How to Create a Custom Username For Your Facebook Page

First of all, it is important to note the difference between a "Profile" and a "Page" in Facebook. The Profile is for an individual and a Page is for a band, product or brand, or company. They both work differently.

The first step is to either create a Profile page for yourself or use someone else's profile. It may be a good idea to use a profile that has a lot of friends already, here's why...

A few months ago, Facebook required you to have over 1000 "fans" of a Page before you could create a custom username. The purpose of this was to try to manage all of the custom usernames, so the guy down the street living in his trailer couldn't create a username like: facebook.com/coke. It was an attempt to control the legitimacy of the usernames.

Upon receiving numerous complaints from the small business community, this number of 1000 required fans was reduced down to 25. So, you need to have at least 25 fans before you can request a username, check it's availability.

This brings us back to choosing a profile that has a lot of friends, the friends are kind of a captive market, insomuch as after you have created your page, if you have a lot of friends, it is easy to go in and invite all of your friends to become a fan of your new page. Using this technique, you will get to your minimum of 25 very quickly, which is important considering you may have a high-demand username and you want to snatch it up asap.

Create or use a profile, create the page, invite friends, get 25, then go here: www[dot]facebook[dot]com/username/ to request your custom username, and see if it is available.

Please note that after your custom username has been created for your page, the profile from which it was created is the default Admin. You can add other administrators to your page as you see fit. They need to have a Facebook profile in order to be added.

Many times, with large companies, there is an employee with a Facebook profile with a lot of friends, this is a good person to use, and add or change administrators later.

After the page and custom username have been created, make sure to get your "badge" from the Facebook page and add a nice graphic icon to your website, email blasts and other marketing material to continue to build up your fan base. In Facebook, the "fans" are pretty much just like an in-house mailing list, so the more the better, there is money in your list.

Make sure to review the settings for your new page. You may not want all fans to be able to post their own comments, videos and pictures, etc. You will definitely want to manage this.

Lastly, remember to update the Facebook page often, give people a reason to become a fan, update with pics, videos and blogs every week.

Revisited: The Art of SEO

As much as Google *pretends* to like SEOs by inviting us to parties at the Googleplex and posting on SEO forums, the bottom line is that they don’t like us — or rather, they don’t like what we do. Google wants to find the best, most relevant sites for the search query at hand all by themselves. Perhaps someday they will actually be able to do that, but for now, they still need our help, whether they like it or not.



Unfortunately, unscrupulous SEOs have given Google good reasons not to like us. Because of search engine spammers, Google is constantly changing their ranking criteria and is always on the lookout for the telltale signs of SEO on any given site. It’s not a huge stretch to say that they may even downgrade the sites that they believe have been SEO’d.



If you think that having your keyword phrases “in all the right places for
SEO” is a good thing, think again! You’re essentially telling Google, “Hey
look…my site has been SEO’d!” To which they reply, “Thanks so much for
letting us know… ZAP … see ya later!” Doesn’t matter if your site is
the most relevant (in your mind) to the search query. Doesn’t matter that
you’ve placed your keyword phrases strategically throughout the site.



Stuff that worked like a charm for many people in the early years of SEO may actually hurt rather than help now. As to what might trigger an SEO “red flag,” my guess is that it’s a combination of things. Like, if you have a certain number of traditional SEO factors on any given page, those may set off some Google warning bells (otherwise known as a spam filter).



Some of the traditional SEO formulaic elements that you may have been taught to use include putting the keyword phrase:

* in the domain name
* in the file name
* in the Title tag
* in the Meta description tag
* in the Meta keyword tag o in the image alt attributes
* in an H1 (or any H) tag
* as the first words on the page
* in bold and/or italics or a different color
* multiple times in the first paragraph or twice on the page
* in the copy in every single spot on the page where it might possibly make sense to use it, and
* in all the hyperlinks pointing to a page.

If you put the same keyword phrase in many of those spots, you might very well trigger a spam filter. Since it’s difficult to determine how many and which combinations of those things might trigger the filter, the best advice I can give you is to do your SEO without any particular formula in mind.


That’s how I’ve always done it and it’s always worked because every site is
unique and has different SEO needs.



Unfortunately, it’s difficult to describe this type of SEO to others, as
people are always looking for the magic formula. For as long as I’ve been
doing SEO (over 12 years now), I’ve had it in the back of my mind that I
wouldn’t want to tip off the engines that my sites were SEO’d. This is one
of the reasons I’ve never used keyword-rich domain names or file names.
That’s probably the most obvious SEO thing you can do.



The most important aspect to being a good SEO is creativity. You shouldn’t
worry too much about the specifics of putting keyword phrases here and
there, and again over there. Not every page needs an H1 heading with
keyword phrases in it. If your page isn’t designed to use H1 headings, you
don’t need to change it to use one just for SEO purposes. And many images don’t really and truly make sense with a keyword phrase in their alt attribute (alt tag). Don’t force one to be there just for the search engines.



Most importantly for Google (and for your users), when it comes to your page copy and how you use your visible keyword phrases, less is definitely more. Please don’t read my Nitty-gritty report and then put the same keyword phrase in every single available spot on your page that you can find. My report is supposed to help you think about a few places you may have missed because you weren’t thinking about being descriptive when you originally wrote the copy. You can definitely have too much of a good thing.



A first paragraph on a page that has, say, 4 sentences, should not have 10
instances of your keyword phrase. It will look and sound dumb. I know that I have stressed this in my conference presentations and in our High Rankings seminars, but no matter how many times I say this, people don’t quite grasp the importance of working this way. If your copy reads poorly to a human, and does not come across as natural professional copywriting, the search engines won’t like it either.



When you do SEO, you don’t follow a guidebook. Think like a search engineer and consider all the possible things they might have to combat both now and in the future. Always optimize for 3 or 4 or even up to 5 phrases, and spread them out throughout the entire page. Never, ever, ever think that it’s the first paragraph that matters and stuff ‘em all in there. There should be an equal distribution throughout the entire page, and you should never use the phrases so much that you hear them constantly when you read it.



If you’ve done it right, an everyday user should not have any idea that a page has been SEO’d. A trained SEO should be able to spot what your keyword phrases are, but it shouldn’t be glaringly obvious. Last, but not least, hire a professional copywriter to work on the important pages of your site. This is the best investment you can make for your site and your business. Even if you don’t want to hire an SEO, you absolutely MUST hire a
professional copywriter. You need someone who really and truly understands target audiences and how to speak to them about the benefits of what you offer. You can easily teach someone like that the SEO writing part.



Hope this helps to give you some ideas on how you might get out of formula-SEO mode and start doing more creative SEO. More than ever, SEO is much more of an art than a science. The science is only a small portion of it.

What Your Logo Designer Needs to Know About Your Business

I can't count the number of times a client has come to me, told me their business name, given me a quick description of what they do, and then asked me to design a their logo.

When this happens, it feels like I'm throwing a dinner party and one of the guests has invited someone I don't know (maybe a new love interest or an out-of-town guest). They've told me the guest's name, but nothing about their personality, food preferences, or even what they prefer to drink. So I'm left guessing—and hoping—that the guest likes pork, drinks red wine, and doesn't mind if our frisky puppy jumps on them a bit when they walk in the door.

I've made these decisions about the dinner based on my preferences and personality and various assumptions but not on facts or information that I really should have about the guest. On the other hand, if I know in advance that the guest can't eat pork and that the sulfites in red wine gives them migraines, I can be prepared instead of having a hungry and disappointed guest.

If someone asks me to design a logo based on a tiny bit of information, then I have to make just as many assumptions about the personality of the business, its customers, and the owner's personal taste as I do in creating my hypothetical dinner. And the logo I design winds up being more about me and my preferences than about my client's business.

A business's logo should tell your business's story. It should capture its flavor and essence. But, to do that, your designer must have information. The more information you give to a designer, the more likely it is that their designs will accurately reflect your business. Instead of a slice of information, give your designer the whole pie.

Information that's really useful when designing a logo includes:

• The reason you chose your business name. Does it have special meaning or significance?
• The products or services that you provide. Be detailed—provide a sales sheet or summary of each of your offerings. Or pretend that your logo designer is a potential client. What do they need to know about your process and approach?
• Your competition. To create a logo that stands out, it's very helpful to know the specific companies you're competing against. Are there a couple of companies like yours you keep running into at networking events? Or that you keep writing proposals against?
• What makes your business stand out? Specifically, why would someone hire you instead of hiring another company like yours?
• Who do you work with? Who do you love to work with?
• What's problem(s) do you solve for your clients? What's the end result that they get from working with you?
• What are your goals with your clients? How do you help people?
• What personality do you want your business to convey? If people were to describe your business using 5 adjectives, which ones would you want them to use?

To get this information, many designers—myself included—have created a questionnaire or worksheet for you to fill out. Or they may interview you and ask you these questions. I prefer the worksheet method because writing things down gives you a chance to think about the answers to these questions. You can also set the questionnaire aside for a day or two and "sleep on it" to make sure that the answers are really right for you.

If your designer hasn't asked these questions, make sure that they're planning to get this information some other way—through reading your website, reviewing your marketing materials, etc. And, if they're doing their research this way, then make sure your materials are up-to-date and really reflect your business as it is now.

However you get this information to your designer, it will help them create a logo that really shows what your business is all about and gives prospective clients a taste of your business's style.