How can I create a custom URL for my Facebook Page?

You can create a custom url for your own page or for any fan page that you manage. If you haven't already set your personal username already - now is a good time.   A custom url makes it easy for others to find you.  You can print it on your business card or list it in other social networking sites.  Once you set it - it cant be changed - so choose wisely.   I always recommend to use your name if its available.   If you have a common name you will want to capture the name before the other "John Smith" does.  I think of it as part of my brand.  You can do the same for your business fan page too - as long as it has 25 "followers".

The process is simple as long as you know where its done.   Just click on this link below to go the setup page.   Any name you select must be unique across all facebook user - so you will have to check its availability.  If you are managing several fan pages - you will see a link that lets you set them up.

http://www.facebook.com/username

Facebook-username

Invite all your Facebook Friends

I thought this script was clever.   I rarely want to invite all my friends to anything.  But this script works.

I set up a couple of groups on Facebook and wanted to invite all my friends, but it would have taken an eternity because for some strange reason Facebook doesn’t allow you to “select all” friends when sending an invite. I mean, they’ll let you do it… but only if you click one at a time! Uugh.

Well anyway I went on a little search and found that you could cheat the system by inserting a little javascript to make it happen! Here is how to do it:

  1. Go to your Event, Group or page and click “Invite People”.
  2. Once the page has loaded you should see all of your friends, but they are not selected.
  3. At this point, copy and paste the javascript code below into your Web browser’s address bar, then hit “Enter”.
  4. If all goes well, it selects all of your friends!

javascript:elms=document.getElementById('friends').getElementsByTagName('li');for(var fid in elms){if(typeof elms[fid] === 'object'){fs.click(elms[fid]);}}

via onemansblog.com

I tried it on a Fan Page.  I selected "Suggest To Friends" - and  a popup window appeared and loaded avatars of all my friends.  I just dropped this script into the url address window and hit return and it selected everyone.   It doesnt actually send the invite - you still have to do that.  So I think its safe to try it and back out.

How to Link Facebook Wall Entries to Twitter

You might be wondering how you can automatically post your wall entries on Facebook to Twitter.   You want anything new happening on your fan page to be shared on Twitter.  Its really quite simple.  First go to http://www.facebook.com/twitter  You will see a simple page that directs you to make the connection.   After clicking you will be taken to a page showing all of you fan pages that you have control over.   Find your fan page and click the button that says "Link to Twitter". 

This takes you to the standard page where you get to "Allow" or "Deny" access to Twitter.  You have the option here to login to Twitter or signout and login into a different Twitter account.   If you are Twittering for a business - you will want to log out of your personal account and sign into the target business account. Once that is complete you will return to your list of fan pages and you will see some check boxes.  If you dont want to share new photos then uncheck that box and save your changes.

I havent found a way to control the format of the tweets going out on Twitter from Facebook.  Sometimes you want to customize your tweets by adding hashtags so your followers can find you. 

Another issue that I find troublesome is that wall posting is shared on Twitter using bit.ly with the shortened url pointing back to the Facebook page.  This is OK some of the time but when you just want to share your new blog from your website you want to be able to post only once to Facebook and then let Facebook autopost to Twitter without your visitors having the intermediate stop on the Facebook page before getting to the blog posting. 

Another thing to notice is that when you share a link in Facebook it will include a nice thumbnail and text without you entering anything.  However when this gets sent to Twitter - only the link is visible.  Meaning that you need to add some text that does show up on Twitter.  I would advise playing around with this a bit to get the hang of it and make sure you are happy with the result.