Facebook username helped double university's fan base in 6 weeks

In June, Facebook enabled page managers to establish intuitive "usernames" for their pages. This made it possible for companies, celebrities, and organizations to create short, intuitive URLs for their Facebook content (e.g. www.facebook.com/username).

At first, this service was only available to Facebook pages that had been set up prior to May 31, 2009, and had attracted at least 1,000 fans by that date. On June 28, Facebook enabled usernames for other pages with at least 25 fans.

I got up early on Monday, June 29, and claimed the intuitive address www.facebook.com/huntingtonuniversity for my campus. Our Facebook page had been set up for a full year, but despite regular updates and some pay-per-click advertising, it had only attracted a few hundred fans.

However, once we established the easy-to-type (and easy-to-remember) URL, our number of fans began to climb steadily. Critical mass accelerated this growth when students returned to campus on August 28 and made new connections with each other and with the university. Throughout this period, content updates and promotion strategies stayed about the same, but the shorter URL made it easier for fans to share the site. After setting up our Facebook username, we doubled our fan base in six weeks. The chart below demonstrates the dramatic results.



Now that there is an easier way to direct people to the page, we expect to continue expanding our fan base through promotion in other media. We have not yet mentioned the new Facebook page URL in our alumni magazine or mailed any postcards, but these are obvious next steps.

If you manage a Facebook page for your college, university, or campus organization, give serious thought to creating an intuitive URL for the site. Guidelines are available here: http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=900.