How to change Facebook username and pagename for a large company?
-
Greetings,
I've been tasked with investigating how to change our Facebook pagename and username. Problem is we have a huge number of followers - over 1,000,000.
From my research it appears you have to submit a change request to FB and hope they accept it as you can only make these changes once. In addition, the change appears to be more challenging if you have more than 200 likes. And there is no guarantee that FB will accommodate your change request. I have been unable to contact a human being at FB.
SEOMoz Staff - May I ask how you effectively changed your page name and username? What was your process?
Kind regards,
Eric Darby
-
Best of luck!
-
Thanks Erica! This is just what I needed. This is a huge undertaking for us. I appreciate the granularity of your answer!
Kind regards,
Eric Darby
-
Thanks John! Great advice. I appreciate your reply!
Kind regards,
- Eric Darby
-
Oh, I should add that they requested quite a bit of information about our rebranding. We ended up sending them: our new URL and it's whois, our trademark number on our new name, an internal slide deck about the rebranding, and a pretty long statement about what we were doing. We're pretty lucky here at Moz that our name change wasn't a huge state secret, but we were pretty surprised about how much documentation they wanted.
-
Hi Eric,
We definitely worked directly with Facebook to do these changes. They flipped both the name change and the vanity URL change on their end and did the 301 redirect from our old page.
If you go into your "admin" section on your FB page and into the "basic information" by the "name" field, you'll see a link to "request change."
Facebook's pretty invested in getting businesses on there, so they seemed to be very responsive about this.
Hope that helps!
-
If the new name is more than 5 characters, I think you can just go to https://www.facebook.com/username and submit the request.
if that doesn't work or it's less than 5 characters, I recently had success through the following channel, and believe me I've tried everything to get an email for a real person or a real person on the phone. When you log into your Facebook account, there should be an "Email support" link in the left nav. I picked "Other" and send in information for the request, and someone actually contacted me and they processed our request! Note that we have ~35K likes, and do spend a bit on advertising ($1-5$K/mo).
I would suspect they'd redirect the old URL to the new URL so it shouldn't be a problem to change it, but you'll want to confirm that with Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/seomoz goes to their new moz page URL, so that's one case confirming my suspicions.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Facebook Contests
Hey Moz Community, I've been reading some articles that Facebook no longer likes if Business Pages run contests on their Pages. I was thinking about doing something super simple with a "Like, Comment, and Share" type of an entry. Does anyone know if this is still allowed - I can't seem to find a concrete answer. Even the guidelines for Facebook seem a bit vague. I could always take the contest offline and use a landing page on my website to generate traffic but that also doesn't help with my social following. Thoughts, insights all welcome. Thanks!
Social Media | | MainstreamMktg0 -
Google Plus Company Page Verification
Hi How do you test successful G+ company page/publisher integration/verification if using the less technical methods such as linking between the Home page and the G+ company page instead of adding code to the head section? Since i take it the google structured data testing tool cant work in these cases since no code on the head section ! Is it best to add the code anyway ? I note my clients still not achieving a knowledge graph card/section in the search results for a branded search but i have heard that doesnt come until you have at least hundreds of followers and/or G+ interactions. All Best
Social Media | | Dan-Lawrence
Dan0 -
Facebook and Google+ Not Properly Picked Up
Hello, I have been having issues for some time now getting my Google+ and Facebook activity to show in the social media section of site explorer. Was anyone else having this same issue? I have verified my website to both pages and the Facebook page receives a considerable amount of traffic so it is very confusing to me. Any help is much appreciated. Thank You Steve
Social Media | | steve2150 -
Do facebook likes have a direct impact on SERPS?
If a post on my site receives a lot of facebook 'likes' does that have a direct impact on the rankings for that post? I notice SEO Moz track them so I guess they must be pretty significant. Also if someone visits my facebook page and 'likes' for example a link to an article on my site does that have an impact on SERPS? I can see that 'liking' something is a vote of confidence or a trust signal that google could use but I would imagine that if someone actually shares my content on their facebook page that would be much more valuable than a 'like'? If facebook is important to SEO then is it worth setting up facebook ads to get my facebook page in front of an audience so that I can build 'likes'?
Social Media | | SamCUK0 -
I am the only one at my company responsible for SEO
This includes onpage, blogging, social media, link building, content creation, reporting, etc Etc ETC!!! The company I work for has about 100 employess and we are an eCommerce company. I have recently taken over all the SEO duties, as the person before me left. In the past we relied heavily on link building but that seems to be losing steam with Panda and Penguin. Is it even possible in this day in age for one person to keep a company afloat in the competitve SEO world? If so, what should I devote most my time to?
Social Media | | joebuilder0 -
Facebook - one page or two for local insurance agency with 2 locations?
We have 2 offices within 20 miles of each other, and we are getting ready to launch a facebook page (or pages)... I'm not sure whether we should put up one page or two. One office is our 'corporate office', and the other a 'satellite' office, both are very much open for business, but there will never be a need to post something on one and not the other...the two locations are just too close for there to be a need for that. If something is relevant to one town, it is relevant to the other. I am really leaning toward one page for both offices for many reasons, but it seems like facebook wants me to have 2 pages (ie. I can't put in more than one address). Any help is much appreciated! Thank you!
Social Media | | jgower0 -
Delete Facebook Account to Trasfer Username on My Fan Page
I have following Facebook fan page and want vistastores username which is my domain name. But, I am not able to get it due to my personal profile. Fan page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vista-Stores/160667877282170 Personal profile: http://www.facebook.com/vistastores I am thinking to delete my Facebook account. [Profile & Fan page] Then, I will re-open my Facebook account and create fan page. So, Can I transfer my username from personal profile to fan page by this method?
Social Media | | CommercePundit0 -
IFrame facebook fanbox and tweet blocks
I am looking for a Facebook fanbox display, and a recent tweets display which looks nice and uses an iframe. The reason I desire an iframe is to eliminate these otherwise followed links which I do not necessarily endorse. When you use a facebook fanbox, if 12 users are displayed then you have an extra 12 links added to your page. When you use a recent tweet display then each tweet, depending on your configuration, can offer many links. The tweeter's avatar is a link along with the sender's name and any links added to the message.
Social Media | | RyanKent0