The End of Ugly Facebook URLs!

Facebook announced yesterday that beginning June 13, you will be able to create your own custom URL and account name, similar to what you can do with Twitter, Linkedin and other social networking sites. This will make it much easier to share your Facebook profile with friends.

I'm hoping you'll be able to do the same thing for Facebook pages. This will make it easier for businesses to promote their pages with traditional media as well as making it easier for people to find you or your business on Facebook and when using search engines such as Google. Choose your username carefully! Facebook says that once your username is set, you won't be able to change it.

If you have a common name, want to get a really cool URL or need to get some important keywords in your URL, you won't want to wait until June 14...it'll probably be too late! I see a mad scramble this Saturday!

More information is available on the Facebook blog.

Zero to 1,000 in 3 weeks

Can plumbing and air conditioning be the subject of a viral social media campaign? Hard to imagine anything less sexy.

We recently started doing social media and search engine optimization work for a mechanical contracting company named Blue Dot, in Baltimore, MD. Having offered plumbing and air conditioning services to a consumer market for over 40 years, they had some brand recognition and a nifty cartoon "mascot" character called Bluey, that they'd used over the years.

We wanted to leverage their existing market visibility to build an audience that they could reach easily and cost-effectively to generate more new business while their direct mail and other print media contributions were shrinking in performance, but not cost. Social media was an important leg in our strategy. The challenge was how to engage people in a social mindset.

We decided to create a Facebook fan page, but instead of doing it in the name of the company, we decided to personalize it with a Bluey Fan Page. We launched on May 12, 2009, and by May 31, our local company had over 1,000 fans. Ashton Kutcher and Lindsay Lohan are not looking over their cyber-shoulders, but this is pretty neat for our local service provider.

How'd they do it?

Bottom line, it was a team effort. We seeded some ideas, got some great ideas from their creative partner, and a visionary senior executive. First, there was a photo contest: take a picture of some Bluey dolls that have been used in promotions over the years. They came in from all over from both customers and employees.

Our client next decided to share the wealth and they promoted a charitable contribution: $100 contribution to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, for every 500 fans. They combined this with the Bluey pictures and offered to send out Bluey dolls for $10 + S&H, with each $10 going directly to the charity.

Ideas keep coming. The creative team came up with a coloring page to download for kids. And then along came Bluette. Bluey's got a girlfriend.

And Blue Dot is adding fans to their business every day. Social media for fun and profit!

You gotta love it.