How should people be directed to your facebook page?

For starters, if you're doing it like in the photo on the right, you're doing it wrong. I'll explain why later.

Since their launch, facebook pages have become an increasingly important part of many companies online marketing strategy. Their versatility and interactive nature have given business a method of two way conversation with their audience like never before, allowing deeper and more reactive relationships.

Add to this the 'word of mouth' element, where a comment or like is seen by a users friends, being something of a recommendation, and it easy to see why facebook pages are becoming just as essential as traditional corporate websites.

For evidence in this, just look to traditional advertising. I've certainly noticed that in television and magazine adverts, as well as billboards, a company's facebook page is often displayed rather than their website. More and more people are being directed to a facebook page, where they can 'opt in' to regular engagement.

But how to direct those customer via offline marketing has always been a problem. With a website, it's easy. Just include a nice, visual link directly through to the page and that's that. However, this is obviously impossible offline.

Company's have attempted this in many different ways in the past, without a single accepted standard developing. People have been invited to 'Find, Join or Search for us on facebook', some times with a search term included, such as 'eskimosoup'. This is what's been done in the picture above; passers by are invited to find the company of facebook, though without the help of suggested search terms.

This was the problem; users did in fact need to search for the page. They would have to remember or guess the search terms, probably the company name and could in fact find a list of similarly named pages, possible visiting the wrong page in the end. Even if they did reach the intended page, it could take work. As with anything online, the fewest clicks means the least effort, so the opposite could cause the people to give up entirely.

This is how it has been, but finally there does seem to be a consensus emerging, with many leading companies employing the same method. And that method just so happens to be the one that we've been recommending for years, ever since the functionality that allows it was introduced.

When a business page is first created, the url/web address will be something like 'http://www.facebook.com/pages/page-name/21343911974'. It's fairly plain to see why displaying a web address such as this would be useless in offline advertising. It's too long and difficult to remember, at least for anyone without a photographic memory.

This is why companies got into the habit of directing their audiences to search for them, as they couldn't expect such a url to stick.

As with any web address, the shorter and more memorable a url is, the better. This is especially important in marketing, where one can only expect limited interest and attention from the viewer of a url.

So, how can that be done with such an unwieldy url as a facebook page has?

In the early stages of pages, I identified this problem and would recommend companies direct a sub-domain of their own towards the page, for example, 'www.eskimosoup.co.uk/facebook'. This could be displayed in offline marketing and anyone visiting that address would go directly to the corresponding facebook page.

While other company's audiences had to login to facebook, then use the search box to hopefully find the right page, if they indeed used the right keywords and there was no other page with a similar name, our clients could be confident that their prospects were directed straight to their page, with no chance of going elsewhere.

This was a great, effective workaround, but then facebook itself realised the problem and introduced it's own solution. Pages could now register a new shorter and more memorable url by visiting 'facebook.com/username'. We quickly registered 'facebook.com/eskimosoup' and went about the business of doing the same for all our clients. This url was then displayed in all offline, as well as online marketing.

This was some time ago, but is only now emerging as the accepted best method of advertising a facebook page, included in those adverts and billboards mentioned above. There are however, still a surprising number of not just small page, but also huge, corporate pages who still haven't caught on.

How about you? Have you registered a short url for your facebook page? Have you included it in your advertising? If not, we strongly recommend you do so as soon as possible at facebook.com/username.