another sam chan: the student blogger

One of the stupidest things about Facebook back in the day was how hard it was to share your own Facebook with others you meet in real life. ‘Just look up Sam Chan’ doesn’t go very far when you’ve got an entire Facebook group consisting of people with the same name as you. Or, you can go the ICQ route and memorize the generic number that Facebook gave you when you first signed up. This changed last June when Facebook finally let everyone have their own URL and the masses scrambled to grab their own name. However, things were less clear for fan Pages. I recently tried to set a vanity url for my own ‘fan’ page and found it amazingly difficult to find proper instructions on how to do so. Thus, here is my own. If you haven’t set your own URL for your normal Facebook page, the instructions are almost identical and will only take a minute to do. Trust me, you don’t want to be www.facebook.com/samchan20495 5 years from now. So here it is:

1. Make sure your Fan Page has at least 25 fans. (Those looking to get an URL for their own personal page can ignore this step).

2. Go to www.facebook.com/username.

3. Click on “Set a Username for your Pages” (for Personal pages, click on the link above that line)

4. Select the page you want to add a vanity URL to.

5. Test out your URL to make sure its available, then hit submit and you’re done!

In a world where online branding is becoming increasingly important, small things like this can make the difference, especially if you’re a budding company. It is extremely disappointing when it is SO easy to give your company that extra bit of credibility, yet over 30% of the top Facebook pages right now don’t even have one.

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I received up a Rockstar Poken keychain today, which is like a social media business card. However, this vlog is about my great experience at www.pokenzoo.com. If you are thinking of picking one up, you should definitely go to them. They rock! (and ship worldwide too!)

Note, I am not an affiliate of pokenzoo, they really are that awesome.

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My first ever video book review: Crush It. Short jist: it’s an excellent read for anybody who hasn’t seen any of Gary Vaynerchuk’s videos and still a fun read with lots of reminders for anybody who already is a fan (as well as a super secret marketing strategy which I don’t talk about in the review!). Let me know what you guys think of the book if you’ve read it!

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By now, you may have started to hear about WINDmobile, a telecommunications start-up trying to join the bridge game that Dr. Bell, Aunt Telus, and Mr. Rogers have been playing for far too long. While all three elders haven’t got a clue about social media, WIND has already gotten a step up with them with a simple, yet hilarious youtube video campaign (see left). They are doing the Twitter and the Facebook as well (where’s twitter.com/rogers, may I ask?) as well. But the thing that has led me to preemptively jump on their bandwagon is their web page. It’s a gorgeous web 2.0 styled page that is community based.

I love that they are asking what they (as in the telecommunications industry in Canada) can do better even before they’ve started. The people-first approach is something that I believe in strongly, and I’ve always wondered why the honest sales guy doesn’t succeed. As far as I’m concerned, when you take care of the people, people will take care of you. For now, WIND Mobile has me sold that they are that type of company. WIND is pending a CRTC trial on October 29th that allows them to officially launch. Here’s hoping that us Canadians will finally get a company that gives a damn about the people. Don’t blow it, Canada!

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