On Saturday, June 13, 2009 at 12:01am EST, Facebook launched custom usernames and vanity URLs. That means that you could log into Facebook, head over here and grab a username, which would in turn give your account a custom URL. For example, maybe your account URL is http://www.facebook.com/people/Bob-Smith/1795806534. That URL is a little tough to remember. And if you are a person who likes to give out or market your profile URL, that URL is downright inconvenient. That is why Facebook launched its custom username program. If Bob Smith goes to facebook.com/username, he can choose a much more concise URL, such as facebook.com/bobsmith or facebook.com/bsmith.

On June 13th, social mediaphiles worldwide waited patiently for the exact moment the Facebook username program launched. Mashable reported that Facebook users created 200,000 custom usernames in the first 3 minutes of the program. It’s on a first come, first serve basis, so you’ve got to act fast. Most common names are already gone. Much like the land rush for dot com domains, this was very much a land rush for usernames. But there is also another side to this story, and it’s all about branding.

You may not know this, but Facebook Profiles and Facebook Pages are very different. People tend to have Profiles. Brands tend to have Pages. Profiles have friends. Pages have fans. If your brand (Brand X) has a Facebook Page, it makes perfect sense to claim the URL facebook.com/brandx. That URL is very easy to market. It’s great for branding, paid search ads, SEO, etc… It sounds glorious, doesn’t it? But do not get too excited yet.

It turns out that Facebook set up eligibility requirements for custom usernames for Facebook Pages. Initially, the requirements were:

• Page must have been active as of June 9, 2009 at 3:00pm EST
• Page must have had 1,000 fans as of May 31, 2009

These requirements were set up to deter would-be username squatters. And it worked pretty well, too. However, I did see a ton of brands scrambling to reach the 1,000 fans mark. On a side note, I saw a couple of posts on Craiglist, asking if any savvy social marketer out there could drive 1,000 targeted fans for a Facebook Page. Gotta love Craigslist, right? Furthermore, if you met those 2 requirements, your username had to be at least 5 characters, and you could not sign up for generic keywords such as pizza, flowers or magazines. Again, this was a way to deter username squatters.

Here’s the part where you can get excited. On June 28th, Facebook reduced the requirements for custom usernames for Facebook Pages. As of last Sunday, the new requirements are:

• Page could have been created anytime
• Page must have at least 100 fans

100 fans? That’s very doable. Even if you are a small brand, you can manage this. Simply go to the Facebook sign up page and choose the type of Page you want to create. Then invite your employees, colleagues, friends and family members to be fans of your brand’s Facebook Page. Once you get to 100 fans, go here and choose your custom username.Facebook just made it very easy to promote your brand. Now go do it!

If you define SEO as “doing anything ethical to acquire free traffic,” then Twitter is for you. Here’s why: you get to link back to your official site. Twitter provides several great opportunities for your brand. Here are some of my observations regarding Twitter and SEO:

• Another top result in the SERPs
  If you can build a strong following for your Twitter profile, it will likely rank in the top results for your brand name, potentially moving one of your competitors down in the rankings. This is especially helpful for brands that have to fight with affiliates, distributors and re-sellers for top rankings.
• Increase free traffic to any and every current promo and/or deal
  You know how your company has an email list of 50,000 people? And every month that email blast goes out and your company makes a ton of money in a span of 1-3 days from the deals in that email blast? Just as that email blast drives free traffic and revenue, Twitter can be used for the same purpose. Currently, there are a lot of big name brands building respectable Twitter followings, and they are seeing the benefits when they use Twitter to promote a 24-hour-only special deal. Again, it’s free traffic from people you know enjoy your brand.
• Don’t count on any link juice
  In 2008, Twitter implemented nofollow tags for every link on a profile page. Twitter was becoming a search engine spammer playground. People were creating accounts in massive numbers, and you would see links for viagra, online poker, weight loss, etc.. Spammers were leaving Twitter spam comments on profiles. To provide a disincentive for this, Twitter implemented a nofollow tag on all links. While we agree that it is still a good sign to have an increasing number of links on the internet, the nofollow tag ultimately kills any hopes of using Twitter to increase rankings for competitive search terms and phrases. Sorry folks.
• Reputation Management
  Remember how I said that your Twitter account will likely rank in the top SERP results for your brand name? Twitter is also a great tool for reputation management. It’s an indirect way of keeping other potentially negative websites out of the top SERP rankings for searches on your brand name. On a related note, Twitter can also be a great way to quickly communicate with users who have complaints about your site, your products, or your brand. Publicly resolving a complaint on Twitter has the potential to make your brand more appealing to customers, and it could also lead to more followers. That’s even more traffic!

Twitter is another social marketing tool that is getting buzzed and bashed all over the internet. No matter what people are saying about it, it just might be a great tool in your overall SEO strategy. I’ll let you decide.