As you know if you have a Facebook fan page you have to have 100 fans or more to be able to claim your custom URL, the vanity URL that will allow you to send people to your Facebook page easily without having to hit Tinyurl.com to shorten your link for you. You can meet this requirement several ways, you can ask your friends and family on Facebook to fan you, You can post your fan box to your blog or your Artfire shop to gain more exposure for your fan page. The fan box is a cool new widget Facebook rolled out recently that shows your recent posts made to your fan page and you can customize it to show your fans too if you like. You can also check out some of these places listed here.

100Network was founded by Kristi Baun as a way for small businesses and online businesses, to meet the 100 fan requirement for the vanity URL. She has a great idea going here. Myself, I have had great results with it and have seen others have great results. You can meet your requirement in no time and as the community grows it will be even easier. As of this writing the fan base of the page is 131 and growing every day.100Network is a fan page in itself, here is how it all works: You “fan” 100network, and make your comment on it with your fan page URL and ask for people to come “fan” you. They of course will “fan” you and then you go “fan” them back and everyone wins! This network is a great way to not only meet your requirement but check out other shops and businesses that are out of the handmade arena. There are lots of small individually owned businesses located all over the country trying to make a web presence by using Facebook. You never know, you may find a business on there local to you that you didn’t even know about!

There is also a page on Mashable, called Mashable Fan Page Help, where you can leave a comment with the link to your fan page. Then you can go thru the list of other comments and “fan” the other people who have posted, You can let them know in your comment you found them on mashable and ask for them to reciprocate if they wish. This method would work well if you are just a few short of 100 fans.

Socialbees also has a similar thing going with their “Fan Page Showcase” You can become a “fan” of Socialbees, and then post your shop description on their fan page showcase page. It’s cool to see all the other fan pages out there, plus it’s a relief to hit 100 yourself and get that much coveted vanity URL you been working so hard on! And you don't have to stop "fanning" pages once you hit 100. You can keep in touch with 100network or the other places I mentioned if you wish and continue to help others reach their goal of 100. It's always nice to be able to lend a helping hand to someone in the same boat. So get out there become a fan of some of these cool places I mentioned here and get your 100 on!

Image Credits: Kellibeans, Kristi Baun creator of 100network
 

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