Facebook Messenger link generator

Plenty of Pages Never Got a Username

Look at the hint under the first field and you will find a quiet accommodation: a numeric page id works too. That is there because an enormous number of Facebook pages were set up years ago, by somebody who is no longer around, and never had a username chosen for them, so their address is a long run of digits that nobody could read out over a phone. The Facebook Messenger link generator above will happily build a link out of either.

It is worth knowing which of the two you have before you start, because it changes what you should do next.

What the Facebook Messenger Link Generator Builds

Two fields and four things back: a link that opens Messenger straight into a chat with your page, a copy button, a test link, and a scannable code you can download for print.

No account, no login, nothing to connect. The link is an address, and building it is a matter of putting your page name into the right shape.

Username or a Row of Digits

The field wants the part of your page address that identifies the page. If your page lives at a readable address, that readable word is what goes in. If it lives at a long numeric one, the digits go in instead and the link works exactly the same.

The difference matters for everything except this tool. A readable username can be said out loud, printed on a van, typed by somebody who half remembers it, and recognised in a link before anybody taps it. A numeric one can do none of those things, and a link built on it looks faintly suspicious in an ad.

So if you are on digits, set a username on the page first and then come back. It costs nothing, it takes a minute, and every link you build afterwards is better for it.

One caution: changing a page username breaks every link that used the old one, including printed codes. Choose it once, choose it carefully, and do it before you print anything.

This Is for a Page

Everything here assumes you are messaging as a business page rather than as a person.

That is worth saying because a fair number of small businesses are still being run from somebody’s personal profile, with customers as friends and enquiries in a private inbox mixed with family. It works right up until it does not: nobody else can be given access, nothing can be automated, and the day the account is locked or the person leaves, the business loses its customer list.

If that is you, the link is not your first problem. Set up a page, move the audience across gradually, and then build the link. Everything else on this page assumes you have one.

The Reference Tag, and Ads

The second field adds a tag to the link, and on Facebook it earns its keep most obviously in advertising.

An ad that sends people into Messenger is one of the more honest things you can buy, because the outcome is a conversation rather than a click. What you cannot do by default is tell which ad produced which conversation, and a tag closes that gap: one per ad, one per audience, one per creative if you are testing.

Away from ads, the same discipline applies to every other placement. Tag the button on the page differently from the link in a local group, differently again from the code on a poster, and you find out where your enquiries actually come from rather than assuming.

The tag says which link was tapped and nothing else. It carries no information about the person, and it is not an identifier.

What Happens to the Tag Afterwards

Be clear about this before you build a naming scheme on it.

The reference travels into the conversation with the person. Whether you ever see it depends on what is answering your Messenger chats: something that reads the tag can show you which link started each conversation, and something that does not means the tag sits in the URL doing nothing.

Check what your own setup does with it. Either way the tags cost nothing, so it is worth tagging from the beginning rather than starting the habit on the day something can read them.

Where a Messenger Link Earns Its Place

Messenger gets written off as the channel nobody uses, usually by people whose customers are not on it. For a great many local trades, that is exactly wrong.

• Ads. The strongest use. A conversation costs more than a click and is worth several of them.
• The button on your page. Free, permanent, and it is the first thing somebody sees when they arrive from a search.
• Local groups. Where a lot of small business recommendations actually happen, and where a link that opens a chat beats a link to a page every time.
• Your website. Worth having alongside a WhatsApp button rather than instead of it, because people use what they already have open.
• Print. A code on a card, a window or a van, which is where the audience for this channel overlaps most with people walking past your premises.

If you are running a WhatsApp button on the site as well, the WhatsApp chat button generator builds one that sits in the corner without a plugin, and giving each channel its own tag tells you which one people actually reach for.

The Code, and Where It Goes

Under the link there is a scannable version to download as an image, and the note beside it is the argument for using both: the link in your bio and the code on print land in the same inbox, and the tag tells you which one worked.

Print it at a size somebody can scan from where they will be standing, leave white space around it, and keep it off gloss. A code printed too small is the commonest reason a card does nothing, and it is invisible until somebody tries.

A printed code is fixed for its life, so decide the tag before the print run rather than after it.

Test It While Signed Out

The test link beside the copy button is worth ten seconds.

Open it on a phone that is not signed in as your page, and check you get a compose box addressed to the business rather than a page, a login wall or an error.

That test catches the two failures that matter: a username typed wrong, and a page that is not actually set up to receive messages. This tool will build a perfectly valid address either way, because it never checks anything, so the only way to find out is to try it.

What the Facebook Messenger Link Generator Cannot Do

• It cannot check the page exists. Nothing is looked up. A typo makes a well-formed link to nobody.
• It cannot tell whether messaging is switched on. That lives in the page’s own settings, and a page with messages turned off produces a link that goes nowhere useful.
• No analytics. It gives you a tag so something else might attribute the conversation. It counts nothing itself.
• It does not pre-fill a message. The chat opens empty, unlike a WhatsApp link.
• It does not read the tag back. Once the link is copied, this page has no further part in it.
• Nothing is stored. Copy the link and download the code before you close the tab.

The panel is rendered on the server before any script runs, so the fields, the copy button and the note are there immediately, and only the code waits for JavaScript.

Messenger Is the Channel People Forget They Have

Before you send anybody there, go and look at what is already in it.

A very common finding is a page inbox with unread messages going back months, from people who assumed a business with a Facebook page reads its Facebook messages. Every one of those is an enquiry that went unanswered, and a fair number went to somebody who did reply.

That is the argument against adding another place for messages to arrive unless you have solved the answering. A new link pointed at an inbox nobody opens makes the problem bigger rather than smaller.

One Inbox for All of It

The reason page inboxes go unread is not laziness. It is that a small business already has WhatsApp on a phone, Instagram on the same phone, email on a laptop and a page somebody set up in 2019, and nobody can watch four things at once.

With DMly Messenger sits in the same inbox as WhatsApp, Instagram and the rest, so a message arriving there is as visible as one arriving anywhere else, and it can get an automatic first reply rather than sitting until somebody remembers to log in.

If Instagram is the bigger half of your audience, the Instagram DM link generator builds the same kind of link for that account, and the comment reply generator writes the public replies that move a comment thread into either of them.