Claim Your Social Media Name – NOW

I’ve been advising my clients to register their names at social media sites for a while. Based on an article in Advertising Age yesterday I see even the big boys are ignoring this most basic advice – claim your name in social media NOW before someone else does.

This is the article that caught my attention: GM, Kellogg, Nestle Beat to the Tweet as Squatters Take Over Twitter Names

Social Media Advice: Claim Your Name

If you have not already done so, register your user name on social media sites. Being able to use your name to build your profile or brand is vital to your success on the web and you need to ensure that you own it and register it. Having a consistent image across all social sites allows your followers or devotees to find you and follow you, plus it has the added benefit that you don’t have to remember hundreds of user names.

Use your brand name or determine a name for your brand and register it at every social media site. If you want to establish a profile for one or more experts, determine the user ID for each person and register that as well.

There are several sites that allow you to check if your desired user name is available.

• http://knowem.com/
  Check username availability for 120 social websites. Also offers a paid service and help you register on all the 120 social media websites after gathering some basic information from you.
• http://www.usernamecheck.com/
  Contains a list of 60+ websites to check usernames
• http://namechk.com/
  Check availability of username in 72 social media websites.
• http://www.checkusernames.com

Some sites will not allow your full name and limit the number of characters that you can have, so create a user name that is consistent and easy to remember.

Register it on every site you can find, you’ll never use most of them, but at least you will own the user names and this will stop others from hi-jacking your name.