Get Your Social Usernames Before It’s Too Late

Jul 16, 2009

If there is no other reason to join in on the social networking for businesses, this one statement should be important enough for any company to see the value.

Protect your corporate identity. Register your social usernames or someone else will. Sites like Twitter and Facebook don’t monitor username registration. Anyone with an email address can sign up for any username that is not already taken so be proactive about your online reputation and grab your company’s name on the major social networks.

And just in case you were wondering what those other reasons might be, here’s a short list of a few more reasons to jump into the social media networks.

Online Reputation Management – making sure you are the one that is in control of your name and brand socially.
Customer Service – if people know you can be reached via Twitter, they will reach you. You can often help people much quicker and easier through Twitter. (140 chars, or less baby) Saves a ton of time from annoying phone calls, am I right??
Tips – Get in front of the millions of people who are using Twitter everyday. Tips are a great way to get people checking back and can help increase the number of followers you have tremendously!
Services – Let it be known why you are on Twitter, and how exactly you can help people via Twitter (what services you are willing to offer etc).
Humor – Just because you are on “trendy Twitter” does not mean you can’t be yourself and make people laugh. In fact, the more you are yourself and let people know its the real YOU, or the REAL COMPANY that they have grown to trust and love, the more likely it is going to do you good – and get you more followers.
Videos – If you are in a field that has videos, Twitter is a great place to share them – especially if they are going to make people laugh, teach them, or in some other way “enlighten” them!
Content promotion – Got a blog? Well make sure you put up a “tweet” every time you got a new post live. The more people that like it will re-tweet it and share it. The more people share it and pass it around, the better it is for you (but that should be a no brainer huh?)
Product promotions – Its OK to promote products that you offer on Twitter – it really is. Just make sure you are doing other things with your Twitter account besides just “promoting”. You are more likely to make sales and gain (not lose) followers by mixing it up!
Contests – A great way to gain new followers and get more people interested (or knowing) about your brand. Offer something that will get people talking about, and linking back to you. This is very powerful when done right!
Reach new customers – You want to be doing everything you can to be finding new customers. The old hard core base is great, but the only way to expand and gain more customers is by stepping outside the traditional methods of marketing.