Social media sites for the most part offer all of their users a profile name and profile page. Take Twitter for example, on Twitter my profile name is @lorenbaker, and my Twitter profile ranks fairly well in Google for my name; Loren Baker.
I have a fairly unique name, and there are not very many Loren Baker’s out there, so I usually don’t have a difficult time securing my profile name across social media sites, but what about your company?
Brand names are extremely important in controlling and since most social media profiles do well in Google, it makes perfect sense to be proactive and secure your brand name now. Why? Because if you don’t either your competition, an affiliate marketer, or some jokester will go out and register your brand across social media platforms and rank for YOUR company in Google. Moreover, they can use that profile, in your brand name, to build relationships with your customer base, and market your competition to that base or even destroy your reputation amongst your target market.
Can you imagine how destructive a Twitter account for Starbucks could be for a publicly held company? Especially if it had thousands of followers and then tweeted something misleading about company operations.
The first step is going out and securing your company name. I suggest a tool called CheckUserNames.com. CheckUserNames.com searches across over 100 social media sites to check if your username is available. If it’s available, be proactive and REGISTER IT NOW!
One thing I also like about CheckUserNames.com is that if your brand name is taken on a social media site, the service will let you know. Then you can request from the social media sites that control of your brand name be taken from the username squatter and handed over to your company. Most social media companies, Twitter being one of them, can be quite cooperative in taking care of this for you, because they do not want brands being misrepresented inside their network.
I also suggest that when you set up a profile page, be sure to link to your site from this profile for two reasons. One, because a lot of these social media profiles will carry some linking juice, that’s a given. But two, because sometimes these profiles themselves show up in Google results for branded company terms, and someone who is loyal to a social media site, take Twitter for example, may just click through to see what’s up with your company on Twitter. You want them to then have the option to click over to your homepage via your profile, don’t you?
Securing your brand across social media sites in the form of profiles is a win-win equation of branding, control of the search results, and link building. Get started now 
? | “Secure Your Company Name Across Social Profiles & Build Links | Daily SEO Tip” ( http://tinyurl.com/d29ha2 )
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This is a most important topic and puts even more emphasis on choosing that right profile name. It should be simple and clearly identifiable as belong to you or your company. This is just another way of getting visibility for what is really the brand you are creating. For years I have used the username bwelford and by now that has a very large Internet presence.
I always feel slightly sorry for those who take a username that is not all that good and then stay with it. It is a huge missed opportunity.
Barry Welford’s last incredible blog post..Hyperlocal Information
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Namechk.com is a good place to check too: http://namechk.com/ (although it didn’t work on Firefox on the Mac - I understand they’re working on that).
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Loren Baker Reply:
April 15th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Yeah, but NameChk is more or less a copy and does not work correctly.
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After reading this and both the comments I had a “aha” moment. Thanks for the tip!
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very good information. Yes unique username is very important and social media is good tool for link building.
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checkusernames.com is a great service and very comprehensive list of social media sites in which you can check to see if your user name has been used. It is good to know that some sites will help you protect your brand
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Nice post, thanks.
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Loren,
My twitter profile also shows on the first page of Google for “Gerald Weber” and I have to compete with my father (who is somewhat of a living legend in the guitar amplifier industry) in Google SERPs.
Gerald Weber’s last incredible blog post..Automatically Perfect Your Blog’s SEO
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I suspect there will be an entire industry built around this. It used to be just a matter of securing your domain names, and you had the Internet covered. Now you have to chase down hundreds of little start-ups that each might be the next killer app (even if most won’t be).
David Leonhardt’s last incredible blog post..The Bugs Bunny Guide to Linkbuilding
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My measures to establish my online identity failed with the growing number of fake profiles created by strangers to tarnish my online reputation. I had to bookmark all my social networking profiles to prevent Google indexing my fake profiles. I signed up for Crederity.com to verify my digital credentials and to stand apart from fake users.
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The Twitter profiles rank very high, and it’s very important to get hold of the important Twitter names for your company. Actually the competition will be very strong.
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Very nice post thanks. I think it’s a rule to secure your company name or you name on the web on every social and media places. But it’s a hard work… Do you have something to do it faster ?
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I do not understand, so what may be the social network? Visitors to my blog? How to raise Google PageRank?
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Great post Loren! This is a “must read” for anyone getting started in social media or branding in any way.
I’m also commenting 2 weeks after launch of this post, but CheckUserNames.com rebranded to http://knowem.com/.
Additional props to their service! For only $65, get your name on 120 socnets.
Dana Lookadoo’s last incredible blog post..A Break from Blogging & Branding
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I have just come here from twitter reading the note line of your post. I believe i this theory so I am with my unique name from the first day on internet and is very successful in establishing it as my identity, “abiquddoos”.
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Where nice you blog…
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I’ve been using this site for a while but I’ve a very American sounding name or so I’m told. So at times it can be hard to secure my name. Also I think the site changed their name to KnowEm recently as well.
Duane Brown’s last incredible blog post..How many keywords per AdGroup?
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CheckUserNames.com / Knowem.com is an invaluable tool. Combine with Ping.fm and you can greatly expand your brand’s reach among the social and free channels out there. You’ve got to be concerned with overlapping messages though.
Joseph Miller - EON
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Hii… do you know the best tool auto submit to social bookmarking sites??
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Social websites and social networking are the great platform to ptomote and market business to the relevent customers. Making profile the great idea. Thanks for info
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Good article - plenty of food for thought.
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nice sharing mate, must to know info
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Social bookmarking has an important part for this… any wp plugins sugestion mate?
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Yes that’s true Social websites are the great tools to promote your company/products and securing a company name in major social media sites like twitter would be plus.
Thanks
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Social Media websites help alot in getting backlink and traffic. Social networking helps alot in branding a company. Creating Profile on social networking websites like facebook and myspace helps alot in brand marketing.
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nice writing… most usefull information inside
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Checkusername is cool tool for check user name in social networking site. I bookmarked this site.
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You have talked a real issue. We should have to take proper action to secure our brand name. We have spent years to have a place in this world market and it would be real painful if someone snatches it before of my awareness.
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How many of us check people’s background properly?, I am sure very few of us. In my favorite site Background check I found how people use other people’s identity for their job. We should have to check them seriously.
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Very informative and helpful post. This issue is very sensitive for those whom brand using other companies. Thanks for highlighting this issue.
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Cool tool for check user name in social networking site. I use namechk.com for that.
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like this article so much
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it a must to do… thanks
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