Protecting Your Personal Brand on Twitter - Twitter Tip
Introduction
Twitter is quickly becoming one of the most popular destinations for communication. Unlike Facebook, you can choose a “handle” for your account name on Twitter. Personally I am using “ajvchuk” as my twitter handle. I use this handle because I am hoping it is a little easier than spelling out my whole name “AJ Vaynerchuk.”
So What’s Your Point?
Twitter accounts will soon be like (but not on the same level) domain names. Your name is your personal brand, and if you do not own the Twitter handle for your full name you are setting yourself up for a fall, just as if you did not own your full name dot com. Shel Israel is paying dearly for this mistake.
Examples of Protecting Your Personal Brand on Twitter
Darren Rowse, owner of ProBlogger tweets from the Twitter handle, “ProBlogger.” Even though he is twittering from his blog’s brand, that doesn’t mean he can’t protect his personal brand:
Gary Vaynerchuk, my brother and host of Wine Library TV twitters from the handle “Garyvee. That doesn’t mean he isn’t protecting his name:
It’s Not Too Late
I actually just realized this mistake this morning! As of this post, I registered my full name on Twitter just 2 hours ago. Twitter is still relatively under the radar, so if you do not own the twitter handle with your first and last name, go out there and go get it now!
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April 15th, 2008 at 11:43 am
Hehehe, all over it
April 15th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
totally agree. great post aj.
April 15th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Great idea.
April 15th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Good Advice. What is necessary when assessing the need for a Brand Name? Is the Username a person uses not good enuf for a brand? And why do we need branding? Questions not criticisms. So new I need to be led like a child in a aisle full of deadly snakes! I fully endorse what you said, and you said it very very well!
April 15th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Great advice, even though I am the only person in the world with my name I would sure hate for someone else to register it and start tweeting as me.
April 15th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
But what does one do when one gets to the twitter party late and someone else is using your brand? Do you cry copyright infringement? What would you do?
April 15th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
I’ve googled myself. It helps to have that weird hyphenated last name thing going on. No one wants that name and usually they just say, oh, it’s Debby double-name.
April 15th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
@Dayngr if you come to the Twitter party too late and someone already has your name, the first thing I would do is to twitter/email/contact the individual. If he or she has the same name as you, I am afraid you are out of luck. If the individual has your name for some other reason, see if they are willing to be nice enough to simply hand over the account. If that doesn’t work, ask if they are willing to sell the account for a price.
Otherwise, I think you may be out of luck :-/
Thanks everyone for all of the great comments!
April 15th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Nice one AJ. But don’t limit yourself to Twitter. If your personal name is really that important, you should do this on almost all the social networks. Or at least register your brand name so you do not lose it or even worse get someone that is pretending to be you. I wrote about this at “Social media screen names are the new domains names”
April 15th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Thanks! Got right on it. Makes perfect sense, like duh…
April 15th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
yo aj - great article bro! i immediately went to go grab my name…
thanks man!
April 15th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Excellent post - glad i saw it. i just registered my domain name in twitter @bloggersdesktop thanks for the info!
April 15th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Great idea, definitely something we all should do.
With all the interest shown for Andrew Baron’s twitter account on ebay (which he just cancelled btw), and all the 3rd party twitter apps being released, I think we also need to protect our brands on twitter from ‘tweet jacking’
April 15th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
AJ, thank you for this, and all the other great stuff on your blog, all of which is very interesting and useful for a total beginner like me. Although being such a beginner and not yet having developed anything like a brand name, I used my personal name on Twitter!
Thank you also for the great 8 Mistakes post on Remarkablogger … I fear I make them all! I have lots to learn, starting with sorting out my background (need a brand/logo first!) and my bio. Using 5 words and URL is a fab idea, you’re a star!
:o)
April 15th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
[P.S. Please Delete my previous comment ! Thanks !]
Great post ! I did this exercise when Darren Rowse alerted everybody earlier this year that @sethgodin was not actually Seth Godin ! (When Seth Godin isn’t Seth Godin)
April 15th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Smart! And I didn’t do my full name: Udayan Tripathi for the same reason you don’t - it’s too long. With the 140 char. limit, you gotta use it wisely. So I’m twitter.com/udy which is nice & short.
But will go protect my personal brand from twittersquatters now
April 15th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Boy do I know about this…my domain name at dianepenna.com lapsed for two months (because I didn’t think I’d be returning to writing. Well, the day I did return to writing, I went to purchase the domain, only to find out it had been registered the week before to some idiot, er..domain squatter. Now of course all I can do is hope he/she doesn’t renew it when it’s up next year…
April 15th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
[…] stop there. Earlier today Problogger, Darren Rowse tweeted that he was reading an article on protecting your personal brand on Twitter - since my article was directly related to something he was interested in right now, I sent him a […]
April 16th, 2008 at 12:10 am
Great suggestion! I just claimed my name. Thanks.
April 16th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Great post AJ, I found it through someone’s tweet. I just set up an account for @renegadehealth to protect that. I post regularly @kevingianni.
Great help!
April 16th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Brilliant…
April 19th, 2008 at 9:31 am
I Twitter as @dalecruse but my blog is called Drinks Are On Me. So based on your advice, AJ, I just set up an @DrinksAreOnMe profile that suggests people follow me on my main account. Thanks!
April 19th, 2008 at 11:43 am
[…] few days ago I wrote a post about protecting your personal brand on Twitter. A lot of people read the post and the conversation around the topic was great. This […]
April 30th, 2008 at 11:41 am
[…] Protecting Your Personal Brand on Twitter […]
June 4th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
following now
June 30th, 2008 at 3:02 am
DONE! Thanks for the advice!
July 12th, 2008 at 8:13 am
Big time agree - got a few variants on my name locked up right now. GMail is great for this since you can add a + and then whatever after your username to have an instant disposable address…love that feature. It let me register my twitter accounts from the same gmail account, just addinng +whatever for each different account.
September 10th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Good post. I wrote a similar article a couple months ago that people may also find useful if you liked this one. Because I had latched on to an early twitter username @ky but wanted to make sure my usual followers could still find me. Check it out - http://somedirection.com/2008/04/01/multiple-usernames-on-twitter/
January 14th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
If your name is already taken, but hasn’t been updated in a while, Twitter will let you claim it. You have to post to a specific thread on their support site at getsatisfaction.com, but it worked for me! (And many others)
This also means that you better keep your various twitter “brands” updated every month or so just so it looks like the account isn’t abandoned.
April 3rd, 2009 at 9:32 pm
Thanks for the insight. And for pointing me to your brother’s Twitter account too; I live very near The Wine Library (or as many of my friends call it: mecca), and it will be fun to see what he’s up to on Twitter.
May 6th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Thanks! I just protected my PB.
May 27th, 2009 at 8:55 am
Twitter is also a great tool for increasing traffic to youtube videos