If you’re pro­tect­ive about your company’s brand name and image then you’ve prob­ably already got vari­ous per­muta­tions of their equi­val­ent domain names includ­ing the all import­ant .co.uk and .com ones. But what about your Twit­ter ID?

For a long time now any Inter­net con­sult­ant or web designer worth their salt, have being advising their cli­ents to grab at least the .com and .co.uk vari­ations of their com­pany and brand moniker as a domain name in order to safe­guard against their com­pet­it­ors from get­ting them.

One of the driv­ing factors behind this think­ing is that it stops someone else get­ting hold of them, thus avoid­ing dam­aging and poten­tially expens­ive, cases of cyber squat­ting at worst or at best; loss of a company’s cus­tom­ers to the wrong website.

But What About Your Twit­ter ID?

Twit­ter con­tin­ues to gain pop­ular­ity and whether you con­sider it to be an addict­ive ‘must have’, or a flash-in-the-pan there’s no deny­ing the fact that com­pan­ies are start­ing to use it as a tool for mar­ket­ing and promotion.

Con­sequently it’s no sur­prise that Twit­ter IDs are begin­ning to be treated like domain names.

Why Should I Claim My Twit­ter ID?

• Exxon Mobil failed to claim their name on Twit­ter and was forced to deal with repu­ta­tion man­age­ment prob­lems when an imposter star­ted tweet­ing using @ExxonMobilCorp.
• Jack Can­field , founder and CEO of Chicken Soup for the Soul Enter­prises, had to take a dif­fer­ent Twit­ter ID because he didn’t act quickly enough to secure his full name (he has @J_Canfield , not @JackCanfield ).
• The same thing happened to the large web developer com­munity and book pub­lisher Site­Point, which was forced to settle for @sitepointdotcom , rather than @sitepoint .

Because of this, a mar­ket in pre-registered Twit­ter IDs is emer­ging through sites like Tweet Exchange in a sim­ilar fash­ion to the domain resale market.

Claim Your Twit­ter ID

So if you’re ser­i­ous about pro­tect­ing your company’s brand and name on the web, get onto Twit­ter right now and reserve your pre­ferred User­names. The good news is that unlike domains, they don’t cost you any­thing. You simply need to set up a new Twit­ter account and either use it or leave it dormant.

Other Posts Sim­ilar To This One

• Close Encoun­ters of the Artistic Kind
• For­get Your Email Address! What’s Your Twit­ter ID?
• The Early Bird Catches the Worm