Social media profiles you should secure to build your personal brand

Social media profiles you should secure to build your personal brand. Regardless, you never know what the future holds, and securing your key social media assets and profile pages will not hurt you. So if you set your username on Twitter to @FirstLast, you will also get the Twitter.com/FirstLast URL. Having your FirstLast username often means you can also secure that /FirstLast URL. FirstLast usernames & URLs just look much more professional. This also means you'll have the @FirstLast username. Here are the instructions on how to set your personal URL on LinkedIn. You may also want to set up a LinkedIn.com/Company/FirstLast company page just in case you ever decide to use it in the future. Don't put this off You may be feeling a bit overwhelmed by all these social platforms, but I strongly recommend you secure each of your personal URLs right now. Find out which domain variations are free: GoDaddy's Bulk Domain Search- see if your desired URL is available across various TLDs (Top-Level Domains like .net, .com, .org, etc.)

Author: Joseph Liu / Source: The Drum

Regardless of whether you’re an agency account manager, client-side marketer, business owner, or just a marketing professional who cares about managing your online reputation, you owe it to yourself to secure a few key social media user names and domain names right now.

Even though your professional identity may currently be linked with your company’s brands or agency’s accounts, you never know how your career will evolve. You may change companies, locations, or even start your own business down the road. Therefore, you should take a few simple steps to secure your individual, personal brand assets online in case you want to start building your own personal brand now or in the future.

Why you should do this today

Now, you may be thinking, hang on Joseph! “I’m currently working full time, and I have no interest in bolstering my own profile or being on every social media platform out there.”

Even if you think there’s a 1% chance you want to create your own personal brand or become a thought leader in your field, you should secure your social media real estate right now.

Please do NOT delay doing this. Trust me.

I can speak from personal experience. When I was working full-time as a client-side brand marketer for brands like Gü Puds or Häagen-Dazs, I never imagined I would ever start my own business, nor did I ever think I would want to build an online social media presence. Far from it. I actually wanted to stay as invisible as possible so my current employer couldn’t take issue with anything I was doing online.

Regardless, you never know what the future holds, and securing your key social media assets and profile pages will not hurt you. Most are free, and only take a few minutes to set up.

Think about it like this. If someone offered you a free house you could keep forever, you would grab it before someone else does, right? I’d recommend you follow the same principle with securing your social media URLs (aka web addresses).

The strategy

The idea here is to secure your FirstnameLastname domain and username. So if you set your username on Twitter to @FirstLast, you will also get the Twitter.com/FirstLast URL. For example, if your username is @JohnSmith, your URL will be set to Twitter.com/JohnSmith. Why is having your FirstLast URL important?

Search engines like Google tend to favor accounts where the person’s name is in the website URL, allowing them to rank more highly in search results, thus being more visible, according to BrandYourself.
Having your FirstLast username often means you can also secure that /FirstLast URL.
FirstLast usernames & URLs just look much more professional.

You can see an up-to-date list of the most popular social media sites at Statista. I’m going to focus on the ones that are both popular and useful in building your personal brand. I’d recommend you secure the following sites right away, in order of priority, although it does depend on your industry & professional sector.

Website (.com)

Get your FirstLast.com. This also allows you to have your own email using that domain name as the end of the email. If your .com is taken, you could get a .NET, .ORG, .ME. I’ve also see a proliferation of .CO.