What’s in a Name? With Social Media, More than You Might Think
Names are important because let’s face it, who wants to go through life with a moniker that mom & dad thought would be cute and results in getting you beat up at school every day? And as Entrepreneur dramatically wrote, for your business “the right name can make your company the talk of the town; the wrong one can doom it to obscurity and failure.” Gasp.
Now social media enters the name fray and casts another light on the choice of a handle for businesses, with the potential for ‘social media stardom’ or alternatively, circling the Internet drainpipe.
To illustrate the importance of naming, I was doing Twitter keyword searches and came across @TheNapaValley, which has 488 followers, follows nobody, is on 20 List, and hasn’t Tweeted once. Not one time. Still gearing up for Tweet numero uno, which the Twitterverse appears to be eagerly awaiting.
While the wrong name isn’t likely to topple your company’s social media efforts, the right one will be easier to find and simpler to share with others. A few suggestions:
> People tend to intuitively search so try to have social media names match or be similar to your company’s real name. For example, Lyman Public Relations - Website: LymanPR.com; Twitter: @LymanPR; Facebook.com/LymanPR
> Last year Facebook introduced vanity URLs, which enable you to select any (available) name for your company at Facebook.com/username
> If your company has a geographic orientation that’s relevant to customers, consider including a locator, such as The Westin Verasa, Napa – Twitter: @WestinNapa; Facebook.com/WestinNapa
> Search engines now crawl social media pages and return keyword hits in results and news feeds. This makes it increasingly important to have name consistency to enhance search engine optimization
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