You should secure your name or brand on social media sites now.

One of my biggest regrets is that I could not secure this site’s exact name on various social networking sites and it still bugs me.

I’m one of those people that’s OCD about organization and a real stickler for consistency in naming files, folders, and profiles.

Unfortunately, by the time I acquired the domain name for this site, the name was already taken on the most popular social media sites.

If you’re just starting your website, then you have the opportunity to secure your name now. Here’s why you should be proactive:

Branding – Protect your identity or brand. Do you really want someone else owning your name? Just imagine what damage it can do to your reputation if another person decides to use your name to post irrelevant, foul, or negative responses across the internet.

Link Building – For each social networking site, you’ll not only have your own username, but your user profile. In most cases, you can include a direct link to your website within those profiles providing an easy way to navigate users to your site.

Traffic From Social Media Profiles –  The power of social media outlets is tremendous. For example, if you Google search for a person’s name nowadays, you’ll most likely get their twitter profile URL on page 1 of the search results. Wouldn’t it be great if that was your website’s twitter profile? Facbook profile? Now imagine such results across the other social networking outlets, and how easily you can gain more traffic from social media profiles to your main website.

Now that we’ve established why you should secure your name on social networking sites, here are a few must-do’s when setting up your accounts:

1. Complete your user profile fully to reflect who you are or what your website is about. I’ve seen some folks even include links to targeted pages on their website within their bio / description.
2. Vanity URL – by default, some of the most popular websites create a user profile url that is not memorable. Therefore, ensure you change the vanity url, commonly referred to as a profile url, to something more appropriate for your brand.
3. Always upload an image of yourself or your site’s logo. Most users assume that profiles with the default image are managed by spammers or folks who simply don’t care to engage with others.
4. Always include your website URL in your profile.
5. Save time by using this list of the best tools to check name availability on social media sites.

Do you have any other tips on securing a name? How many accounts do you manage successfully or actively? Let me know in the comments.