Tuesday 10 January 2012

6 Things to Consider When Choosing and Optimising Your Twitter Name:

Twitter Tip 1 - Claim your name as soon as possible:
Twitter has fast become the 2nd highest used social media network, with 175 million+ users and this means that a considerable amount of names have already been taken. I would recommend signing up as soon as possible to claim your name.

Twitter Tip 2 - Think about your audience:
Think about your audience and what they will be searching for.  Your Twitter name is a powerful influence on how you rank in search engines (google / bing etc) and twitters own search results. It is your identity, so when using the service consider using a name as close to your own name, your brand name or your online alias, as this will ensure that people will be able to recognise you or your company and find you with ease.
If you can’t find a name close enough to represent your brand use a key word to appear in searches that supports the subject you will be tweeting about e.g. if you are going to predominantly tweet about social media and your name is ‘Tim’ agood example of a name would be - @socialmediatim.

Twitter Tip 3 - Keep your name as short as possible:
(Your username can contain up to 15 characters) Twitter only allows you to type 140 characters per tweet, so try and keep your name as short as possible for when people retweet your tweet or mention you, giving them more space for their input.

Twitter Tip 4 - Try and avoid the use of underscores:
Twitter has a high number of mobile users, and not all mobile phones feature an easy to access underscore button, in general people prefer to be able to log on and type in a simple name to search for or mention you in a tweet. It also sounds much more professional when saying it aloud to someone for example @socialmediatim is short and to the point …@social_media_tim becomes social underscore media underscore Tim, quite a mouthful.

Twitter Tip 5- Changing your username:
If you have a twitter account already you may be familiar with the fact that you can change your name as often as you like, although this is good for experimentation to see what username works best for you and your brand, I would recommend that you don’t change it too often as people become familiar with your username and will use it to search for you.

Twitter Tip 6 - What to avoid:
Try to stay away from using vulgar or offensive words / terms (unless of course this is what you will be tweeting about) In general people will stay away from these profiles as not many people want to respond to or retweet from somebody with an offensive name. Treat it as you are introducing yourself to 175 million+ people in real life and use common sense.

We hope you find this post helpful and will be posting other ways to optimise your twitter page in our next post.
You can tweet any twitter or other social media questions you may have at us @socialjamm or post them in the comment box below!

The socialjamm team.
http://www.socialjamm.com/
www.twitter.com/socialjamm
SocialJamm © 2011. Powered by Blogger.