Twitter for Business: Picking a Username

If you are going to use Twitter for business purposes, the username you pick is very important. You want to take a moment to think it through and pick something that will work to promote your business.

First, a few key points. Your username might be taken already, so be prepared to come up with variations and alternatives. Also, don’t use numbers or underscores in your name, such as WillyMartin11 or Willy_Martin. See this article if you want to know why.

As you consider your username, keep in mind how you want people to be able to find you on Twitter. Also, consider the fact that your Twitter account can come up in search via Google, Bing, etc. So, if you want people to find your Twitter account when they search for your business, you’ll want to name your account based on how you expect people to search for you.

Next, think about your goals for your Twitter business account. Will you use your Twitter account mainly to provide support to existing customers? Simply to monitor and respond to what people are saying about you or your business? Are you trying to use Twitter as a way to invite and stay connected with your customers so you can promote products or services from time to time? Or are you trying to drum up leads through Twitter? Maybe it’s a combination.

After you’ve considered those points, here are some general guidelines to follow:

1. Twitter for customer support:  If your primary goal is to use Twitter to provide support to existing customers, use your business name.
   
2. Twitter for monitoring your brand: If your primary goal is to use Twitter to reactively monitor what people are saying and respond to them, use your business name.
   
3. Twitter for ongoing customer relationships: If your goal is to invite customers or leads to Twitter and maintain long-term contact with them through the tool, then you need to decide whether to use your company name or your own, personal name. Which you choose depends on the type of business you do. As Jane Chin advises in her blog post:  “If your presence is an integral part of a business brand (a reason why I tweet with my real name) or if your name IS a business brand, use your real name as the username; otherwise, use your company name or product name as the username.
   For example, if you are a realtor working for a large realtor like Windermere, you will still want to use your own name, since that’s how your customers will seek you out and since you are, essentially, your own brand. You want people looking for you specifically, not Windermere. Likewise, if you are a recruiter working for Volt, you still want to use your own nam, not Volt.
   
4. Twitter for lead generation: If your goal is to generate leads through Twitter, you need to consider the same issues as in #3. If you’re a small business and customers will search for you primarily based on your business name, use the business name. On the other hands, if you work for a larger company but you are trying to generate leads for YOU, specifically, as a sales person, recruiter, etc., then use your own name.

An important note. Once you have your username on Twitter, take care to protect it. Don’t taint your name. You don’t want to get a negative reputation associated with your username, or you may find yourself needing to abandon it altogether. Specifically:

• Don’t spam. Spam tweets are ill regarded on Twitter. And Twitter does block the accounts of known spammers.
  
• Don’t tweet only about your business. Twitter is a social networking site. It’s about relationships. Would you socialize with someone who only ever talked about what they could sell you?  Probably not.
  
• Keep it professional and nuetral–but not impersonal. Just as in other interactions with customers or potential customers, you want your tweets to be professional. And you want to be generally nuetral. Don’t tweet about your political views or other polarizing topics, unless you’re willing to alienate a portion of your followers.

That doesn’t mean, though, that your tweets should be impersonal. Again, Twitter is a social network. It’s fine, and even a good thing, to tweet about your day and your personal life. It makes you real and provides opportunities for real, more personal interaction with your customers.
Say you tweet that you just got back from a vacation at Yellowstone. Maybe one of your customers is thinking about going as well and responds asking what you’d suggest for people planning a trip. By having that kind of conversation, you’ve deepened your relationship with that customer, who is going to think of you even more favorably than he or should would have if your interactons stayed solely professional. That’s part of the power of Twitter. It’s part of the fun of Twitter, too!