If you’ve ever thought about building your own personal brand, you should secure a few key social media user names and domain names right now. Building a strong online brand is what has helped people like Marie Forleo, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Tim Ferriss build a huge audience.
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.
Back in the day, when I was working full time in the corporate world, 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. However, employers are increasingly using social sites to research CURRENT employees, not just prospective employees.
Therefore, 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.
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.
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. I’ve also included the latest links with instructions on customizing your username & URL as of Dec 2016 (subject to change).
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. So for me, I got josephpliu.com which allows me to use the email [at] josephpliu.com. If your .com is taken, you could get a .NET, .ORG, .ME. However, the word on the street is that these aren't indexed as favourably or treated as seriously as .COMs.
Facebook Page
Facebook is the #3 most visited website in the world, only behind Google and YouTube. Secure your Facebook.com/FirstLast page if you can. A "Page" is typically publicly facing, something a business or brand might use. A "Profile" is for personal use as an individual person (you probably already have this). You can read more about the difference between Pages & Profiles on Facebook. Here are instructions on creating a custom Facebook Page URL.
Grab your Twitter.com/FirstLast. This also means you'll have the @FirstLast username. You can also include your middle initial if @FirstLast isn't available. If you're not already on Twitter, you can sign up here. If you're already on Twitter, and want to change your username to be FirstLast, you can follow these Twitter instructions to do so. And if you're one of those people who does not have ANY interest in Tweeting, it's okay. Still secure your username and make your Tweets private. At least this way, you have your username in case you ever want to use it in the future.
Grabbing your LinkedIn.com/in/FirstLast URL is more of a convenience than a necessity, but I still recommend it because it just looks more professional. 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. Here are instructions to create a Company page or change your company page URL if you've already set up a company.
If you're in a business that's quite visual or creative, you'll want to be on Instagram. Claim your Instagram.com/FirstLast by either signing up for an account and selecting that username or changing your username following these instructions (currently must be done from mobile app).
YouTube
YouTube is the #2 most visited website behind Google. If you plan on creating & sharing videos, be sure to grab your YouTube.com/FirstLast URL. This one's a bit trickier, and Google seems to to continually change the steps needed to set a custom URL, making the process as convoluted as it gets. Here are the latest YouTube instructions on how to set a custom URL.
Pinterest is the virtual pinboard of the internet. Again, if you consider yourself part of a creative or visual industry, be sure to grab your Pinterest.com/FirstLast URL. You can either create a personal board or business page, which provides more analytics.
Medium
If you intend to publish articles or long-form posts, consider creating an account on Medium, securing your Medium.com/@FirstLast URL. You may not have heard of this Medium, which is an online blogging platform owned by Twitter, but as of Oct, 2016, Medium has 25+ million unique monthly visitors and over 75K posts/week according to the Medium Support team. Alexa ranks them as a website with higher traffic than ABC News.. In fact, the White House has an account along with all major newspapers. You can create your account at Medium and select your username (which becomes your URL) when you join.
Welcome to the club. This happened to me too. You would be surprised how many early adopters named Joseph Liu exist out there. If fact, by the time you read this, your desired username will like already be taken unless you're VERY lucky or have a very uncommon name.
If your desired username is taken, alternatives can include (depending on the platform):
- Add a middle initial (I've done this across all my profiles)
- Adding a special character like an underscore "_" or hyphen "-"
- Add a number (I know this isn't ideal)
- Add a short modifier (e.g., coach, comms, tech)
- Add a relevant abbreviation (Co, Inc, Biz)
Avoid using numbers or weird spellings. Ideally, you should still have your FirstLast in there somewhere.
Domain & username tools
Here are a couple handy tools to make things a bit easier for you as you build your online personal brand.
- See which usernames are available: NameChk scans across all major social media platforms so you don't have to check each one individually.
- 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.)
- Find out owner of taken domain: GoDaddy WHOIS Lookup shows you the owner, address, and expiration date of taken domains (if info is public)
- Attempt to purchase taken domain: I recommend GoDaddy Domain Broker, which charges a small fee and commission to attempt to negotiate the purchase of a taken domain. I've successfully secured taken domains using this service, although it's not always successful. Never hurts to try though! I've found GoDaddy to be more effective and personal than sedo.com, another popular buying service.
If you found this helpful, please let me know in the comments below. I'd welcome your thoughts on other platforms you're on or tips that helped you stake out your social media assets online. Good luck staking out your personal brand online.
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A longer version of this original post can be found at josephpliu.com.