Recently, I spent a good bit of my workday determining whether one of our client’s brand names had been registered as a username on a number of different social media sites: Twitter, YouTube, Delicious, and about 15 more. It wasn’t an arduous process in any sense, but it did take some time, searching every iteration of the client’s name, with spaces and underscores and the like, then filling out the necessary registration forms.
If only I had come across Brian Solis’ most excellent post on his blog, PR 2.0, sooner!
I would have discovered an amazing service called KnowEm, which easily searches 120 different Web sites with user generated content to determine whether your brand name, username or vanity URL has been registered. Simply type in the name you’re looking for, then click “Check Username.” KnowEm does the rest.
The site also offers a premium paid service to register your brand’s username on all 120 sites (before someone else does), for a little under $.55 each. And, users can sign up for a subscription service to have KnowEm monitor for newly launched social media sites, then register the username to those sites as well (according to KnowEm, there are “always a minimum of 10, up to 16” new sites each month!).
Of great value here is that KnowEm is streamlining the process by which communications professionals can manage and protect our clients’ online brands. No easy task, as these days, strategies for nearly all brands demand a strong Web 2.0 presence. As Brian said,
“Brand and reputation management is now a systematic process in our daily routine of listening, learning, and participating. We ARE responsible for our personal brand as well as the corporate brand we represent. Securing that online brand and investing in and cultivating an impeccable and influential reputation is critical to establishing and maintaining a consistent, strategic, and complementary presence from network to network. It's not just about what's popular today, but ultimately engaging where your communities are congregating. Maintaining a portfolio of consistent usernames provides a seamless ability to effectively navigate the Social Web as one cohesive brand, where and when opportunities emerge.”
Type in your desired brand name, username or vanity URL, then click "Check Username"...
...and the availability of that username will appear next to each Web site.
By rolling over each Web site's logo, KnowEm also provides a brief description of what the site offers.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment