In this series, we will cover some of the first 60 days of integrating social media into your overall business and marketing strategy. These trainings are designed to be completed in an hour (after all we have businesses to run).
Just a few days left before we launch your blog. Today, we're going to travel outside the blog a bit, securing your usernames with other social networks and tools.
Almost two weeks into our work, and today we touch on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social tools for the first time (but just to secure the names).
First things first, bang out that practice blog post (Day 4) and don't forget the eye rests (Day 3). And remember, now that we've set up categories (Day 11), make sure you place your practice post in at least one of those categories. (30-40 minutes?).
There are two main reasons I strongly recommend folks to secure their (user)name on just about every tool that has legs (growth in use and popularity):
- Get your name before someone else – even someone who shares your name – secures the name (Did you know there are almost 20 different "Mike Sansone" people out there? Several own businesses!)
- It's free! Even if we haven't yet figured out a business reason to use the tool, at least get your profile up. We may find a way to use the tool or engage in the conversations taking place in the community.
Plus, it's become incredibly easy to sign up with two web-based tools: KnowEm and NameChk. Both of these tools allow you to check 100s of social media and social networking sites to see if your name is already taken.
I would suggest you secure your personal name AND your business name (See the two reasons above). Below are screen shots giving you a glimpse of how it works. Below the screen shots are the sites I'd recommend you start out with.
Know em separates sites into different categories (Blogging, Bookmarking, Business, Community, and many more). Follow the list below, but also check each section to see if there is a social networking site you've heard a lot about in your field. Remember, secure your name – and it's (for the most part) free.
NameChk doesn't have as many sites to choose from, but there's enough of a difference that you should use both tools. Each of these tools take you right to the sign-up or join pages of those networks you choose.
Remembering that we're simply signing up today (we'll begin engagement with these tools in the near future), here are my suggestions to the "must-have" tools in your social media quiver (you may already have some of them):
Find it on KnowEm:
- Blogging Section: Tumblr, Disuqus, Posterous, IntenseDebate
- Bookmarking: StumbleUpon, Delicious, Diigo, Squidoo, Vi.sualize.us
- Business: Linkedin, DocStoc, Kiva
- Community: Facebook, Slideshare, Instructables
- Design: Aviary
- Information: About.me, Flavors.me, MyOpenID, Yahoo, Scribd, Wikipedia
- Microblogging: Gowalla, Foursquare, Twitter, FriendFeed (still)
- Music: Jamendo, Last.fm, Blip.fm, Pandora
- News: Alltop, Technorati,
- Photo: Flickr
- Video: YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, Hulu, UStream, Seesmic
Find it on NameChk:
- Facebook, GoodReads,
Others to Consider, but not on either list:
Yep – lots of leg work to prepare for great things. This is just getting our ducks in a bunch. I'm sure there's a few folks that will do this for you for a small charge – in fact, I'll do it for $100 bucks (for one name – $150 if we include your business name).
That's it for today. On Day 12, we travel to the bookstore (best lesson in the bunch, I'm told).
The Series:
