THE IMPORTANCE OF CONSISTENT SOCIAL MEDIA HANDLES
It’s an extension of your brand, your online identity and a tool to drive customer loyalty and sales. So, it’s only right to give consideration to your social media handle, after all it’s as important as your business name.
Successful companies utilise social media and a strong domain name and associated social media channels is essential. It’s the place customers naturally go to find out more information, or to purchase your product.
Too much to handle?
The poor business card, it once served an important purpose for providing essential details about a business. Today this has been upstaged by a few words prefixed with the ‘@’sign – otherwise known as your social media name or handle.
Which is why it’s more important than ever to have a strong and consistent handle.
For instance, calling yourself @MyShop on Twitter and @MyShop1 on Facebook is going to cause no end of confusion to the customer, plus it just looks unprofessional.
There are four good reasons why you need a consistent social media handle:
- A memorable handle is crucial for your online identity
- It makes your company easier to remember and find
- The simplicity of communicating one handle on business material
- It shows professionalism
Now that’s out of the way, we can concentrate on finding the right social handle for your business!
The Matching Game
Best practice suggests that a company name and website name should match. If taken, there’s lots of alternative domains one can use from .ie to .org, but names should try and be consistent.
The same applies to social media.
So, if your company is called ‘Pipes For You’ and @pipesforyou is available on key social platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Linkedin, Google+, Snapchat, Pinterest), then snap it up before someone else does.
When in doubt, Namechk is a great resource as a social media handle checker doing all the hard work for you.
NO before you go!
But as we know, it’s not always that simple.
While you may have lucked out with securing a matching business and domain name, it’s often the case the someone else has taken one or several or its social media handle versions. Grrr!
As tempting as it is, here’s what NOT to do, using our mythical example ‘Pipes For You’:
- Don’t add numbers to your name, it makes you look late to the party (@pipesforyou1)
- Don’t use underscores, they’re easy to forget or mistype (@pipes_foryou)
- Don’t abbreviate or misspell your name – it’s inconsistent, hard to remember and easy to misspell (@pipes4u or @pipezforyou)
- Don’t make your name so long it’s hard to remember or write (@industrialwastepipesforyou)
Creative Ways to Express your Brand
Don’t despair, there’s always a solution! Here’s some creative ways to find a suitable social media name, if your preferred handle is already taken:
- Use your residence to give it authority (@pipesforyouIE)
- Add gravitas with ‘base’, ‘HQ’ or ‘I am’ (@pipesforyouHQ)
- Use your area of speciality (@handmadepipesforyou)
- Prefix it with friendly terms like ‘hello’, ‘this is’, ‘we are’ or ‘we make’ (@wearepipesforyou)
- Feel brave? Show off your brand personality @wastenotwantnot
- If it’s for customer feedback mainly, you can use ‘ask’ @askpipesforyou
Hopefully this has provided some inspiration and insight – the main rule to remember is consistency is key.
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*Please note, any examples used in the copy that have a similarity to any existing brands is purely coincidental.