Where Do I Start?

Tuesday afternoon I was reminded by my friend Kevin Mullett during a presentation he did on Social Media and Search Engine Optimization about a site you can use to claim your name on social media sites: http://namechk.com/




When you visit Namechk, you can enter your name and see if it is available on 162 social channels.

My advice is to claim your name at as many of those sites as possible, even if you are not planning on using those sites.

Why?

Two reasons:

If someone else registers your name then you will never have the opportunity to use it.

and,

If someone else registers your name and they start using it, you could be associated with that account, which you have no control over, and well let's just hope and pray they don't do something that would be embarrassing or damaging to your name.

And let me clarify what I mean by your name.

Your name could be the name of your business, or it could be a form of your personal name. Your name is your identity online which also bleeds off into real life.

My example is myself, Scott Howard. There are too many Scott Howards in this world so I created ScLoHo a mash-up formed by the first 2 letters of my first, middle and last name.

I use ScLoHo online, not to hide, but to distinguish myself uniquely from the other Scott Howards.

Thanks Kevin (@KMullett ) on Twitter.