Twitter Username Tips

So many questions about Twitter, so little time. They come at me like I was drinking water from a fire hose. Ouch. But they are all good questions, so I’ll try to tackle them one at a time.

When you sign up for Twitter, you have to create a username. So what should it be? Should I just use my name? Should it be witty? Contain keywords? What are the rules? Am I breaking them? Why is Twitter so confusing to me when it seems so simple on the surface? What’s the meaning of life?

Well, I might not be able to help you with that last one, but what I can do is give you a site to check out that lists 8 Twitter username tips. It falls into the “couldn’t have said it better myself” category. So check it out here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10216871-2.html.

The article appears in CNET and was written by Don Reisinger. Here’s a quick summary to ease your Twittering mind, along with a few opinions of my own of course:

1. Don’t be afraid to use your real name. However, in my opinion (here I go), unless you’re somewhat of a public figure, you’re not going to get as many searches for your name as you might for some other keywords. When you sign up, you can enter your real name in another field. When you follow people they get an email that says something like: “Allison Kulage (Allison Kulage) is following you.” Aside from the fact that it sounds a little stalker-ish, it’s redundant. Make that subject line pop so someone wants to know who’s following them and perhaps they will follow you back. Don’t be redundant. Did I say that already?

2. Don’t use curse words or obscenity. Unless the shock value is what you’re going for. Otherwise, play nice.

3. Use your name to tell people what you do. Hmmm, like “UprightSEO” for example?

4. Be creative. Spice up our internet experience. Go ahead. I know you want to.

5. Distinguish yourself. Try to be unique, but don’t put characters or numbers in your name that don’t make sense to anyone else.

6. Don’t look like a bot. Avoid generic terms, or names that make you look like all you’re going to do is spam me with MLM opportunities and pyramid schemes. Yea, I said it. Not interested.

7. Don’t impersonate a celebrity. Unless you’re super cool and you actually have the same name as a celebrity. Capitalize on that one. Otherwise, don’t be a tool.

8. Consider the impact of your name. Does it give a warm fuzzy feeling? Does it turn people off? People are quick to judge from something as simple as a user name so make sure you’re portraying the image that will gain you some followers.

Now that you’re going to pick a super awesome catchy user name, you’ll want an avatar, a custom background, more followers, people to follow, still searching for the meaning of life… So stay tuned and I’ll be posting more blogs on everything Twitter. If I stumble across the  meaning of life I might even share that, but no promises. Happy Tweeting!