Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Have you locked up your Brand Identity for Social Media?

There are several sites out there that people use for sharing information and more social media aspects that you should consider registering your name. Even if you don't plan to use Facebook or Twitter, we would advise you at least lock up your name so someone else cannot steal it - which is known as "squatting". Besides, just because you don't plan to use either of them does not mean there isn't the next hottest one around the corner that you should lock up.

This happened with domain names in the mid 90's as websites were coming into popularity. Several Fortune 500 companies ended up in court trying to get their trademarked names back. There has not been any precedence set for Social Media and if and how companies can get control of their Brand once it has been registered by someone else who is not them. As reference, here is an article from Adage that shows you some of the big Brands that don't own their Twitter identity.

You can see if anyone has squatted you out and potentially avoid that by visiting UserNameCheck.com . There are 68 different sites that someone could "squat" you on. Some of them you have never heard of, several are familiar and you can find all the different sites people could squat your identity on. You never know what might be the next big fad or emerge so it is best to lock them up and as new "fads" come out, register those as well, even if you don't ever use them - you can at least know you are protecting your Brand when it comes to Internet & Web Marketing and Social Media.

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Friday, March 13, 2009

Question and Answer Sites are exploding

As reported by web monitor Hitwise, this sites have been growing faster than the web itself. Between 2006-2008, use of these types of sites has increased 889%. The report was based on data from eight leading Q&A sites, and of course due to the growth, there are new Q&A sites popping up regularly now on a global scale.

Top sites according to the report: (note this is growing older)

Yahoo! Answers 74.05%
Wiki Answers 18.35%
Answerbag 4.51%
Ask Metafilter 1.8%
Askville 0.85%

Now, this can be a great way to generate back links and get people to bookmark you and really increase your inbound links and exposure on the web. If you have subject matter expertise, you can post to these sites and increase your exposure for your company and website.

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