Claiming Your Online Name
Let's face it, there are more social media channels than any single human being could manage (well) on their own. More and more tools come out that allow you to push one piece of content to multiple channels at once, but if you have 5 comments to each piece of content on every single channel, does that mean you go and respond to them all? Well, social etiquette would dictate that you do, but that's not what I'm trying to say at all.
Get your social media accounts just to have them and to lock them down.
Let's say you are just an Instagram person, and you don't use Twitter at all, which is totally fine, but what happens when you land a gig and the producer requests that you re-share a piece of content, are you going to say: "Sorry, I don't do Twitter"? Or are you gonna grab your phone and start a new account? Let's assume it's the latter... what are the odds that you're going to find the username you'd like to use right away? What are the odds that you are going to find a username that matches your other usernames? Well, the answer is - the longer you wait, the slimmer the odds.
Let's say your name is John Smith, and your Instagram is John - probably not, but let's say that's the case. Now you need to get Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, but John is already taken. If you really like your username, you can stick to it, or you can try finding something that would say the same thing across all sources, here are some ideas:
- ActorJohnSmith (ActorYourName)
- CastJohnSmith (CastYourName)
- OfficialJohnSmith (OfficialYourName)
- JohnSmithActs (YourNameActs)
- HelloJohnSmith (HelloYourName)
You can get creative, and when you do, make sure that the username is available on ALL channels (or at least most of them), this way you don't have to TRY and remember whether you're John, Johnny, John007, JohnS, or JSmith on a specific medium. Same username, same photo, same title everywhere. @CocaCola is not @Coke on Twitter. Don't dilute the brand. Get your usernames down right now.
And here's the tool to help you: https://www.webforactors.com/admin/existence/#webforactors
