Is your brand registered through social media sites?

Companies should learn from major marketers' failure to protect brands in the social media world

What happened

Since Myspace, the social media trend has transformed the way millions of people communicate. In 2006, a website called Twitter.com was started, with a user-friendly interface on a powerful Ruby on Rails framework, giving users the capability to easily register for a free account, then produce and share messages limited to 140 characters. Since then, Twitter has turned into one of the most popular websites on the internet, used by an approximate 20 million people a month (according to ComScore Data). This has made Twitter into an increasing focus by major marketing campaigns representing national brands. Unfortunately for them, many national brands have discovered that other users have beaten them to registering their brand's name as a Twitter username. 

Because it's so easy to register an account on Twitter, many users have created false accounts bearing the name of major brands like Bank of America, General Electric, General Motors, Nike, Walmart, Hyundai, and many more. Although they have tried to communicate with Twitter and requested ownership of the accounts, the major brands have not received help from Twitter. According to a similar article on Adage.com, a look into the @Hyundai Twitter account reveals "a collection of 140-character blasts in English and Korean about oysters, cellphones and the Yankees.". The subjects on the Twitter updates in the fake @Hyundai account have no relevance to the actual Hyundai car manufacturer, but the brand name of the company is obviously being used to gather attention from consumers and promote spam content.

How this can affect small businesses

This brings to mind the thousands of businesses and organizations currently not registered through Twitter and other social networking sites. Not having their brand name reserved could become a hindrance to future online marketing efforts. Right now, anyone with an email address can register your brand name on a social networking website. This might not seem critically important to most small business owners, but when you realize how many people access social networking sites a month, and the possibility of your brand name connecting with consumers dwindling, its actually very important to have your brand name reserved. 

What you should do

Right now, go to major social netorking websites like Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace. Register a username bearing your business name, for example, if your business name is "Fresh Furniture", register a "freshfurniture" as a username, and place your company's logo clearly visible as a main profile picture. If you have any questions about our Social Media Marketing Campaigns, contact us today.