This is the first post in a series of posts about how to build your small business brand using social media. You can read the second post Small Business Social Media Branding Tips.

Social media is an increasingly popular way for individuals and businesses to build brand equity and brand strength. With more and more businesses turning to social media to marketing their products, services, and programs, it is imperitive that you dedicate the time to not only present your brand consistently across all media platforms, but that you actively protect your brand.

The first thing you need to do is secure your social media brand by registering your name and business name, where appropriate, on all of the different social media sites you will be using.

Even if you aren’t planning on using a certain social networking website or you don’t plan on being highly active, securing your name on those sites is important. Why? Because it prevents other people from using your name or business name.

Imagine what could happen if someone else registered your name or business name:

• Your brand could get confused with another brand – potentially a competitor’s brand. This could cause your brand to lose some of the valuable brand equity you have worked hard to build.
• Offensive or completely inappropriate content could get posted to the profiles and result in a detrimental hit to your brand image, perception, and reputation.
• You may have to use different profile names/user names on each social media site or social networking site. This could cause inconsistency in your brand and make it difficult for your audience to find you or remember you.

The easy way to maintain brand consistency across all social media sites and build your brand equity online is to secure the same profile or username on all social networking and social media websites.

For example, I am “jenniferbourn” (or bourncreative where appropriate) on all of the social networking sites I participate in:

• facebook.com/jenniferbourn
• facebook.com/bourncreative
• linkedin.com/in/jenniferbourn
• twitter.com/jenniferbourn
• plaxo.com/jenniferbourn
• friendfeed.com/jenniferbourn

If you are using social media marketing as part of your small business brand marketing plan, and you haven’t yet grabbed your name or business name on the social networking sites, you can check and see if it is available quickly and easily for free. Simple check out NameChk.com and Knowem.com and grab your names!