Posts Tagged ‘dandyid’

Posted on November 19, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

Protect your brand with Claim.io – New site, improved service & Twitter contest.

The Pitch*:
Claim.io (formerly ClaimMyName) now injects your brand into 300 of the most popular social media and social networking sites, creating an account on each site, securing your name and/or vanity URL, and embedding your messaging, logo and links into each account.

Why Claim Your Name?
Brand Protection – Claiming your name and other high value keywords on the most popular social networks prevents your brand from being hijacked and helps ensure that you own and control your presence online. Don’t wait until someone else claims your name and its too late.

Brand Exposure - Claim.io goes beyond protecting your brand. We establish a rich presence on each social network that includes your brand’s messaging, logo and a link back to your primary website. You fill out one form and we take care of the rest.

Search Engine Visibility - Increasing the number of inbound links (other sites that point to your website) is one of the most effective ways to increase your visibility on major search engines. When you claim you name across 300 social networks, each account that we create for you becomes a site that points back to your website.

Today Claim.io is celebrating their product upgrades with a Twitter contest by giving away a Brand Essential Package worth $998. To enter just follow @claimio on Twitter and then tweet: “I want to win a free www.Claim.io account! http://claim.io/welcome/contest” You have until 11:59 p.m. (EST) tonight (11/19/09) to enter. For full details see: http://claim.io/welcome/contest and good luck.

*Disclaimer:
I have no investment in Dandyid or Claim.io but I’m an affiliate of Claim.io and their services work.

Posted on November 10, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

3 1/2 Ways for Brands to Reclaim their Twitter Name from Squatters

It hurts my eyes to see provocative profile pictures of half-naked women and other racy avatars in my twitter stream from squatters who have hijacked brand names. I may not be following these accounts but when I do keyword searches or just looking for brands on Twitter, only to find out that they have yet to claim their brand name is sad. It’s even sadder if they have attempted to get access to their brand name twitter account and were unsuccessful. But with the growth of Twitter and dealing with all of the spam, please be patient with the Twitter team.

Photo via AdAage.com

Yesterday’s Advertising Age article called GM, Kellogg, Nestle Beat to the Tweet as Squatters Take Over Twitter Names is a troubling sign for Twitter and brands but it should be nothing new to brands, just something they haven’t done in a while. Remember the .com squatting back in 1997 and more recently Facebook username / fanpage squatting a few months ago. Regardless I’ve had a few success stories helping brands getting access to squatted Twitter accounts and getting a few spammed “brandjacking” twitter accounts closed. How you ask? Well I will say their is no exact proven method that will work 100% but I will share what has worked for me.

1. Email terms@twitter.com to let them know that you own the trademark to your brand. A screenshot or pdf attachment with proof is advise to let them know you want your Twitter brand name.

2. Send a tweet from a representative of your company or another company created twitter account to the proper twitter employee that handles Twitter name squatting. I’m not going to give you their names but you can find and follow the entire Twitter team here: http://twitter.com/twitter/team and /or here: http://listorious.com/twitter/team. Please don’t spam them. Note that @biz and @ev are the cofounders and are very busy.

3. Login and fill out the “Submit a request page here to Twitter’s support team: http://help.twitter.com/requests/new

1/2. Use a service like DandyID’s Claim my name that will secure your name on social networks and prevent brandjacking. http://www.dandyid.org/beta/claimmyname

To those of you who are squatting twitter names, shame on you. To those of you who are trying to get access to your Twitter brand name, good luck. Oh, by the way @Krispy_Kreme if you want access to the @HotNow Twitter account, just let me know.

Update: Also read  DON’T FALL VICTIM TO B2B TWITTER SQUATTING by Jeff Cohen aka @dgtlpapercuts

If you need additional help I can be reached at wayne at ourhashtag dot com

Posted on September 9, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

All the Cool Kids Have 'Em: Social Web Profile Aggregation Sites

I’m not sure if it started with Tim Van Damme but he sure did kick off a trend of new “Social Web Profile Aggregation” sites or social networking profile identity aggregation sites. Can you feel the “buzzwords” through your computer screen, lol. Either way since Tim’s site was created one “Social Web Profile Aggregation” service has launched called Card.ly and now there’s a WordPress theme from John Saddington. Take a look at the WordPress theme below.

Hat tip to @Corvida who posted John’s WordPress theme on her Posterous site. It’s interesting that John calls his WordPress theme the “The Digital Business Card” vs  a “Social Web Profile Aggregation theme” but since the idea comes from Tim site which looks like a business card, I totally understand.

Back to Card.ly, I’ve blogged about it before here: 3 ways to showcase your social media profiles: Card.ly, DandyiD & Google profiles and since then a few other “Social Web Profile Aggregation” sites have launched such as hi.im. You can see my hi.im profile below.

There’s also chi.mp and Reallywho which that has a goal to be your “Identity Verification for the Social Web” service.

It seems with the explosion of social networks, social media and the social web, the next big thing may be social identity verification and aggregation. Something I’m sure Google is thinking about with Google Profiles and other services such as DandyID, Chi.mp and Reallywho. While these services are great for social web identity verification, they may be a little much for the average user who wants to just setup a cool WordPress site and promote their own social web profiles. If that’s the case then you  may want to give John’s digital business card WordPress theme a try.

Here’s my digital business card theme or Social Web Profile Aggregation Site as I like to call it at FriendWayne.com

Corvida has one at: OprahOfTheWeb.com

Jeff Cohen has one at: JeffreyLCohen.com

I want to say thanks to Tim for inspiring the idea and to John for creating the WordPress theme.

Do you have a similar website and what are you thoughts on the future social web identity verification?