Own your name before someone else does. Your own name. Your business name.

> Own your name online
> Choose your online real estate
> Register with a little help from namechk

Own your name online

Owning your name – the URL or as a username on popular social networking sites – protects and builds your brand, conveys business stability, and helps build a cohesive web presence.

Owning your name doesn’t mean you have to use it on all the places you could possibly register it. It means owning it to protect your brand and making it available to you if and when you ever do want to use it in online arenas.

Choose your online real estate

Buy the domain names for your own personal name and, if possible, your business name. At around $8/year per domain name, it’ll never break the bank. If you don’t own your own name yet you may get lucky and find its still available if it’s an unusual name. Alternatively, add a middle initial or name and start using it in all your business communication.

Register your name and/or business name in the popular social networking sites (some would say all social networking sites). Start with LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed and build from there.

Come join me on Twitter – I’m @tammylenski. Find other online hangouts by visiting my contact page.

Register with a little help from namechk

It’s tedious to go social networking site by social networking site to see if your name is available. So don’t do it! Instead, use the convenience of namechk to help you. With namechk you enter your preferred username or URL once and indicate the services you’d like to use it with. While it can’t register them for you, it’ll let you know within seconds where you can and can’t still own your name.

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MakingMediationYourDayJob.Lenski.com.

And a bonus