@Twitter Username Taken? There is HOPE!

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Erin Cell

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Erin Cell, is the Founder & CEO of Socially Powered, LLC. helping business owners Power Up their online presence since 2012. Erin trains and speaks on social media around the world focusing on strategy, Instagram and marketing for blockchain, cryptocurrency and events..

I recently ran into this specific problem with a new client. She had started a new company & I went to register her desired Twitter username only to discover it was already registered by someone else:

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We discussed our options:

1. Find a new username & move on
2. Try to get the username we wanted from the user directly
3. Contact Twitter & see if we could secure the username based on the registered TM &/or lack of use policy
4. Pick a username, but still try to get the name we wanted. (After all this person had only tweeted once, had 18 followers, & hadn?t tweeted in 5 years)

We decided to go with Option #4 – attempt to get Twitter to give us the username we desired, but go ahead & setup an account.

The Process:

To start, I emailed Twitter based on the information posted on their website regarding activity & trademarks – To keep your account active, be sure to log in and Tweet (i.e., post an update) within 6 months of your last update. Accounts may be permanently removed due to prolonged inactivity.

https://support.twitter.com/articles/15362-inactive-account-policy#
https://support.twitter.com/articles/18367-trademark-policy#

Good to know, right?

Twitter responded quickly, but we had to submit further documentation.

Things to consider when requesting a username:
Twitter prefers an email address with the brands email domain (ex. erin@sociallypowered.com not sociallypowered@gmail.com)
Be sure to have proper documentation showing you have authority? to act on the brand?s behalf. (i.e. signed statement from the brand, copy of your business card, valid government-issued photo ID)

We submitted documentation & about 3 weeks later received confirmation that the username was OURS!

SUCCESS!
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Only thing left to do was respond with the username we recently setup. Easy!

Side note: I did attempt to contact the Twitter user on multiple occasions to see if they would release the name, but never got a response. I suppose that is probably common when someone hasn?t logged in or posted to Twitter in 5 years.

Good luck & have faith you will get the name!

If not, there are other options for choosing an appropriate Twitter username for your business, but I will save that for another blog post. Cheers!