I had to make a choice between my full name and LouiseBJ which is my nickname or ‘handle’ on most of the social media sites, and opted for the one more people know me by.

Sam & I have always advocated the importance of protecting your brand; by buying your name domain (especially .com (and .co.uk – if you’re in the UK!)), and registering your name on Twitter, if possible.  Now we recommend you grab your Facebook URL too!

A few of the better known internet marketers weren’t quick enough off the mark on Saturday morning and had their names hi-jacked.  They’ve appealed to Facebook to intervene and it will be interesting to see what happens.

If you plan to use the internet to market your small business, and take part in the social networking world, you need to make yourself known.  Imagine you sign up for 5 online networks, and you use your business name for two of them, your own full name on one, nickname on another and lastly, your first name + house number, because your name wasn’t available.

Now imagine that someone is searching for you on Google (other search engines are available!).  Are they going to be able to find you easily?  Or are they going to find someone else with the same name and be confused, or misinformed?

I’ll admit I haven’t got it totally right myself – but I’m working on it!

The internet is a very big place and it’s difficult enough to be found.  You can make it a little easier by ensuring you protect your own name.

Do this for your Facebook profile here.

If you want to know more, these articles from dailyblogtips and mashable explain the changes well.

By the way, at the end of June, Facebook are enabling vanity URLs for ‘Fan’ Pages too!  They already have for ‘celebs’ with more than 1000 fans – but us ordinary mortals We’ll blog about this very soon.