Get your usernames fast & cheap
Today, I want to suggest something different. This may not be for everyone, but I'm sure some of you will find this useful and will try it out. Let me just say that this may sound a little shady, but it's not.
If you have followed any of the acting gurus on social media, you probably noticed a pattern, and you'll see that they all preach the same: brand yourself. They all tell you to reuse the same headshot on all of your profiles and, if at all possible, reuse the same username.
Now, raise your hand if you thought you came up with a perfect username and then went to register it elsewhere and it was taken. Shock! If you actually put your hand up, you can put it down. We made the same exact mistake. "WebForActors" seemed like such a perfect username on Twitter, but then we saw that the domain was taken, and Facebook was not available.
Well, today I will tell you about 2 tools that might help you avoid similar mistakes:
1. Namechk
If you haven't yet decided on a perfect username for yourself, put your ideas through this check. If you see all boxes turn green, you might have hit the jackpot, but if a lot of boxes went dark, you may want to reconsider. Branding means keeping it simple for people to find you. You don't want to be JohnDoe on Twitter and JohnnyD on Facebook. If either one of these turns green for all, pick that one instead.
2. Fiverr
Now, if you haven't heard of Fiverr, you should check it out. This site has a lot of cool offers that start as low as $5, but the link above is not to the site, but to a specific offer. There are many similar offers, this one just happens to be the first one I found.
Let me explain how this works. You can pay this person $15, give him your headshot, your bio and a desired username, and in a few days he will send you an excel sheet with 50 social media profiles that he created for you. This way you don't have to register on 50 different websites one by one, but in time, if you chose to use that social media site, you will already have a name that matches your brand.
Bonus 1: Name Mesh
Finally, if you're planning to have a matching domain name for all of your usernames, then look no further than Name Mesh. I've been using that tool myself for years. I highly recommend it. Just enter your name, your nickname, or your name and an attribute like "actor" and hit "generate". You will get back dozens of suggestions for your perfect, branded domain name.
Bonus 2: SEO Boost
If you are going to get the 50 social media links from Fiverr and you already have a domain name set up for your website, include a link to your website in your bio to improve your Search Engine Ranking.
