I know what I’m doing tomorrow – Friday night – at 9pm. I will be behind my computer, on Facebook, to set up my own vanity URL. Indeed, Facebook is finally allowing users to get their own usernames.

Your new Facebook URL is like your personal destination, or home, on the Web. People can enter a Facebook username as a search term on Facebook or a popular search engine like Google, for example, which will make it much easier for people to find friends with common names.

It’s a good thing to have your vanity URL if you care about personal branding. However, if you’re one of those online privacy freaks, that might not be a good idea…

You will be able to create your Facebook vanity URL on Friday, June 12th at 9.01pm PST by visiting http://www.facebook.com/username/

Show Off With Your Background Image

This is the very first thing potential followers are going to see, so don’t hesitate to show off! If you’re serious about your personal branding, you should really consider creating a custom Twitter background. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be a graphic artist; there are many sites out there that allow you to create Twitter backgrounds in less than 2 minutes. Check out my previous article about Twitter backgrounds resources for a list of websites where you can do that.

You Are What You Tweet

The quality of tweets is one thing I really pay attention to when looking at someone’s profile as it gives me a good idea of what the person is about. Many people think Twitter is similar to the “status update” on FaceBook and that is a big mistake. People are not following you on Twitter to learn about useless details of your life. That means you should avoid such tweets: “going grocery shopping”, or “I just had breakfast and now going to work”. Who cares!?

You must provide value to your followers by pointing them to interesting articles in order to build your credibility and influence on Twitter. Pointing your followers to quality and relevant information will undoubtedly help build your personal branding as followers will start seeing you as an expert in your field.

Your Bio Is A Mini Resume

Think of your bio as your resume in just 160 characters. You should give a good description of who you are and what you do by trying to be as descriptive as you can. The bio is one of the few things I really pay attention to when I look at someone’s profile because I know it gives me a pretty good impression of who this person really is. For example, if I see something like “I’m the best designer in the world”, I might think this guy has a big mouth. If I see something such as “Taking it easy”, I might think this guy is just a lazy ass.

Put A Real Picture Of You

Instead of using the default icon that comes with your Twitter account, or instead of using a funny/stupid/cute icon, I would suggest you upload a real picture of you. Remember, it’s about personal branding. You are the brand! You don’t need to have your picture taken by a professional photograph for the occasion but having a real picture of you will build more trust and will most likely increase your “follow rate”.

If you’re going to be on many social networking sites, I think the best thing to do is to use the same picture across all your profiles. This will create consistency and it will help people identify you quicker and easier should they visit your various profiles.

Use Your Real Name

I wrote a full article on this topic so I’m just going to sum up why you should use your real name on Twitter. Don’t use a stupid username such as CrazyBee or something along these lines. Letting people know who you really are is very important for your personal branding. It will help you attract more followers because people can relate to a real person easier than they can relate to a brand or a silly nickname. My Twitter username is @sebastienpage, which is my real name.

Like your profile picture, I recommend you use the same username across all social networking sites.

Add A Link To Your Website

This is your chance to promote your website or blog. I decided to have www.SebastienPage.com show on my Twitter profile even though I have several blogs and websites, most of them being money makers. Assume people want to know about you. They don’t want to know about what you’re trying to sell.

Under the pressure of Google, Twitter added a nofollow attribute to links in bios but it’s still a great way to get free traffic to your site.

Location Location Location

Again, you don’t want to lie or show a funny location. I’m from San Diego, and that’s what my profile shows. Don’t write something such as “everywhere” or “universe”. This is stupid and might do more harm than good to your follow rate.

Showing your real location is an important point as it might help you meet or get in touch with people in your area.

Don’t Protect Your Updates

One big mistake you could make is protecting your updates. You’re on Twitter to get the word out (whatever word) so make yourself available to everyone.

One Last Thing…

Twitter is not a marketplace! You are not on Twitter to sell your products or services; you are on Twitter to connect, share, and make friends, ultimately building your personal branding. While it is a common practice to link to your latest blog post or article, you don’t want to promote your site all the time. The community is smart and will unfollow you as easily as it followed you in the first place.

I think that’s about it. I would love to read your comments about this article as I am sure you have great ideas on how to improve you personal branding on Twitter too. As usual, if you like this post, please subscribe to my RSS feed and follow me on Twitter.

When I saw that, I couldn’t help sending her an email explaining why she’d rather go with @debicarlston. She heard me and changed her username right away. Now here is a more developed version of what I told Debi and why I think using your real name on Twitter establishes you as a social personality that is connected and approachable.

1. You will attract more followers

Using a company name or brand as a username is probably the biggest mistake people do (I did it too when I started on Twitter) but the fact is that people will most likely follow a person rather than a brand.

Which one would you follow: @billgates or @microsoft? Yes, you’d rather find out what’s inside Bill Gates’ head rather than receive special offers about Windows Vista. Your potential followers are the same. They don’t care what you sell, they want to reach you on a personal level. They want to know more about what YOU think, not what you’re trying to sell.

2. You will establish yourself as a professional

Whatever you talk about on Twitter, using your real name will differentiate yourself and establish you as a professional in your field. As I told Debi, in the real life, she is not Director Of Marketing for CrownAir; she is a sharp business woman who happens to do marketing at an aviation company. In the same way, I am not iPhone Download Blog (my iPhone blog), I am Sebastien Page, a guy who knows a lot about the iPhone.

Note that this point is not valid if all you do on Twitter is sending useless tweets such as “going grocery shopping”. Nobody cares about that. Keep this for your MySpace status update ;)

Establishing yourself as a social and knowledgeable persona will get you more attention, raise interest in who you are and what you do, ultimately helping your business if that’s what you’re looking for. As an example, I received several advertising requests for my iPhone blog from tweets that I sent out, even though I never looked for advertisers directly. These people saw that I knew a lot about the iPhone, they went to my iPhone blog, noticed that I got quite a bit of traffic there, and ended up asking me how much I would charge them for banner ads.

3. You will be able to keep this username when you leave your company

Imagine for a second that you are the marketing guy for a music magazine. For the last 2 years you’ve been using the @xyzmusicmag username,  attracting over 3,000 followers. Now imagine that your boss tells you that you are being laid off (or let’s say that you quit, if that can make you feel better).

What would happen to your Twitter username? You have 2 options: First option: you can just leave it to your company. You will lose all your followers and you will have to start on Twitter from scratch. Second option: you can sneakily change your username (Twitter is very flexible on this) to @yourrealname, taking the risk of being sued by your employer for doing that, which would be its own right.

You will never have this dilemma if you choose to use your real name on Twitter as soon as you create your account.

As you can see, there are big benefits in using your real name on Twitter. All this can be summed up in 2 words: personal branding. This in itself could be the topic of another blog post…

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