Is Your Business Being Squatted On?

Some human predictions about the future have been amazingly accurate … just check out the Paleo Future blog. Some things we never saw coming … including the idea that there could be a full-time income made from domain squatting! With the prevalence of different sites that are available to create corporate profiles, your internet marketing campaigns could be in real danger of sabotage and blackmail, from social media profile squatters.

What is social media profile squatting?

Well, for starters, although it is recognized phenomenon, it doesn’t really have an agreed-upon name. Perhaps we’ll call it social squatting . Much like domain squatting, this would be the process of looking for companies, large and small, that have not yet registered an official profile on one of the major social media sites. The trolls would then set up a profile with your business name, in the hope of selling it to you at a later date.

Obviously there is a subtext to the offer of sale as well – whoever registers your official profile name on a site becomes (as far as the public knows) the spokesperson for your company. Choose to deal with them in a way they don’t like, and they may find an ingenious way to sabotage your internet marketing and drive away your customers.

What sites should I register on?

Here are some of the popular social media sites that it would be wise to register an official Page, profile or account on:

• Facebook (note that Facebook is taking steps to prevent people creating non-official brand name pages)
• Twitter
• MySpace
• Friendfeed
• Youtube – create a company channel
• LinkedIn
• Technorati
• Squidoo
• Yahoo Answers

But I don’t want to do social media marketing right now…

That’s okay. Most social media sites will let you register a profile, and then effectively make yourself invisible to the public at large. Leave it blank if you like – just make sure the account is registered to your business. This way all that careful brand building and internet marketing effort is carefully preserved.