We ran into that when we started building the brand for the soon-to-launch TBD. It’s a popular acronym, as everyone knows, so securing that namespace in social media was quite challenging. Though we’ve been tweeting for nearly two months as @TBDDC, this week we finally acquired @TBD. This is how it went down.

We wanted @TBD from the start, but it was occupied by a private, dormant account with zeroes across the board – no followers, no follows and no tweets.

Obviously, the first step in this scenario is to try to contact the handle owner. From my own account, I requested to follow this user to see if they were checking their notifications. Either they weren’t checking or I was rejected, because I never heard back.

I also sent the user a couple of @ replies to see if they were even checking those. No response.

It was time to turn to Twitter.

When you want to take this next step, it’s important to note Twitter’s policies in relation to your situation.

The policies are different depending on whether or not the account is active, whether the user is actively impersonating your brand and whether or not you have a registered trademark on your name.

If someone is actively using the handle you want in accordance with the rules, there’s little Twitter can do, even if you have a trademark on the name.

From Twitter:

Where there is a clear intent to mislead others through the unauthorized use of a trademark, Twitter will suspend the account and notify the account holder.

When an account appears to be confusing users, but is not purposefully passing itself off as the brand/company/product, the account holder will be notified and given an opportunity to clear up any potential confusion, per the guidelines listed below.

Contacting the user directly is really your only hope to getting the name in this instance.

If you want to acquire the handle of an inactive account, as we did, it really helps to have a registered trademark on the name. We did not have our trademark registration info right away, but I still submitted  a ticket request to have the name released.

Once we got our trademark registration information, I filed another ticket, this time under the trademark policy. This time I filled out the required trademark info. To do this, our Twitter account had to be linked to an email address from our domain (an important thing to note if you have a business or blog without a URL yet). This was the final thing that pushed it over the top and got us @TBD.

If you don’t have a trademark registration, you may still have a chance, though note this important point in Twitter’s inactive username policy:

We are currently working to release all inactive usernames in bulk, but we do not have a set time frame for when this will take place. If a username you would like has been claimed by an account that seems inactive, you should consider selecting an available variation for your use on Twitter.

Even so, it wouldn’t hurt to submit a ticket request from your account to report the inactive name.

When and if you get a username opened up, you can easily change your Twitter handle to the new one without affecting your followers, lists or settings. You can do this from the Account tab of your account Settings.  In our case, Twitter rolled @TBDDC over to @TBD for us.

When you change your Twitter handle, you have to be vocal about the change. If you can do it before the changeover, tell your followers what’s coming. After the change, they’ll receive your tweets at the new handle, but they may not realize the difference and may send replies and DMs to your old handle. Tweet about the change and encourage retweets. It might not hurt to briefly re-secure your old handle and put up a message there about the new account.

Note: If you get a second handle for this purpose, be  good citizen and don’t name-squat. After a couple of weeks or so, if you aren’t going to use this account for something else, delete it and re-open the name.

But even if you don’t get the handle you want, you shouldn’t let it stop you from jumping into social media.   It wasn’t a deterrent for TBD – we were able to build a lot of buzz on @TBDDC before we got the new name (and we were prepared to have that name be permanent).

If you can’t get the username of your brand, think of a way to make your own version. Shorten it, add an adjective or adverb, tack on a location or do something entirely out-of-the-box. It really isn’t all in a name. It all depends on how you use the medium and how well you can promote it elsewhere.

Intro to Facebook for journalists (and any professionals): A guide that explains the basics of Facebook with a glossary or terms and a look at demographics.

Setting up an All-Purpose Facebook Account: Setting up a Facebook page you can easily use for personal and professional contacts.

Sharing Your Content on Facebook: Using your newsfeed to promote content, blogs and social media accounts.

More resources on Facebook you should check out:

• Search Facebook status updates at Openbook or OpenFacebookSearch
• Mashable’s Facebook Guide for Journalists: An excellent look at using Facebook for finding leads, effective sourcing, ethical issues and more.
• Facebook Demographics and Statistics, 2009-2010 (iStrategy Labs)
• Ways to get Facebookers to Read Your Story

The idea of spurning social media for breaking news in order to protect your wire service would be a little like an early 90s  telephone service provider spurning the notion of developing an Internet service, instead allowing competitors to use its lines to serve up dial-up service to its customers.

Truth is, Twitter is the perfect medium for breaking news. I think of it as the latest incarnation of the “this just in!” radio bulletin.  As a tool, it is immediate, mobile, searchable by keyword and location, you can easily see who has passed on your news (via RTs), link traffic is easily tracked and, best of all, it has your brand attached so you can get credit for the scoop.

There is absolutely nothing more satisfying to this newshound than a series of re-tweets on my item from readers – and even better when it includes a begrudging re-tweet from my competitors.

If a news outlets that uses the Reuters wire is the first to post an item to a social media, it will look as if they broke that news. Their link to the same Reuters content will be the one passed around from retweet to retweet. One would think they might want to get their name on it first – but  guess not.

I see this play out every day on my Tweetdeck, as the local TV stations battle to tweet out the latest kooky AP news item from 200 miles away first. I always can’t help but think, “Gee, why isn’t the AP trying to get this into this market’s Twittersphere before local news outlets even get the chance?”

In the end, it won’t matter if they broke the news on the wires first. Most readers don’t read the wires, they read either their preferred media site or social media to get their news. As more and more news organizations take advantage of using Twitter to break news (or in the case of the BBC, mandating it), news providers who are late to the party on every story will eventually render themselves pretty useless as breaking news resources.

It’s downright shameful that an industry leader in breaking news (including some of the biggest breaking news events of the 20th century), would just let that go in favor of protecting a corner of the market that doesn’t benefit its readers or its reporters.

I have to say, the rest of the policy is rather helpful. It largely focuses on explaining how journalists can manage professional and personal brands on Twitter, including guidelines for making corrections in the social media sphere and avoiding accusations of bias with a thorough look at one’s social media profiles. All good info to know.

Ignoring the basis of her argument, let’s examine the excellent social media marketing at play here.

The entire tone of the piece is aimed at stoking the fires behind a largely-imagined competition between the National Enquirer and “mainstream media” that is widely-believed and argued by a certain corner of the political spectrum. Never mind that a vast majority of the Enquirer’s stories – think weight gains/losses, celeb rehab, who’s sleeping with who – are not of any interest to most “mainstream” news outlets anyway (but that’s besides the point).

Note the only quoted source in the story. Note the author in the comments of the story stoking that political fire. See her later the same day actively campaigning for the Enquirer getting the Pulitzer on Twitter. Note the National Enquirer, the same day, writing its own story about Miller’s story, praising her campaigning. Watch the Twitter stream reaction from said media competition theorists. Then see the link bait everywhere (you too, Mr. Romenesko).

The entire Issue-with-a-capital-I has been re-framed as Biased/Mainstream Media is preventing the Upstart/Misunderstood National Enquirer from getting a Pulitzer instead of asking if the story is worth journalism’s highest honor in the first place. Miller and the National Enquirer fed the beast in just the right ways to both get huge gains from their regular bases and a whole new crowd of big media haters who bit the competition bait.

It’s brilliant marketing and more media outlets should take note.

See, the National Enquirer has been using social media to change its brand’s reputation ever since the Edwards story started rolling out in 2007 and 2008. I don’t know how it started, but somehow they have managed to market themselves as a certain-kind-of-conservative’s go-to brand, along with Fox News, of  news that is perceived by fans as non-mainstream and unbiased in a world of mainstream and Left-leaning news outlets.

Every day I keep a cursory eye on a Twitter search for the word “enquirer” (to keep an eye out for mentions of my own newspaper, The Cincinnati Enquirer). At least a half-dozen times during my work day that stream will feature someone saying the National Enquirer is a more reliable source for news than “mainstream” news. You can’t really buy that kind of word-of-mouth love, especially after decades of having such a negative brand reputation.

We as an industry are generally awful about marketing ourselves and managing our brands. I’m not saying you need to actively wage a campaign like this to get noticed, but baby steps help a lot. Somewhere along the line, journalists got the notion that you can’t be good in this business unless everyone thinks your newspaper sucks and to hell with them if they don’t like it. I don’t think this works anymore.

Right now, when bloggers and users in social media denigrate our reporters or brands, the strategy is to keep quiet and don’t let them see you sweat. At worst, some outlets and media companies go further than that to actively alienate and discredit the detractors as a defensive maneuver, which never seems to go over well in the long run.

What we should be doing is contacting the writers, leaving comments and answering questions. We should defend our work and people when necessary and apologize when it’s warranted. We should go on record for interviews, return phone calls and emails – you know, do all those things that companies do when they want to be liked. Even when you don’t have to respond to criticism, we should be out there putting our best foot forward. Start by talking up your work and your paper’s efforts to local bloggers, your competition and your Twitter and Facebook friends. Involve the community in upcoming changes (eve the bad ones) and seek feedback whenever you can.

At the very least, take a cue from the Enquirer on this – you need to have fans somewhere. Find them, court them and keep them in the loop…then you can say to hell with everyone else.

• Taking the plunge and starting your own blog or news website? OJR has a great checklist to help you get off on the right foot. Whether you’re a college student or a mid-career journalist looking to get your name out there in a new way, this should really help you figure out your plan. And, if you use Wordpress to host your blog or site (I recommend it), here’s a friendly DIY guide to Wordpress troubleshooting from our friends at the OJB.

• If you’re looking for a new online storytelling or crowd-sourcing technique, try using a lifestream or eventstream to tell a story in a narrative form using tools like Tumblr or Posterous. Using a stream, you can combine blog posts, tweets, images and other sorts of updates around a subject from several different people to flow into a single “stream” in chronological order. It’s sort of like a Friendfeed that tells a story. Try it out.

• Or if you want to get really experimental, try the “mapped” writing model for online news. This technique isn’t so much a narrative as a “choose your own adventure”  for long-form news. It involves an overall summary (or nut graf, if you will) followed by a series of “threads” that don’t need to be read in a particular order. I learned about this model back in online journalism class back in j-school – and I never thought it would come into use. Whaddya know.

• Data fiends, multimedia producers and Flash fanatics can get great ideas for unique and innovative maps from 10,000 Words. Data visualization is a big deal for online media, buy now the key is making those maps simpler, prettier and fun. (Note: The images on the post are blown out, but it’s a solid list of examples). If you’re just a wannabe data fiend, the blog also has tips for finding and visualizing data. Very cool.

• User-generated content doesn’t have to mean “amateur” content. The Knight Digital Media Center offers up some great tips for training citizen journalists that could make submitted news a valuable information asset for your site (and it helps the community too). Remember, not everyone had to sit through several credit hours’ worth of copy editing class – so just be patient.

• Reporters, in particular, should consider expanding their social media brand by setting up a YouTube account. Those cats at Old Media, New Tricks have great how-to advice for branding yourself on YouTube. Yes, it can be more than just funny cat videos.

• Take it from me, it’s tough to manage comments on your blog or news site, let alone learning to love them and use them to your advantage. I think a lot of the opinion in this piece is a bit pie-in-the-sky (because I’ve been there), but they offer good tips, nonetheless, for understanding online communities and managing commenters.

• If you haven’t been using Twitter lists yet, here’s Mashable’s primer on what they are and how they work.

• This is more for organizations rather than individuals, but Social Media Today has tips for making employees into effective Social Media Ambassadors. Hint: It goes beyond just getting everyone on Twitter and calling it a day.

• 5 Twitter Tools to Help You Manage Unfollowers | WebProNews – I can’t recommend Qwitter to anyone – it simply doesn’t work. Try these other services to keep an eye on who is unfollowing you – and possibly why.
• Paid Twitter Streams Are Here: Super Chirp – Is this the end of the world as we know it? Maybe. I’m not ruling out that a good Twitter stream is worth paying for – I just haven’t seen it yet.
• A new Colonel Tribune? – Daniel Honigman, the voice and creator of Colonel Tribune, is no longer with the Tribune. While I give him big congrats for getting out of the business on his talents in social media, I don’t think Colonel Tribune can really be the same with a new voice. We see this on a smaller scale when we change voices behind @cincienquirer – anyone can see the difference.
• The ‘branding’ of the journalist – Editors Weblog – I’m always bugging the reporters at my paper to market themselves as brands – particularly in the current job climate.
• Facebook | Recession Survivors – You’ll need to log into Facebook to see it, but this project is an excellent example of how news outlets can use the crowdsourcing tools built into Facebook to involve the community in a story. Click on the videos tab to see the fan videos that Facebook users have contributed to this project.
• To Tweet? To Twitter? The Final Word On Proper Twitter Lingo – The AP Stylebook has officially added Twitter and it’s words for usage (”to tweet” “to Twitter”). Who says we’re behind?
• Lead, Follow or Block: When to Use Twitter’s Block Function – A reporter today asked me about Twitter’s block function – when it should be used and what exactly it does. I found this post to be helpful in explaining the issue (the comments also add some insight).
• Twitter Dividends | Knight Digital Media Center Weblog – This was an interesting discussion amongst alums of the Knight Digital Media Center’s fellowship workshops about what sort of gains news organizations can or should expect from Twitter. Yours truly is part of this discussion – and I suggest the answer doesn’t lie in analytics.

In case you hadn’t heard, Facebook has decided to let Fan Pages with less than 1,000 fans get a custom URL – but they’ll have to wait until June 28.

You can reserve a name right now so long as it is trademarked and you have the trademark registration number by going here. Of course, if you’re like me and have no idea if your name is trademarked or if there’s a registration, you’ll just have to wait.

•    Tweet links to your stories, photos and blog entries on Twitter.

•    Link to your stories or some of your photos on Facebook.

How? From your Facebook profile page, click in the empty box where it says “what’s on your mind”? It gives you the option to add a link. Paste in the URL to your story. Now all your Facebook connections can find your stories.
•    If you’re a blogger, put the RSS feed to your blog on Facebook.
How? On your profile page, click on Settings just under the “What’s on your mind?” box. From here, you can add links to blogs and other social networking sites (if you’re into that sort of thing).
•    Add your stories about national topics to Publish2.com.

Wha? It’s a site just for journalists and news organizations to share news between sites.  Submit your story there and it could show up as an “additional link” on lots of other websites like this: http://www.sfgate.com/webdb/jobcuts/
•    If you’re on Twitter – make sure people know it.

Put your Twitter link into your outgoing email signature and with your online updates.
Submit your Twitter account for inclusion onto “expertise” sites like http://muckrack.com and http://wefollow.com or manage your account on http://twellow.com.

As it is right now, Facebook offers these links to select businesses and entities (like the New York Times). Soon, pages* and profiles will be eligible to receive them on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Why would this be useful to you?

Just like every other social media site, a vanity URL would be an easy-to-guess, short and direct path t your Facebook page. As it is now, you are merely a long series of numbers according to Facebook. If someone goes to search for you on Facebook, they may or may not find the right person with your name. If you have facebook.com/your.name, it’ll be easy to find and simple for you to link it in your emails, put it on business cards, etc.

Because it is the Internet, there will inevitably be a mad dash for these vanity URLs. If you have a common name or you want to be sure to get your company’s name first, you’d better hustle. They are available at http://facebook.com/username on midnight Saturday.

* Mashable notes that pages will not be able to get a vanity url unless they have at least 1,000 fans and have to have been created before May 30. Better get to recruiting new fans (I know I will).

• 10 Must-Haves for Your Social Media Policy – As always, Mashable pulls together the tips that can help us all – individuals or businesses and news orgs – better develop our social media strategies.
• Keyword Streamgraphs on Twitter – This site creates a visualization of the last 1000 tweets on a certain keyword. It doesn’t really make anything useful data-wise, but it is a great little thing you can link to out of your coverage of an issue or to track your buzz on an ongoing story. Mine is made for mapping who mentions “Reds” – but you can change the link to be any keyword.
• How to Mine Twitter for Information – Great tips on getting data from Twitter to track buzzwords and trends over time.
• Collaborative Reporting Tools | Publish2 – This new offering from Publish2 – which is a great tool if you haven’t used it – can be used in a lot of ways. It can be used to gather news tips, crowdsource stories and allow multiple people to contribute to reporting.
• JournoTwit – The twitter client that’s not just for journalists… – This tool is still in development, but it has great potential. It is similar too, though not as good as, Tweetdeck – only online-based. If you could make the columns customizable, I’d be switching today.
• Journalism.co.uk : BBC double-checks journalists’ ‘professional’ tweets – I guarantee there are reporters and editor that read this and think, “What a great idea!” No, it isn’t. Twitter is “right now” – not “ten minutes from now.” If you need an editor to make sure your tweets don’t have libel, spelling or factual error, you shouldn’t be tweeting. Period.
• Commentary: Why Twitter won’t save journalism or kill it | McClatchy – A fairly honest overview of Twitter from someone who isn’t “in the tank” like me. While I think it is short-sighted to say Twitter won’t revolutionize journalism (maybe not Twitter – but something like it can and will), it’s at least giving the service a shot.