Information Centre

With social media such an important part of business communications and marketing nowadays, most companies choose to establish accounts with the major networks - so an added challenge when choosing a domain name relates to these identities.

In an ideal scenario, you'll be able to register a .com.au name of your choice (and .com if you're really lucky) along with the equivalent for your Facebook, Twitter,Plus, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn accounts. In reality, this could be quite difficult as it becomes like trying to pick all the right numbers in a lottery.

Should you avoid registering a domain name simply because the equivalent isn't available on the social networks you'll be promoting your business on?

For most businesses, this isn't a major issue unless one of the above is intended as the major marketing medium and most of your publishing efforts will be focused on these accounts.

People tend to follow links or run searches on for companies they are looking for on these networks, either via Google or the service in question. However, this does make it important to optimize your social media page to ensure you can be easily found on your company or domain name.

There are a few ways to address the lack of a perfect social media handle, while still offering some visual recognition of your brand.

Let's say you have the .com.au domain name "flombles" and you're serving Australian clients only, but someone else in the U.S. has that as a social media account handle. Something you can do is add an "au" to a social media account name; i.e. "auflombles" or "flomblesau". The addition of "au" might even help your efforts as it will help identify you as the Australian business.

Another option is to use a "." if the service allows it - e.g. au.flombles. However, it's probably wise to use the same handle across all social media networks - even if it differs from your domain name.

In a nutshell, while many of the guidelines for selecting domains apply to social media usernames,  it's probably best to let a domain name influence your handle choice in most cases, rather than the other way around.

By the way, the rise of social media has also given rise to the idea that domain names are no longer needed - this is a myth. Social media is a valuable tool, and one that that can help drive visitors to your web site (and vice-versa).