It's time to stake your claim in the twitterverse

For those of you who’ve secured your unit or agency name on Twitter, congratulations! Now, for the 99% of you who haven’t, please get over there today and get it done. It won’t take more than a couple minutes to register your organization on Twitter and you’ll save yourself a great deal of time and frustration should someone decide to come along and squat on your domain. All you need is a username and the most basic of contact information. So if you haven’t done it yet go to Twitter Registration and fill out the requested fields before someone else decides to hijack your identity.

Many of you may not know what you’ll do with your Twitter account. That’s perfectly fine for the moment – just get your preferred name registered now (it’s free) and no one else can come along and take it. Once you have the name you can take your sweet time to decide what to do with it. Worst case you don’t do anything with it until late this year, but at least you’ve secured your unit’s name and prevented someone from taking a good name or even abusing your online identity.

Over the last two years some Twitter users have chosen to deliberately take military and intelligence community names for various reasons. Some of these are squatters – perhaps hoping to sell the name, trade for it, or even exploit it down the road for fun or profit. Others are simply having fun. In any case, should you find a user has taken a name which you feel your unit or agency has legal claim to you should visit Twitter’s Terms of Service policy as you can likely get them to assist you if a user is impersonating you or improperly using your brand or Trademark.

In many cases your organization will decide to use Twitter to communicate, to listen, to share content or for other uses. You might use the account to keep the public informed of key news; you may use it to recruit members; you might even use it to issue threat advisories, helpful tips or solicit assistance from the public. You may end up using it during an emergency for crisis communications or to respond to a disaster overseas. In any event, there’s likely at least one use you’ll have for Twitter and it just makes perfect sense to get out and get yourself a good name now.

As a parting shot, we’d like to recommend a few military and government Twitter users and bloggers who serve as great examples in the Twitterverse:

MajGen McDew made Social Media a Priority for Air Force Public Affairs

Air Force leading the way: Maj. Gen. Darren McDew made Twitter and other social media tools a priority early this year – check out @AFPAA, @AFPADude, @US_Air_Force, @airforce, @AFcombatcamera for a taste of what the Air Force is bringing to the table

US Coast Guard: @uscoastguard shares breaking news and media via their account

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF): @TotalCIO is not an ATF account but is run by Andy Blumenthal, the Chief Technology Officer of the ATF. It’s a great example of a Federal thought leader providing a personal voice with relavent professional information.

Combatant Commands: @USJFCOM, @PacificCommand, @southcomwatch, @US_EUCOM, @CENTCOMNEWS are using Twitter to various levels of success

US State Department: @Dipnote expand’s the reach of their official Dipnote Blog and encourages discussion and sharing of news.

DHS TSA Blog Team : @TSABlogTeam is relatively new but doing a good job at personalizing the TSA and sharing important news.

For a rather long and inclusive lists visit Ari Herzog’s (@ariherzog ) wiki of US Government Twitter users for official and unofficial pages.