When I first joined Twitter about a year ago, it was to interact of course and to promote my blog. I grabbed every plugin I could find for WordPress and Twitter.
Alex King’s Twitter Tools was used primarily to post a “tweet” everytime I posted an article on my blog. I’ve now switched to @soldoutactivist ’s PingPressFM plugin.
Since the idea was to promote my blog, the username I chose was “morningbrewva” since the blog was Scott’s Morning Brew.
As I gained more and more followers, and followed more and more people, I found that I was leaning toward branding my name as opposed to the blog. Folks were contact me for help setting up their WordPress installations, ideas on social networking and asking for my input on other situations that my friends had come across. I also started another blog where I was documenting my experience and lessons learned on taking a public agency into the social media world.
It became time to brand ME, my name anyway, instead of just my blog.
I created a new Twitter account for @SDWhite.
But getting my followers over there and getting those I followed into that new account became daunting. So I abandonded the idea.
Last night I was on a marathon tweeting session and something flashed across my screen. “How to change your Twitter Username.”
BINGO! I clicked!
I read through the article by @rickbutts and it seemed simple enough. One of the comments on the article was that it was “more scary than difficult”. I agree. While the author assured everyone that all was safe; when you have spent months building your network, monkeying with it seemed a bit… daunting.
But I followed the steps, exactly as he outlined them. And it worked perfectly. My former @morningbrewva account was successfully renamed @SDWhite and all my follows (following me and me following them) transfered over without a hitch. As they (followers and followed) log in and interact, their address books are automatically updated with the new name. My photo, background on my Twitter home page all remained in tact.
The ONLY thing that changed was my user name.
Interested?
First, log into your Twitter account and follow @rickbutts
Second. Go here and follow the directions EXACTLY.
Third. ENJOY your new identity!
