Twitter Username: Keyword or Company Name?

[seomasterbrasil]

Hello everybody!

I'm in doubt with which one is the best:

To have a Twitter profile name with:

1)the company's name.
Of course it's good for branding, but it's a B2B, industrial market.

2)a relevant keyword.
Will it bring traffic, considering that is a B2B, that works different.

The question is: does Google gives relevance to username with keyword in it? If yes, have it a great value, or should I use the company name?

Thanks!  =]

[MashBonigala]

Ah! Keri... a very important point... yes, better to secure your brand name as a handle on social channels...absolutely!

[KeriMorgret]

Agree on the looking spammy.

I would get the company name in any case so that someone else doesn't get the name and make you settle for a lesser name / have them tweet out stuff that's against your brand.

[MashBonigala]

Actually my experience has shown that keywords in the handle actually look spammy and most people tend to not take that account seriously.. Infact I myself had deleted a lot of follows who either had a keyword in their handle or a graphic of some sort. I cleaned my follow list to ensure I was getting tweets from people and not automated systems. I am probably digressing here... sorry....

[gfiorelli1]

I agree but just in one case:

you are not a brand and want to transform in a brand. For instance, SeattleSEO is a exact keyword... and you have the site called SeattleSEO and your "brand" is SeattleSEO. In order to transform SeattleSEO from a simple exact matching keyword to an entity, then the consistence of its use everywhere (social profiles, handles in blogs, forum...) will help.

But for pure SEO purposes... I don't think it really matters

[JaspalX]

In answer to 'will it bring traffic' I'm not so sure...not done any testing, but (as far as I can recall) I've never seen twitter results in serps where the twitter handle corresponds to the keyword I'm searching for.

All things being equal, I'd be inclined to go for brand name, social media is about engagement and people like to know who they're talking to.

Having said that, if you can get a nice keyword name that doesn't feel 'forced' then that would be good. For example, in the pr industry there's @ThePRCoach which is nice and doesn't feel like someone is squeezing a keyword unnaturally into the name (as it happens his site is called ThePRCoach too, but hopefully you get my meaning!)

[malachiii]

if you can get both twitter accounts, why not take them both and sit on the keyword twitter. It may be valuable in the future for industry leadership, etc.  But for marketing and branding definitely go with your company name

[AnthonyMangia]

I agree with Gianluca.  I think having a keyword-rich Twitter handle has extremely limited value, whereas conversely, a Twitter handle with your brand can have a ton of upside.

[gfiorelli1]

Don't take me as good example (I'm not).... in fact I use none of above (gfiorelli1)... but you know, when you have a nick attached to you since the BBS era.

Seriously talking... brand name is always better for the twitter handle of a company. For the "professional" twitter handle of an employer of the company, the best is Name-Brand.