Twitter Verified Accounts Will Eventually Be Good for Your Brand

Twitter rolled out the first portion of its verified accounts capabilities late last week, meaning those celebrity accounts clogging up your home page stream can now be linked to the actual celebrities behind them. Anyone wishing to receive a Verified badge on their Twitter profile will have to apply for it, and Twitter will go over the submitted information in order to grant the badge or reject it.

The purpose behind the verified accounts badge is to help users screen out which accounts to follow and which to steer clear from. It’s an authentication process that has been set up to help others avoid fake accounts. You know, the one’s that aren’t really Oprah or Ashton Kutcher. Because following the real celebrity accounts is what matters to you.

When it’s all said and done, many of Twitter’s feature upgrades have catered to the highly influential and power users of Twitter, many of which are celebrities. But what about the rest of us? Just as important, what about those of us that are using Twitter for personal brand-building and business purposes?

Well, Twitter says the business account verifications are on the way. But now is a good time to discuss why these are important for you as a blogger and a Twitter user. Having the ability to verify your account means that you’re a trusted member of the Twitter community, according to Twitter. This provides a bit of brand protection, on the personal and business side of things. To that end, your ability to promote your brand through Twitter is increased.

Combine this with the similar verification process Facebook rolled out earlier this year, and you’ll notice a trend where social networks and blogging platforms are looking to brands in order to build out their feature set and provide a slew of new tools for self-promotion and overall marketing.

I think the cross-network ability to verify yourself as an individual or business brand will be important for the long-term support of social media marketing. It’s a concept that others have attempted for years now, providing a third-party application for verifying accounts and displaying a trust factor assciated to various accounts across the social web. WOT is one such service, and does a great job. But with the verification process coming directly from certain social media services, the need for third-party apps is minimized and the ability for individual brands to promote themselves will grow in the coming year.

Written by Kristen Nicole from Kristen Nicole
Posted on June 15th, 2009 and filed under Blogging News
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