I think one of the most important elements of building a personal brand is consistency and context. Whatever you might call yourself on the social bookmarking tools and connection platforms should be in line with either your personal brand (your personality) or your formal corporate persona (your company's brand or personality).

Whatever you choose you should use it across all related content. It makes you easy to spot in a digital room. If you are choosing a personal brand persona, be authentic and be the real you. A conservative youth minister might get lots of follower by calling herself @Hoochiemama but it no one would take her seriously (I don't know if there is such a user with such a name - it is just an example.)

@DrPain or @DrPayne too would not be good choices if one were a dentist, even if that were their proper name. @TheSmileGuy would probably be more favorable.

If anyone ever needs a review of their social brand (as it relates to branding on the social web) hit me up on http://www.knowyoursocialmedia... - it is the newest online community that is uniquely about social media. Create a profile and share with others what you are doing, innovating or wanting to collaborate on.

@Digitalgodess
http://www.twitter.com/digital...

It is funny you should mention it, but I have some Payne in my family. I would not suggest that either.

I noticed that you gave some good points, but yet, you never actually answered the question at hand, which is how you chose your Twitter username. Give us the scoop on digitalgodess. ;-)

@desympsons
My name is DESY
And i like THE SIMPSONS
So,i combined it.
The simpsons sounds so similar wiv desympsons anyway.haha

@akomuzikera

ako means "me" and musikera means "musician"

i just threw in the 'z' for some kick

@nthmost expands to Naomi Theora Most, my real name.

It's also an adjective describing, in the Set Theory branch of mathematics, the penultimate (second-to-last) item in an infinite set, as in "the nthmost number of this set".

--Naomi

I am a Tiger. fierce, loyal, majestic, always hungry, dangerous, great sense of humour, protective (specially of kids & underdogs) and I take life in my stride... one day at a time... what else would I have called myself on Twitter

My username on twitter is shaileelathe that is my name and surname together, I use the same name all over the internet and now on my site too. So that kind of makes my name a brand too :P
as I had no clue about twitter/ microblogging I didn't keep in mind it's length now I wish that I had.

http://www.twitter.com/shailee...

I chose my twitter name because it was my grandmother's actual name, and I think she would have liked twitter. Interestingly, most people on twitter call me Kim, my real name, so I probably should change it. But I still like grandma's moniker and it's old-fashioned charm.

i use the name LeglessLush lol.

i'm paralyzed and an amputee. a friends mom was an older woman (almost 70) who had a grudge against a guy in a wheelchair from the neighborhood. he was drunk all the time and she would yell at him really loud with her boston accent while he was wheeling by... " you f'n leglesslush you're no good ect." bad taste maybe but that always stuck with me and it was funny as hell to see this conversation live lol.

i'll take that name over handicapped, disabled, handicapable (my worst lol) any day! :)

Nothing too fancy. My website and my branding are all about my business in real estate helping people buy and sell homes in Renton WA. @rentonhomefinde was available, the R on the end wouldn't fit, so here ya go.
Figured it would work. I make sure my name and info is available so that people can see that I am really a nice guy human and not just an advertiser. Gary

My Twitter username http://twitter.com/razorianfly is a bit unusual. Originally I was looking to create sharp branding for a new graphic design company.

I first tried Razor Fly, but it was taken, so I thought how can I generalize it?

In the same way 'ian' is added to the end of 'Liverpudlian' I decided to add ian onto the end of Razor (sharp). Sticking with the idea of 'Fast' I stuck Fly on the end.

Pronounced it, sounded pretty cool. The rest is history. :D

My name is Melody and I sometimes have a rational mind and like to let people know what's on it...hence "melodysmind" Unfortunately, no one told me in advance to keep it short.

My Twitter username is for my blog http://twitter.com/Diggin_Digi... I'm diggin my blog and I'm diggin digital. Simple... Can you tell I was raised in the 60's? lol

My name Twitter name http://twitter.com/sccouple715... represents my where I'm from (south carolina), couple(hubby and I) and his and my birth years (7156). Easy to remember and we use it all over. :-)

I just love expressing with what I made.

My name on Twitter is Bloggertalk after my blogging community.

I am @Annakabana
With a name as short as mine, rhymes are pretty easy. Someone came up with Anna Kabana years ago. I suppose I chose it for my Twitter username as it's only explicitly 'me' to people who really know me. The concept of anonymity and mystery is certainly appealing! There's that 'filtering of self, and use of selective details' element, I suppose.

mine's the same story as a few above; it's the same name i've been using for ages all over the Internetz (apart when i had to spell it w/a 1 instead of an L cos someone else snagged it on youtube before i got an acc't there.

it has a long story, part of which has has sump'n to do w/the Fugs'tune 'Slum Goddess' (but i'm younger than the original SG).

ps, i'm @slum_goddess on Twitter. :-)

self explanatory :)

My twitter name http://twitter.com/fallencross is one of my favourite martial art techniques from Kenpo.

Initially I used it as a wrestler name in a Facebook game and seem to have used it ever since. :)

Mine's a simple one really @darylsws is my first name plus middle initial plus initials of my last name (it's double-barreled).

It's short and simple and I use it virtually everywhere. Wish I had a more interesting story to share about it!! :o|

Mine is my name @helenthornber. I'm developing a career as a writer and my surname is fairly rare so my name is my brand.

My user name @mystiquetur was picked for twitter because I use it for everything else. I did not take the 140 char max into consideration when I chose it. I've been using Mystique since 2000 when I started playing Ultima Online I picked it for my character's name. I got the name from X-Men. The TUR comes from Ultima Online as well. It is the name of the guild I was in "The Unruled".

My name means witchery in Portuguese and it was what my friends used to call me when I was 17 years old and I was looking at them playing on pinball machines. I didn't play and I just watched them playing so they began to joke, every time they loose a game, that it was me that had made a witchery. After it they began to call me a witch every time they referred to me in conversations. It began to be my nickname. I don't use witch instead of witchery because there are always a lot of witches as nickname.

My name simply orginates from my love of my Football club (sunderland Association Football Club) (Soccer to those of you on the wrong side of the pond) and my blogging.

It is the username on a billion sites (probably less than a billion) both new and old.

My twitter name @tommytrc is my firstname and my initials TRC added together. I have had that username since back in the early 90's with my AOL screen name...that takes me way back. The screen name just stuck with me for all these years.

My Twitter name is my real name. I write articles for websites and blogs. I am trying to get my name out there as a sports writer. I don't sell anything on Twitter, I make money when people click my articles.

thanks for all links…keep the good work high

This comment was originally posted on AndySowards.com :: Professional Web Design, Development, Programming, Hacks, Downloads, Math and being a Web 2.0 Hipster?

My Twitter username is claireyawen, Claire is my English name, YaWen is my Chinese name :)

Oh get this! Well, it's my name :-)
I did consider it crossing over to Google, etc. I usually use my pseudonym however I realized I may need to use my real name now that I am building my career.

http://twitter.com/reerob My dear grandmother Robinson was "MaRob" and she called me "Ree" and so "reerob" was born on Twitter!

I chose Tymlee because I felt that Twitter was a very timely tool for me and, I'm sure, millions of others. It was a flash of genius if I say so myself. LOL

Not a very interesting story to the username I use most often: emd5005 It was the college userid that was assigned to me my freshman year of undergrad- emd are my initials, and i was apparently the 5005 person to go to that school with those initials!

Well mine is really interesting... my name is Dani so my twitter username is dani :D lol

For reasons long forgotten I used tweebleone as my name when I signed up for a pogo account several years ago. Then I used it for a youtube account a year or two after that. When I signed up for twitter, I thought "Why not?" Figured it was one less name to have to remember.

@steakRIOT
Random imagery that crossed my mind- a NY street riot with people throwing steaks at each other like pillow fight day. At the same time, the name seemed fit to describe the curve balls life throws at you and the way it's dealt with- chaos cooked and served medium-rare. The way to eat both social media and steak.

I have always been rampantheart. First thought of having the name as Rh but decided against it. I am rampantheart everywhere in Social media circles. Didn't want to change the name.

I have used @collisionbend as my user name just about everywhere since I bought the URL collisionbend.com: I hail from a very old family from Cleveland, so I wanted something that was uniquely Cleveland for a site name, plus I wanted it to come from an area of the city where my family actually lived and worked. "Collision Bend" is a bend in the Cuyahoga river (it's that hairpin corner in the river just to the west of Progressive Field as seen from a blimp), has been a Cleveland landmark since the 1840s (my family came here in 1832), is uniquely Cleveland, and is instantly memorable as a name. The bear (Brutus) is my alter ego, and has no bearing on my branding, but is, in effect, my "spokesman."

My username is based on my real name. My last name is Cool, which of course would be an optimal username—I had it on Pownce—but it tends to get snagged pretty quickly. So when I can’t get that I just append my initials in front to make @hacool. The sad thing is that whoever nabbed @cool. isn’t even updating. Bah!

@valster50 is a combination of my nickname (derived from the old SNL skit) and the magic number that I originally was afraid to admit to, but now am proud to be. (also, Valster without the 50 was already taken!) My nickname is also on the license plate of my red convertible :)