As some of you may know, I started at Ektron just over a month ago as their Social Media Strategist. One of the tasks that was bestowed upon me was to get the Ektron Twitter account. There were many other things that took precedence over securing this account, like creating documentation, building case studies, learning the platform, and all the other standard “starting a new job” things. Which leads me to December 11th.

I submitted a request via the Twitter Support area and asked if there was anything that I could do to secure the Ektron Twitter account.

I outlined to Twitter that the account:
1. Had protected their tweets
2. Had no friends
3. Has no followers
4. Had no Tweets

I also mentioned that I had thought that someone was squatting on the account to either force us to create a new account or to block us from leveraging it to communicate. I received an immediate email informing me that their Support team was processing the request and to allow for several days to review the case and to receive a follow-up.

I then went to twitter Twitter and asked if anyone had dealt with this in the past, as I was sure that I was not the only one. My friend jimstorer RT’d (re-tweeted for those of you that are not on Ttwitter – posted it again) my question. He was then contacted by another individual, nickhuhn who in-turn contacted me and let me know that I was following the right process, and that in his experience, it took about a month. You really can’t beat the power of Social Media and Networking, validating the process.

After 5 five days I received a communication from Twitter with a step by step process as to how I could go about securing up the account, including the specific information that was needed (Patent # specifically). I submitted the information via their online support channel and 2 two days later I received word from Twitter that the account was now Ektron’s.

The entire process was extremely painless. Twitter was transparent with me during the entire process, setting expectations and communicating with me during the entire time. I was able to leverage a “2nd degree friend” in order to validate the process, and within just over a week’s time, I had the account secured. Thank you to Twitter and thank you for the avenue to both submit my request and locate others that have gone through the same process.

* cross-posted at http://www.ektron.com/mikepascucciblog