Whether you’re creating a brand or just in the mood to have a username that tons of other people don’t already have, it’s important to choose a unique and effective username.

Choose a username that is easy to remember and reflects you or your brand. To make it unique, you may have to make up a word or use a combination of uncommon words. To make it strong, it will have to be recognizable and easy to remember.

If you choose two or more words to create your username, make sure they sound good and make sense together. You don’t want to have to say a tongue twister every time you tell someone your username.

Consider using interesting (incorrect) spellings of words or numbers, but only if they make sense or are used in moderation. For example, too many misspellings will start looking ridiculous, like spelling special like speshial. A good rule of thumb is that if you can’t recognize the misspelled word easily, it’s not worth using. You might be able to use something simple like krazy for crazy, but going nuts and using lots of numbers instead of letters and weird misspellings won’t work well.

Realize the difference between good unique and bad unique. Good unique would be easy to spell and remember, but not common. Bad unique would be hard to spell, difficult to understand, and impossible to remember. Being unique is great, but if that uniqueness won’t be memorable or create a strong brand or image, it’s useless.

Make sure that you’re happy with the username that you choose. If you don’t like it, you won’t feel comfortable with it, so it will be useless.

Go to usernamecheck.com and check if your username is taken on a number of sites. If it’s free on most or all sites, you’ve got yourself a unique username.