Ready, Set ... Go! It's Time to Lock Down Your Vine Profile URL

One of the biggest problems with growing a dedicated following on Vine is that you couldn't share your profile with other people. The only way people could find and follow you was through a link on an individual vine. I couldn't share a link of my Vine profile with anyone directly without some serious hacking -- which wasn't exactly easy to do on your phone.

Lucky for us, that's all changing tomorrow, December 20, at 9 a.m. PST. At that moment, Vine will start allowing verified Twitter users on Vine to register for a vanity URL ... but it won't exactly be a rat race.

According to an email from Vine, "The Vine team will automatically reserve profile URLs that mirror verified Twitter @usernames. Even though the Vine team will reserve profile usernames, you must still claim the profile URL by registering it."

The rat race will actually take place on Monday, December 23 -- that's when the rest of us lowly, unverified folks can register for custom Vine URLs. And it truly will be a free-for-all: The social network won't be holding URLs for unverified accounts and once you select your Vine profile URL, you can't change it, which means some people may just grab any Vine custom URL they can.

Vine didn't indicate what exact time the race will start on Monday, so if your company account isn't verified or you simply want to unify your personal brand online, you better jump on this quick. 

How to Secure Your Vine URL

Once you get access to securing your URL, the process is pretty simple.

According to the email from Vine, all you have to do is visit vine.co, log in to your account, and then you’ll be directed to the form below. Be careful though: You won't be able to change your URL once you select it. 

Then ... ta-da! You'll have a Vine URL. It's pretty simple. What's not so simple, though, is what you'll do with that URL once you grab it.

Some companies may just grab the custom URL and sit on it while they figure out if Vine is a smart tool to use in their marketing strategy. (If you need help evaluating Vine for your own marketing strategy, check out this free ebook.) Some may just sit on the URL to sit on it -- and because it can't be changed, that could put other companies in a pickle. And some may use this as an excuse to launch more Vine campaigns.

Regardless of what you decide to do with Vine, it's a smart strategy to grab your company's URL in the off chance that you'll need it later.  

Does your company use Vine? Will you secure your Vine URL tomorrow or Monday? Share your thoughts about this update with us in the comments. 

Image credit: The Next Web