Change Your Twitter Handle Without Losing Your Old One in 3 Easy Steps

Roni Noone blogs at Ronis Weigh, GreenLiteBites, and TheUnworldlyTravelers. She is the founder of FitBloggin’ and truly believes blogging can change the world. Want to contribute? Send your guest posts to posts@fitbloggin.com. 

Regardless of why you do it, changing your Twitter handle is a nerve-racking experience. Just ask Carla, aka MizFit, who is in the middle of rebranding herself.

I’ve told people I’m going to shift from my Brand’s name to my OWN name on Twitter! for ages.

For years.

I think it was three years ago I secured @carlabirnberg (an account I lost to hackers, which is a post for a different day) and it’s quite literally taken me three years to get to the place where I was ready to make the switch.

I was apprehensive for two reasons:

1. The first being the fact I am so tightly aligned with my branding, so much so that most people I’ve met online call me MizFit rather than Carla.
2. It wasn’t so much I feared no one would know who I was, but the fact I realized once I did the switch I could never go back.

Carla’s fears are pretty common but she knew she had to take the leap.

I decided to do what I do in most fearful places in my life.

I Dr. Phil’ed myself.

I asked myself “What was the worst thing that could happen?” and quite frankly losing my Twitter following wouldn’t be THAT catastrophic so I trusted in the process.

And the process is simple. It also results in NO loss of followers.

1. Create a brand new Twitter account. Use a generic twitter username like your current one with a simple “2” after it. What you use doesn’t matter — you are going to change it in a few moments anyway.
2. Once you have the second account set up, login to your current account (the one you want to change) and change the username to your desired new Twitter name.
3. Twitter usernames are immediately available once dropped, so now quickly (don’t stop to tell everyone you switched just yet) log back into your new generic Twitter account (the one with the “2” after the name) and change that Twitter account name to your old Twitter username.

That’s it!

I would suggest leaving one tweet on the new, which is now the “old” Twitter account, to cover your tracks. Something like:

I no longer tweet here. Please follow me @NewTwitterHandle

Has anyone else successfully changed their Twitter handle? Any words of wisdom for those still fearing the process?