Your handle is taken, now what?

After I settled on Edicek as the product name, I went to claim the social media handles. Twitter was available. Instagram and TikTok were taken.

This is the problem everyone hits. You have a name you like, you got the domain, and then social media is a mess. Different availability on every platform.

TL;DRWhen @edicek was taken on social media, I used @heyedicek everywhere instead of different names on different platforms. Then I needed a subdomain for my link-in-bio page and realized hey.edicek.com matched the social handles perfectly. What started as a workaround for a taken handle became a unified branding strategy across social and web. Consistency beats perfection.

The Consistency Problem

Most people think platform-by-platform optimization is smart. Use the perfect name where you can get it, adapt where you can't. But here's what that looks like in practice: someone finds you on Twitter, tries to search for you on Instagram with the same username, and gets nothing. Or worse, finds someone else.

It looks amateur. Like you didn't plan ahead. Like you're not serious.

Consistency beats perfection. If your name is taken on some platforms, pick a strategy that works everywhere and stick with it. Add a prefix. Add a suffix. Whatever it is, make it the same across all platforms.

People remember patterns, not names. They'll remember "the one with 'official' at the end" or "the one that starts with 'hey.'" They won't remember five different variations.

The Prefix Solution

When @edicek was taken on Twitter, I went with @heyedicek. Simple prefix. Used it everywhere—Twitter, Instagram, TikTok. Same handle across all platforms.

A few weeks later, I was setting up a link-in-bio page. I needed somewhere to host it. The obvious choice was a subdomain under edicek.com.

And then it clicked. The same prefix I was using on social media worked perfectly as a subdomain: hey.edicek.com.

It wasn't just convenient. It was cohesive. Someone sees @heyedicek on Twitter, types hey.edicek.com in their browser, and lands exactly where they expect. The branding carries through.

From Workaround to Feature

What started as a workaround for a taken handle became a unifying strategy across social and web. The constraint forced consistency I wouldn't have thought to create otherwise.

The prefix isn't just solving a social media availability problem. It's creating a namespace that works everywhere. Social handles, subdomains, email addresses—all using the same pattern.

Sometimes the limitation is better than the original plan.