In recent years, traditional marketing strategies such as television advertising campaigns have been superseded by social network marketing.

Companies agree that Instagram is the best way to launch an effective campaign because comparatively speaking, a prime-time tv ad campaign comes in at an enormous cost. And tv campaigns cannot target a specific audience or reliably measure their impact on the target audience.

It has been proven that Instagram can do what tv cannot. It can tailor marketing to a low-budget. It can target a specific audience for the company's product or service. And it can reliably measure the target audience's degree of acceptance (´engagement`).

It operates on a first-come, first-served basis. Not surprisingly, companies are going flat out to get an Instagram username that coincides with the company's brand name. Once this is done, the company can use Instagram to promote the company's products or services.

Contrary to the company practices described above, most Influencers work the other way around. They use their usernames as if they were trademarks and, in turn, use that trademark to sell their own products or products of third parties. So, if an Influencer makes commercial use of his username, can he later register that name as a trademark?

The answer is yes, the username can be registered at the Trademark and Patent Office as a trademark. In fact, this is highly recommended as protection against the use of the trademark by third parties.

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