Choosing a Name for Your Blog

Photo by Shira Golding

What’s in a name? Whether you’re part of a social media team starting an official corporate blog or an individual launching a so-called personal brand online, you are bound to confront a few challenges as you attempt to pick a blog domain name that best represents you or your company. So what do you do?

I have recently seen a few excellent articles on the subject: one from Tim Berry and the other from Dan Schawbel. Both offer some great suggestions for picking compelling blog names.

Regardless of your topic, it is important to keep a few things in mind: Is the name you’ve picked relevant, concise and memorable? While I am sure you can point to successful blog names that are lacking in at least one of these areas, it is generally a good set of criteria to follow.

Relevant

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to choosing a domain name, but generally speaking it helps to have a name that is relevant to either the topic you plan to discuss or the personal brand or company you plan to represent. You typically see three types of relevant blog names: thematic, personal or aligned with a preexisting corporate brand in the case of established companies that launch social media efforts. Blogs are then typically used as a hub for other new media accounts (more on that in a future post).

• Thematic – Blog names like Mobility Today, Personal Branding Blog and Social Media Explorer immediately give the reader a sense of what these sites cover while simultaneously increasing Search Engine Optimization (SEO). There are, however, quite a few successful blogs with creative names that don’t necessarily call out their topic as explicitly; yet, they still give the reader clues about their thematic focus. In the post I recommended above, Tim Berry mentions a few blogs that fall into this category including Duct Tape Marketing, Freakonomics and Life Hack. In each case, the blog name implies the site’s topic.

• Personal – What could be more relevant than your own name? Especially if you plan to build a personal brand. A few standout examples are ChrisBrogan.com and GuyKawasaki.com. While this type of blog name may not initially offer as much SEO potential as thematic names, aligning your domain name with your actual name is a great way to assert yourself as an expert on a given topic. And don’t worry so much about SEO right away. If you choose your tags wisely every time you post new content, search engines will find you.

• Preexisting Corporate – If you are creating new media accounts on behalf of an established company, much of your work is already done for you. You likely have a recognizable brand with legitimacy in the eyes of the public. In that case, the blog name you choose might be the company’s name preceded or followed by the word “blog” or it may be some derivative of the brand name. For example, Twitter’s official blog is blog.twitter.com, while Dell’s official blog is Direct2Dell.  On the other hand, some companies start blogs in the name of one of their executives, in which case this would take the form of a personal blog.

Concise

Ok. You have a relevant blog name, but is it concise? Concision is important for a few reasons. For one, it helps your audience avoid spelling mistakes when they try to find you online.  Another, and more important reason, is that concision helps people remember your domain name. More on choosing a memorable site name in a second, but for now, keep in mind that concision doesn’t just mean short. It also means streamlined and void of anything superfluous. So, it’s best to avoid punctuation like hyphens, underscoring, etc.  In some cases, it would be well advised to remove numbers; however, there are some exceptions. In the case of Dell’s official blog, the number “2″ actually helps shorten the blog name, which makes the name concise and effective. But if your blog name was My-Blog2545, people might have trouble remembering the blog name or even trusting its content. I’m exaggerating a bit here, but you get the point. One last item to consider: the clunkier your domain name is, the clunkier your blog’s email address will be — that is if you plan to use one.

Memorable

To some degree memorable is a function of concision, but not necessarily. You might have a very concise name, but if it’s not compelling or if it isn’t relevant, it probably won’t catch your readers’ attention. Therefore, it helps to have a catchy (or at least clear) title. The blog names I’ve included above all fit into this category and serve a good examples to emulate. Be creative, but also consider your overall objectives.

A few closing thoughts:

You might initially have trouble finding the exact domain name you want. In which case, be creative and look for derivatives of your idea or company name that might work, but be cautious not to fall into the trap of using punctuation or superfluous numbers. Also, please note that people tend to trust .com domains more than any other. If possible, try to choose this kind of domain as it will likely give you more credibility in the eyes of your audience. It may be tempting, but I recommend staying clear of other kinds of domains.

Good luck! I hope these tips are helpful. Please let me know your thoughts. What has worked for you?

Photo Credit: Shira Golding

Tagged as: blog, blog name, brand, domain, New Media, personal brand, social media, tips