Blogging 101 :: Naming your Blog

What	Definitions and Introduction – What is a Blog and why do you care?
Why	Questions to ask before getting started
How	Your sphere of influence is your target
Naming	Name your blog
Where	Your platform is your podium
Bells & Whistles	Vanilla is great, but now you want to spice it up
Ready? Set. Go!	Final checklist and things to look forward to

Naming your blog
Whether you choose a standalone platform or a shared solution for your blog, you will need to name it. Naming it is of course a part of the branding, and ties into the theme and topic matter. It all ties together into a bit of a chicken and the egg problem. I personally suggest that you explore your sphere of influence and how to project that online, pull your theme and topic matter from that, and then name and brand it accordingly. A name can be very hard to come up with. There are innumerable guides online that can help in this decision, as well as some free tools. Searching for a great name can also be a fun, addictive pursuit all its own. I would advise that you avoid stressing on this point early on. Get a sense of how you want to blog, and about what, and most importantly whether you genuinely enjoy it, before committing too much to this decision. Avail yourself of the free options to blog in the meantime, and be sure to keep a local copy of your posts so that you can easily populate a new blog and back date the posts when you go make the ‘final’ decision. As you consider the name(s), however, remember that you cannot use a trademarked term in a url name. Seeking legal advice before trying to deploy a site with the term realtor, or mls, for instance, would be highly advisable. One basic way to conceptualize the naming choice is first decide whether you are hoping for easy keyword recognition, or a brandable stylized name. ‘MyContraCostaRealtyBlog.com,’ for instance, is employing keywords. A series of terms relevant to the content make up the url. In contrast, ‘zarealafu.com’ has no clearly definable ‘terms’ within it. Sure, the word ‘real’ can be seen in there, but without any recognizable context, it is lost to you, and will be lost on google as well. One advantage of such a stylized name is that if branded well, it can become a household term synonamous with its content. Just ask someone if they can google something for you. Or get you a Starbucks. They will know what you mean. Ultimately this is a much more powerful, but difficult to achieve phenomenon. The other advantage to stylized names is that you can achieve a much shorter domain name. Of course a keyword name can be branded, but it is tricky to do. CCAR created HomesOpenToday.com – HOT, as an acronymical keyword domain name… the keywords boil down to a brandable acronym. Thus HOT and the HOT logo; but this can be tricky as of course that is not ultimately the domain name. Some tools you might like to use in selecting a domain name include: godaddy.com dotomater.com domainsbot.com nameboy.com