Most content marketers (bloggers) know branding is one of the most important aspects of building trust, authority, and a following. Without a strong brand, it is easy to be forgotten.
While the writing style of an author or the quality of a product are huge aspects in branding, there is nothing more important to branding than the name.
When you hear John Chow, you think of Make Money Online (or evil blogger depending on how long you’ve known him). When you hear Nike you think sports apparel. When you hear Twitter you think of spam… errr.. I mean social media.
The point is, without a strong brand name, your product will be hard to recognize. Having a consistent brand name across all online media networks is important for building your brand.
How annoying would it be if you wanted to register a Twitter account or a Facebook vanity name only to find out someone already took it? When I started Props Blog, I was lucky the name wasn’t taken anywhere.
Use NameChk to Help Protect and Build Your Brand
NameChk is an awesome utility that lets you check the availiblity of a username on well over 100 different social media, file sharing, and bookmarking sites.
Simply, type the name you want to check for, hit “Chk,” and NameChk will quickly list which sites the name is taken on and which sites it is still available.
It is important to make sure that you have your brand name locked up for several reasons. Having a consistent name across all networks and sites will make it easy for users to find you, identify you, and most importantly, remember you.
Also, the last thing you want is to work hard building your brand only to find out someone is tearing your brand down by impersonating you on another site. The easier way to prevent that from happening is stop it before it starts.
Don’t get stuck having to use off names like Problogger007 or JohnChowBrownCow, and use NameChk to lock up your brand name today. A little time could go a long way.
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- 7 Steps To Building A Following And Following The Right People On Twitter
- Don’t Judge A Blog By It’s Homepage: At Online Marketing Blog Content is King
Gabe | freebloghelp.com Says:
November 2nd, 2009 at 4:35 PM
Great tip on namechk. I’m going to have to add it to my to-do list for the week.
Blake Waddill Reply:
November 2nd, 2009 at 4:45 PM
I spent half my afternoon knocking out the first 40 of them. Some of them really don’t make much of a difference, but any bookmarking or social media I locked up right away. I have noticed that NameChk is slightly behind on updating though.. I’ve registered a few account that it hasn’t detected yet. I guess most people aren’t racing to get a single user name, so it isn’t a big deal to be updated in real time.
Harsh Agrawal Says:
November 2nd, 2009 at 5:06 PM
I believe this is the first thing which i do when ever I get a domain . I get all the imp account like twitter/Digg/Stumbleupon for my domain. Though I personally believe in making my self as brand rather than building any domain brand, but just for future security I tends to grab all the username associated with my domain on popular media sites..
Blake Waddill Reply:
November 2nd, 2009 at 5:43 PM
I agree. I think that branding yourself is definitely the best choice long term since it allows you to change niches without losing credibility, but for someone building their first blog, I think a regular brand name is stronger.
For example, Problogger is stronger than Darren Rowse, but both names are well known. Darren Rowse would have been hard to make famous without Problogger being well branded first.
Dana @ Online Knowledge Says:
November 2nd, 2009 at 9:08 PM
Branding our self is really important. Btw, what you think when hear dana? :D
zeesu Says:
November 2nd, 2009 at 11:46 PM
gr8 post.that is very true.branding is very imp.all said and done it take considerable time to build brand.even if you have all username on all social networking associated with your domain name.it may take few years when your website name is associated with niche you choose
Dave Doolin | Website In A Weekend Says:
November 3rd, 2009 at 12:14 AM
I have a very interesting story concerning branding, which I can’t really tell just yet. There’s a series of articles in it. Good ones, too.
Will need to sort out how I’m going to handle it first.
Blake Waddill Reply:
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:20 AM
I’ve always been curious about the name website-in-a-weekend.. I’d love to hear the story
Gabe | freebloghelp.com Reply:
November 3rd, 2009 at 1:26 PM
You guys are killing me. It’s almost a race to write about the next “in” topic.
Anyway, I have a three-part branding series that just started today.
Dave Doolin | Website In A Weekend Reply:
November 4th, 2009 at 12:21 AM
Gabe, memes erupt spontaneously. Einstein was lucky, he was first.
Himanshu Says:
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:26 AM
Hi Blake, another nice article from your side. Branding is the most important term when you run a blog. But I am not agree with you totally in this context. Remember Dailyblogtips, Quickonlinetips are a big name rather than its writers (though Daniel is very famous among bloggers).
I remember a person Zaibatsu who is a top Twitter user but I don’t know about his blog.
I think it doesn’t depend on the media from which we are pushing ourself to distribute content. It depend upon the hard work which we do to promote our brand.
I never digg, stumble or reddit any nice article by looking its username who submitted the article.I think domain name and Twitter profile name is the most influential things and which decides any brand. It perfect if we people are there with the same name.
Blake Waddill Reply:
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:41 AM
The Daily Tips pages (Daily Blog Tips, Daily Writing Tips, Daily Bits) are well branded and probably more well known than the name Daniel Scocco.
I spoke with Daniel briefly the other day, and he said he was trying to increase brand awareness of his name and put less emphasis on DBT.
I don’t think Zaibatsu has a blog. I think he’s 100% social media.
When I signed up for Digg, Stumble, Reddit, etc.. I looked for people I knew to add as friends since I figured they would like the same sorts of things I like.
I might not digg/stumble stuff because of who submitted it, but being able to find friends is easier when they use the same name across all media. It never hurts to have a good reputation on Stumble, Digg, or even Reddit.
John Samuel Says:
November 3rd, 2009 at 7:47 AM
It’s really important to grab hold your favourite username or brand
Tekshek Says:
November 4th, 2009 at 9:56 AM
Thanks for sharing this site. Here i want to mention another site http://knowem.com. Here you can check your username for over 340 sites