Blog Names and Branding
When you started blogging, how much thought did you put into choosing the name you would blog under?
You may have spent some time choosing a title for your blog and a domain name if you’ve registered your own. But what about your name on the blog?
Anonymity?
Some people choose to blog with their own name. Maybe your blog is part of your business or adds to a professional reputation you’re building up online. Many personal bloggers, though, choose to blog under a pseudonym.
There are good reasons to blog anonymously, many related to privacy issues. Not everyone wants to be easily identifiable on their blog, and it’s never a good idea to post lots of personal details like birthdates, addresses or phone numbers on the web. These key pieces of information could be used to steal your identity.
You might be worried that a future employer could search for your name and make decisions on whether to employ you and there’s been several high profile cases where bloggers have been fired for blogging about their employer.
How Blogging and Social Networking Can Impact Your Job Search
How to Blog Safely About Work (or Anything Else)
You might also want to protect the privacy of others you mention in your blog, like family and friends. Even if you use pseudonyms for your “characters”, if you are identifiable, they might be too.
In a recent thread at the Aussie Bloggers Forum, members shared their views on whether to blog anonymously or under your own name.
Related Articles on whether to blog anonymously
Disclosure and Commitment
Employers and Blogging
The True Consequences of Blogging Anonymously
How to choose a Pseudonym
If you do decide to blog anonymously, the next question is how do you choose a pseudonym? You’ll probably want to choose something that’s personal and unique, not a name that every second blog you read has. Just like in real life, your blog name is part of your identity. It’s how you will be recognised not only on your blog but in your comments on other people’s blogs, in forums and in the many services you might sign up for like Stumbleupon, Entrecard, Bumpzee and Technorati.
When you do choose your blog name, consistency is key! Remember that your online identity is sum of all the places you visit online not just your own blog.
Snoskred recently commented in a thread on the Aussie Blogger’s Forum about how to choose a blog name:
Find a unique nickname for yourself, and use it everywhere.
If you search for Snoskred, you’ll find the majority of the results lead back to me. If you choose to blog as “Mary” there’s already thousands of search results there for that name and none of them lead to you. I don’t recommend using your real name on the internet at all, ever.Places you can find unique names -
The Baby Name Network has a list of baby names by country origin which is a great resource to begin with. (I especially like the Aboriginal baby names, I’ve used them for other usernames around the place)Different languages - Choose a word that you like, and then see if you can find out what that word translates to in other languages - that’s how I got my name. I actually picked mine out from here - Norwegian-American Dictionary.
Before you make a final decision on the name -
Search for it on the search engines and see what comes up - are other people using that name? If yes, it will get very annoying fast when you keep getting Google Alerts for that other person. Trust me.Do it right the first time
- it is very difficult to change your name later on down the track, and you can’t get people to change their links to you - a *small* amount of people who linked to you will change the links, but the rest won’t and you will find it very frustrating.
As Snoskred points out, it’s important to do your homework before committing to your blog name. Make sure you’re happy with it, because changing it down the track could cause a few headaches.
But, if you’re anything like me, when you first started your blog, you didn’t realise any of this would be an issue. You may have wondered whether you would even stick at it for long. And you probably never thought that the name you chose could become your brand. In hindsight, I wish I had chosen something a little more exciting or exotic than “A Roaming Aussie Mum” for my blog title and I thought about changing the name when I moved my blog to a self-hosted domain. My blog name, Guera (pronounced “where-a”) was chosen on a whim – it means “blondie” in Spanish and is a name I get called often by Mexicans.
I realised though, that the identity I had built up in the few months I had been blogging would be lost if I changed my name. It would be like starting all over again. Instead I decided to make the name my brand. I don’t mean in the sense that I have something to sell, but that everything I do on the web adds to my online commodity – me. People recognise me as Guera wherever they see me - on the Aussie Bloggers forum, on another blog, on MyBlogLog, etc. And the Roaming Aussie part of my title might not be very exciting, but it’s a brand I can build upon too. If I ever find the time to launch the other blogs I have in the pipeline, you’ll see they also have a Roaming Aussie theme. 
One of the founding moderators of the Aussie Bloggers Forum is a good example of how to build on a blog name as a brand. Lightening chose her blog name and started her blog Lightening Online (read why she chose the name Lightening here). When she decided to start a few new blogs, she built on the reputation she had cultivated online under the name Lightening and created Lightening’s Blogworld and Lightening’s Garden. It’s obvious they are connected and the new blogs build on her Lightening “brand” and add to her online reputation. Her readers get a wonderful chance to know more about her and different sides to the Lightening persona.
So, even if you’re a personal blogger and blogging might just be a hobby for you, it’s worth considering the blog name you choose and the brand you are creating.
What about you? How did you choose your Blog title and name? Have you built on your brand?
I chose Frogdancer as my online name because it sounded funny. (Just how would a frog dance, anyway?)
[...] you probably already read the Aussie Bloggers Blog, but in case you don’t, my guest post on Blog Names and Branding is up there [...]
What cracks me up is that I’m so used to my online persona that I find I have to stop and think when sending an email to someone that knows me by my given name rather than my online name.
Frogdancer - it’s a great name you chose! Very distinctive and the image of a frog dancing always makes me laugh.
Lightening - I do the same thing. I’m always emailing my Mum and have to remember not to refer to the kids as Guerita and Chiq!
I picked KirstenL4W because I couldn’t come up with anything and putting a number in the middle was found to be a great way to get the user name I wanted. I’m the only one of me out there!
My blog’s name — All About Me - And Then Some — was picked because I really stink at coming up with clever taglines, and that is what my blog is about. Turns out that was a good move too, because even though others have similar blog names, it gets me towards the top of the list of most blogrolls, since they tend to be alphabetical. That right there is plenty to make me not want to change it.
I am Widdle Shamrock because I am of Irish descent, and I have a tattoo of a shamrock.
We often say widdle here instead of little, so widdle shamrock was born.
My blog’s name is ‘The musings of a green knee capping lephrechaun. The blog is a place for my thoughts or musings, and the rest are Irish references and the fact that I offer to knee cap anyone that upset my friends. (Bettina offers the axe)
While I do blog under the pseudonym Adam Mordo, it’s common knowledge that I am in fact Peter Juan. I use my real name for my blog’s domain name as well. I did so because I felt that I could connect more to the general public as myself than as an online character. It also makes it easier to transition from online to real life interaction which is frequent because we love blog meets here on my side of the globe. My blog title, “Walrus”, was chosen because of my affinity to water.
I deal with matters of privacy and security by using my i.ph blog’s” deeply granular privacy setting to select which posts can be seen by whom. Because I can give access permissions even to people who do not have i.ph blogs, I can actually select my audience. My blog therefore has several faces, one that the general reading public sees, one that only my friends can see, a serious one that only my workmates see, even a sappy one which only my wife can access. I like how I can represent myself online as myself and not have to worry about safety or privacy.
Before I started my blog I had a long search for a name. I came up with a few gems, but apparently they were gems because they were close to what other people already had - and another part of building a “brand” is differentiation. It took me a long time to find a name that I was happy with and the actual name of my blog is from a quote that I found. I did explain it all in my first post,but should maybe look at incorporating some of it in my About page so its easy to find.
I like knowing how people come up with their blog names, it adds to the personality of it and I guess lets the rest of us know a bit more about the blogger.
I didn’t think much of it … but was taken by a song and the fact that my oldest played the drums. I wish I had done a lot of things differently too now.
I wish The Aussie Bloggers Forum was around then to advise me.
I didn’t know how to say your name …LOL I do now.
Hmmm I can’t remember what came first…. redsultana is a combination of me and my husband’s names … well the meaning of them and was originally for our home website… Cellobella is the handle I’ve used since I needed a handle…
So now it’s Cellobella’s Blog on Redsultana… which isn’t perfect but hey life is organic and evolves right?
CB
Kirsten - Good point about alphabetical listings. I inadvertently end up up near the top too with “A Roaming Aussie Mum”
Widdle Shamrock - very distinctive name and I love the name of your blog. Might not fit on a blogroll though!
Gemisht - you’re probably one of the few people who actually thought properly about the name before starting your blog. It’s good that you came up with something no-one else is using. We’ll never confuse you with anyone else!
Trish - me too! Wish I’d actually done some research before diving in to it too.
Cellobella - Absolutely, the process is organic. Most of us don’t have the perfect well thought out start to blogging, but once you “own” the name it takes on a life of its own. Everyone knows the name Cellobella now!
I thought lots about trying to give my kids some anonymity on the blog, but probably didn’t think too much about having a creative or exotic blog name; wish I did. But how exotic can a blog with a planning focus be!!!!!
Mine was accidental actually. Byootaful is a nickname that my boyfriend gave me, so I figured I would just use “A Byootaful Life”. It was funny because Phill and I were putting my blog together and when we got to the “blog name” question, we just didn’t think hard about it and put that in. And of course, it’s stuck. I don’t mind it because I would find it too hard to think of something else, but if I could go and do it again, it might change it.
I use “Katie”. It’s not my real name, but similar, and it’s quite common. Phill is my boyfriend’s real name and Puddy is my cat’s real name. That’s as real as I get on my blog.
I was sitting down in front of the Blogger blog startup screen and it asked me for a name for my blog and it pretty much evolved there and then. Not too much thought and I am a bit stuck with it. I wanted something to associate geographically, something environmental, which is the field I work in, something scottish (coulda been haggis) and something to tie it all together, since I knew it would not be a focussed or niche blog. In fact I had no idea what a niche blog was and was really writing for myself and had no perception of whether anyone was reading.
The green porridge actually has a humorous family connection because my brother, when he was a game keeper in Tomintoul, served it up to 10 very hung over grouse beaters on their last morning of work after keeping them up till 4am. I always thought that was very mean and very funny.
In the end the blog title ranks fairly highly for Adelaide and very highly for Adelaide and Green and Adelaide and Cafe and Adelaide and Porridge. Not sure how useful that is, but you have to get your readers any way you can.
I use clutterbells for my user name. Not too many of those that are not associated with me on Google. One of our friends came up with this as a cojoined surname for our family. My wife is Clutterbuck and I am Campbell. Campbuck just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
l
Planning Queen - your name is perfect for your blog. I don’t think every blog needs an exotic name - a name that describes the blog well is pretty good in my book.
Katie - A Byootaful Life is such a cute name and I love hearing the stories behind them.
Colin - I’ve been wondering where your blog title and name came from. Great story! My husband and I also use a similar combined surnames title for our family blog and email etc.