One of my projects for this summer is to put together a WordPress blog. This will be a professional/personal blog: It'll be a personal blog since it won't be sponsored by my (future) employer (whoever that turns out to be) and I won't be representing them, but I'll be discussing professional topics related to the field of technical communication. So I'm trying to come up with a name for my new blog. In doing so I'm considering several factors:
- The URL must be available. To simplify searching the blog title and the URL should match. When I know the name of a site I often type it into the address bar directly rather than search for it through a search engine. Using my name as the URL is definitely one way of identifying the site with me, but these days it's more common to tie the URL to the name of the site and identify yourself on your blog in other ways.
- The name should reflect what I'm talking about. This is tricky. I'm planning on talking about technical communication, but that encompasses a broad range of topics and I haven't narrowed it down to individual facets of the field yet. Which tells me I should probably think about this more before I start my blog, including coming up with a list of tags I intend to use.
- The name should reflect my personality. Personal branding is a big concept these days and this blog will become part of my personal brand. In my mind, how this works into the title is in what types of words I use. Does my title include an action verb? Alliteration? A made-up word? How I put the words I choose together can reflect a little about who I am.
- The name shouldn't be too long. One word probably isn't enough for me but 16 words is definitely too long. There's a happy medium out there, I just have to find it.
Well, it's not very creative, but peggyharvey.com appears to be available.
ReplyDeleteYou've probably thought of this already. But take a look at the blogs you read, think about which names you like and don't like, and ask yourself what each set of names has in common. That'll give you some clues.
ReplyDeleteI suggest not including the word "write" in the name. There's a plethora of blogs and sites by people in our field with that in it, so using it at this point may not help you stand out. Absolutely no offense intended to anyone who is already using the word.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't recommend using my blog as an example. I came up with the domain name before I knew what I wanted to do with it. You're in the opposite situation. Actually, the thing it may be a good example of is having a mascot. You may want to think of one and go from there. Jeanette Rogers's "black rabbit" of Black Rabbit Consulting comes to mind. Something catchy like that. Good luck!
Here's a few off the top of my head:
ReplyDelete1. Peggy Harvey's Good-Tyme Old-Fashioned Tech Blog
2. HottSexxyTechBlog (well, at least it'll get lots of hits...)
3. Happy Fun Blog or Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Blog
4. Google! (oh, wait...)
5. PegBlog, Peg-a-Blog, P-Blog, or P-Tech (or PB&J, although I have no idea why I thought of that. And yes, I know that you *hate* being called Peg - just roll with it here)
6. BippityBoppityBoo.tech.blogspot.com
7. Rikki Techy Timbo
Ok, I'm fresh outta ideas now...
Ok, maybe just one more...
ReplyDeleteTic Tech Toe!
:)
have you thought of the name yet? good luck!
ReplyDeleteHere's what I did: I used my name as the domain name, then gave my blog a title based on my initials. At this point, you really don't know what your niche will be. Quite unintentionally, I ended up focusing on writing and personality, so if I'd used a domain name like GrammarGuru.com (since grammar is what I originally intended to blog about), I'd have been out of luck. But I can easily change the blog title if I decide it's not relevant to what I'm blogging about anymore.
ReplyDeleteMy method was all wrong. I had bought a domain years ago on a whim, then when I wanted to start a new blog (a week or two ago), I just used what I already had.
ReplyDeleteIt's related to writing, but not tech comm or anything.