I’m trying to expand my repertoire by writing articles. This one sort of hit me in the head the other day, and I thought I’d share.
One of the more important aspects of marketing yourself and your business is “branding.” Brands are easy to remember and stand out in your mind. If they do that, they have succeeded in accomplishing a good step in marketing: developing and maintaining a brand.
For the purposes of this article, we will be talking in terms of web presence. Anyone who tries to sell you SEO “tips,” can promise to get you at the top of Google searches for a hefty cost, or anything like that, are selling you crap. I’m just being honest.
There is no easy way to establish a web presence. If you want something, you have to work for it. You have to go out there and do a bit of legwork. But trust that if you do the right things and keep up with marketing practices (which change in the ever changing atmosphere of the Internet), you will work.
The best way to brand something online is by starting simple: knowing how to use social networking sites. You cannot ignore the potential impact that social networking can have on your online identity. These are tools that you must embrace. It is a fearsome thought if you are a Luddite but it’s much easier than you think. Some of the more popular social networking sites out there are ones you may have heard of: BlogSpot, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and LiveJournal. These are not the only ones; there are often social networks on Ning that you can participate in that are relevant to your field or talent.
The second step is buying your own domain. By purchasing a domain, you can control what information is out there about you and your style. Try and choose one that is easy to remember. There used to be the 8-letter rule, where your domain name couldn’t be longer than 8 characters because no one would remember. Or that your site has to be a .com. But this is no longer true. It just has to be catchy.
I highly recommend NameCheap (not an affiliate link) to purchase your domain. There are many domain registrars out there (GoDaddy, Network Solutions, eNom, and so on). I personally use NameCheap. Their pricing scheme is decent, and their website is incredibly easy to use.
The third step is assuming that you will concurrently buy web hosting for your domain. If you are using cPanel, you can create a subdomain using this tutorial. As noted on the tutorial, you can always go back and Disable Subdomain Redirection within cPanel if necessary. This step will need to be modified, depending on what your host is using as a hosting platform.
The fourth step is redirecting popular social networks into easy to remember URLs. If you want people to remember your domain name – and your business – create subdomains pointing to your social network’s profile: myspace.yoursite.com, facebook.yoursite.com, twitter.yoursite.com, tumblr.yoursite.com, etc.
Anytime anyone access myspace.yoursite.com, it’ll get redirected to your MySpace profile, without them having to remember a complicated MySpace URL. This is especially true for pages on Facebook, as their page URLs are incredibly long. I know most of the social networking sites I’ve mentioned do offer the ability – or already have – short and easy to remember web addresses.
But that’s not the point. The purpose of this article is introduce you to a method of branding that is easy on you and your future clients.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to comment.
The less that can be said about me, the better.
