You may have noticed that my posts now say TorontoCarol rather than Mrs C. I've been trying to brand myself for awhile now, and other than becoming confused about who I am, I haven't done well.
I suppose if I had only one interest and had a clear focus right from the beginning, I wouldn't have this problem. But when I started online, I had a blog about Canada, a blog about computers, a blog about myself and on and on. See where I'm going with this?
I started off calling myself TorontoCarol and that's how I'm known on the Internet marketing forums. After all, I'm a native Torontonian and Carol is a very common name otherwise. Even Carol Bremner is owned by people I've found out about online from England and Australia (none of them related and one I wouldn't want to be mistaken for). So TorontoCarol was fine for the forums and worked well with my Canada blog.
But I have a company blog too. TorontoCarol doesn't sound very professional. There I just go by my full name, common or not.
Then there's the computer blog. Toronto has nothing to do with computers, so I started using Mrs C. Then I started blogging about grandparenting at my supergramma blog and created my first product for grandparents. So Supergramma was a good name there.
By this point, I can hardly keep track of who I am. Can you imagine what will happen in the future when my memory decides to work part-time? I'll have to pin a badge on myself so I remember my name.
Obviously, I have to make a decision before I have more names than a cat has kittens. I found out about a site called namecheck where I could go and enter the name or names I want to brand and see in what 2.0 sites the name is being used already. This was a big help.
As a result, I found that my real name was in use at a few sites. Mrs C was being used all over the net, so that was definitely out. TorontoCarol I had the corner on, but like I said, it wasn't right for the grandparenting market I'm trying to do. Gramma C was as popular as Mrs C and even SuperGramma was being used on eBay, Twitter, and Ning.
I had to make a decision. Who am I? I decided on Supergramma C and set up an account on Twitter, eBay, and youtube to start with. I'll try to do a few at a time until I corner the market on the name.
So there you have it. The long, drawn-out explanation of why I am signing these posts as TorontoCarol. What are your thoughts on branding? Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? Does it really matter?
I suppose if I had only one interest and had a clear focus right from the beginning, I wouldn't have this problem. But when I started online, I had a blog about Canada, a blog about computers, a blog about myself and on and on. See where I'm going with this?
I started off calling myself TorontoCarol and that's how I'm known on the Internet marketing forums. After all, I'm a native Torontonian and Carol is a very common name otherwise. Even Carol Bremner is owned by people I've found out about online from England and Australia (none of them related and one I wouldn't want to be mistaken for). So TorontoCarol was fine for the forums and worked well with my Canada blog.
But I have a company blog too. TorontoCarol doesn't sound very professional. There I just go by my full name, common or not.
Then there's the computer blog. Toronto has nothing to do with computers, so I started using Mrs C. Then I started blogging about grandparenting at my supergramma blog and created my first product for grandparents. So Supergramma was a good name there.
By this point, I can hardly keep track of who I am. Can you imagine what will happen in the future when my memory decides to work part-time? I'll have to pin a badge on myself so I remember my name.
Obviously, I have to make a decision before I have more names than a cat has kittens. I found out about a site called namecheck where I could go and enter the name or names I want to brand and see in what 2.0 sites the name is being used already. This was a big help.
As a result, I found that my real name was in use at a few sites. Mrs C was being used all over the net, so that was definitely out. TorontoCarol I had the corner on, but like I said, it wasn't right for the grandparenting market I'm trying to do. Gramma C was as popular as Mrs C and even SuperGramma was being used on eBay, Twitter, and Ning.
I had to make a decision. Who am I? I decided on Supergramma C and set up an account on Twitter, eBay, and youtube to start with. I'll try to do a few at a time until I corner the market on the name.
So there you have it. The long, drawn-out explanation of why I am signing these posts as TorontoCarol. What are your thoughts on branding? Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? Does it really matter?
You can always try something abbreviated like SGC or GrandmaC or similar. Long names can have their problems.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tip Kris. You're right, long names can have problems. Since a Twitter name counts as part of the total number of Twitter characters, it wouldn't leave much room for comments.
ReplyDelete