Finding a Domain name for your Blog

If you have decided to set up a Business Blog which will be separate to your main company website, then part of your planning process will be to select and buy a domain name for it.

In some cases, this is a very simple process but if you are in any way unsure, then there are a number of different elements that you should consider. Having a suitable domain name is important when it comes to branding and developing both reputation and credibility, whether it is dealing with a company, sector, service, product or individual niche.

So, what elements should you bear in mind when picking a domain name?

• Subject matter of the blog: to have a descriptive domain name for your blog will make it all the more memorable for those people reading it and also more memorable when they want to recommend it!
• Branding elements for your business: you may wish to have a branding element incorporated into it as a special attribute of some sort.
• SEO elements: from a Search Engine Optimisation point of view, the domain name is an important element and so will ideally contain the primary keyword or keywords for the blog
• Supporting the title of your blog: where possible either make it the same or incorporate the title of your blog in the domain name which will help recognition;
• Availability: it may sound obvious but do check that the domain name is available early in the process. There is no point agonising for days over the perfect domain name only to find that it isn’t available anyway!
• Length of domain name: while it is good to have a descriptive name, you should avoid one which is too long and also ideally avoid one with words separated with lots of hyphens which now has “spammy” overtones – something you want to avoid for your business
• Top Level Domain: whether it should be a .com, .co.uk, .net etc. As with a normal website, it may well be sensible to cover all bases and take the main ones that are available and so safeguard it from a branding perspective

You may or may not be able to get a suitable mix of these elements and generally you will need to find a compromise which combines the points which are most important to you. Try to base these on the aims of your blog and your target audience which are two of the key elements you should be looking at during the planning process before setting up a business blog.

Feedburner: making RSS work for you

In my post about Technorati last week called Using Technorati to research your future Blog or your Market, I mentioned that there were two main blog site recommendations for anyone intending to use blogs. The second of these is Feedburner which provides some excellent easy to use tools that all bloggers can benefit from, right from the start.

Using your RSS feed is particularly important as the role and the profile of RSS is going to grow enormously over the coming few months particularly when Microsoft releases the version 7 of its Internet Explorer which will include an RSS reader and so will make it quick and simple for anyone to save and use RSS feeds to keep up to date with news and information.

Feedburner offers a number of paid services which you can progress on to as the need arises, but their free services are well worth taking the time to examine and incorporate in your Blog. There are ones which I particularly recommend because I feel that they help in utilising and developing your Blog’s RSS Feed in important ways.

The elements I would highlight are:

Subscriber information: by channeling your RSS Feed subscriptions through Feedburner, you can obtain additional information about those subscribing. Specifically, it allows you to identify the number of people that are actively subscribed to your feed, as well as providing information on the type of reader they are using and the articles that have been visited directly from the feed itself.

User friendly RSS feed: through Feedburner, you can make certain changes to the look and feel of your RSS feed which will help personalise them and use them more fully to market your business. These include giving you the opportunity to add your logo, which in itself reinforces the branding aspect, and changing the description of the feed. To do this directly to the feed yourself requires additional technical knowledge, but Feedburner makes it simple for everyone as is well worth doing.

Feed Reader Chicklets: the chicklets are the little RSS logos with “Newsgator”, “Bloglines”, “My Yahoo” etc which appear on many blogs. Feedburner provides the code and images required to create these quickly and, while not necessary to allow people to use your feed, any method such as this which increases the visibility of your feed on your Blog can only be beneficial to your promotional activities.

RSS Feed via email: for those people who don’t use RSS readers but still want to know when you have updated your blog, there is the option of an email subscription service. Feedburner provides you with the code to create a basic sign up form on your blog and then visitors can use to subscribe to receiving your blog updates automatically via email. A similar service is provided by Feedblitz.

Headline Animator: this is a small image using an animated gif file, which automatically displays the titles of the last 5 posts from your Blog and allows people to click through a sign up for the feed. It appears in the form of a box (2 formats available) which can be used either in emails or perhaps in online forums etc.

PingShot: this is an ideal companion to the concept of “Post and Ping”, where PingShot notifies a number of servers at once that you have published new content on your Blog . No real difference from the other services available at Pingomatic and Pingoat (indeed it works through Pingomatic) but a good extra service.

How do you do this? Well, just head along to the Feedburner site, sign up for an account and then “burn” a Feed using your current feed, follow the instructions and away you go! There are some useful services there and with RSS destined to become more widespread as the year progresses, set up in the best way you can in readiness.

Your Profile and contact details

Business Blogs as well as personal blogs, have a personal side to them which, in part, differentiates them from being just another website full of product information and advertising speak. That’s a key part of why they work so well in communicating ideas and opinions, and in gaining positive reactions.

So make sure that you provide your readers with a clear way of finding out about the person who is writing the blog and who they are going to be communicating with. Always remember to put up a profile up on your Business Blog and also a way for your readers to get in touch with you.

If you prefer to include your details as part of your sidebar then keep it short and sweet – there’s lots more information that you also want to be highly visible there. I personally prefer a link through to a separate page where you have a little more space to include whatever details seem appropriate to you.

Some profiles will focus on past work and experience ( no CVS though, please), others will have more of a current focus and outline future plans. What ever you put there, try to make it personal though and, for extra impact, put up a picture as well. Remember that from a networking perspective, your Business Blog acts as the hub at the centre of that network – people are therefore going to be interested in the “real you” and what makes you tick so give them some insights into the person behind the Blog.

You also want people to be able to contact you. They can do this by posting comments on your blog, but they may also want to get in contact with you directly. So, make sure that you also have your contact details on your blog, either as part of your profile or in a separate section – or both! There’s nothing more frustrating than finding a really interesting blog and wanting to get in touch with the author but not being able to do so.

Key tip: make sure that your profile and your contact details are clearly visible on your Blog and help start that conversation!

Technorati Profile