Creative Blog Title or No?

[Kelly Young]

What's best practice ... for an organization to have their name in their blog header (ie. FitCity Mom's Blog or IMA blog) or come up with something creative? Thoughts? Some names of blogs that you like/dislike? Trying to come up with a suggestion for a client. Thanks.

[Jillian Koeneman]

In my opinion unless their brand is super strong, I'd stick to something creative and catchy but also representative of the topics that will be discussed.

[Kelly Young]

This is for Women's Fund of Central Indiana (can just be Women's Fund). Their newsletter was named Women's Fund Focus, which started me thinking about the name for the blog. Would love any ideas.

[Tricia Meyer]

In this case, I think you definitely need the name in there. If the blog were just a general niche blog, I think you would want a creative name that people will remember but that will also help with search engine optimization. In this case, you need the SEO benefits of having that blog come up first when someone searches for the name "Women's Fund."

I have about 10 different blogs and most of them are creative names. But the best search optimization I get for the sites that mainly sell brand name merchandise are the ones with the brand names in the titles.

[Amy Lemen]

Hi Kelly,

I don't know if it is a best practice, but I do have the name of my business in my header -- but I also have a bit of creativity in my blog name, just to make it a bit more memorable. One thing that I found very helpful was the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog program. Day 1 is all about the 'elevator pitch' for a blog, and I used this to help me decide on my name. Here is the link to the lesson for Day 1. This might help inspire you. http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/04/06/write-an-elevator-pit...
Hope this helps!
Amy

[Kelly Young]

I will definitely use this. thanks for sending the link to a great article. what's your blog?

[Amy Lemen]

My blog is The ALL In One Marketing Greenhouse. www.allinonemarketing.wordpress.com

[Scott Howard]

I believe the name of the organization and the theme can be used together. For example I took my blog Collective Wisdom and renamed it ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom

[Kelly Young]

Perfect. Like the blog, by the way. Thanks for responding.

[Duke Snyder]

Kelley,
Am a broadcast journalist by trade with a fair amount of pr/advertising experience.
Though I have no definitive answer to your question a couple of thoughts come to mind on this.
(1) Basic internet Search Engine Optimization criteria stresses use of your keywords in everything you post and to be used rather liberally.
(2) Politician's credo..."I don't give a damn what you say about me just be sure to spell my name right so it's seen again and hopefully remembered!
Therefore, how important today is the "branding" of your name?

[Robby Slaughter]

I see two aspects to naming a blog: brand identity and findability.

It might seem clever to use a common phrase such as "The Pen is Mightier" for your blog, but that turns up 250,000 hits on Google.

Likewise, you could call your blog "Non-vacuous Erudition" (a phrase that apparently no one has ever used before), but that's difficult to spell and not easy to remember.

I blogged about naming blogs last year, when I relaunched "Around the Web" (a terrible name) as "Turning Left Against Traffic"

http://www.robbyslaughter.com/blog/?2008-02-11

[Rodger D. Johnson]

Naming a blog? That's a great question. And I've writen widely about naming conventions on my blog. It's simple, really. You want to make people SMILE.

Naming your blog is all about branding. It's an extention of your brand (personal or otherwise) and if people are smiling after they learn of your brand (blog name), they'll be more likely to remember it. We more readily remember things that make us smile.