I started my blog on November 7th 2007 after I had spent a lot of time thinking of a brandable name. I had finally decided to go with “Mixed Market Arts,” which was a play-on-words of Mixed Martial Arts, a popular sport in which fighters use a mixture of different types of martial arts. I wanted my marketing blog to share a mixture of internet marketing techniques, thus Mixed MARKET Arts.
In theory, it sounded like a hugely brandable name. In reality, the branding backfired.
There were multiple big problems with the branding of my blog’s name. The main one was that when people looked at it for the first time, most had an internal feeling that it was a blog about martial arts (thus building relevant subscribers took an extra step as those who hate martial arts didn’t visit the site as often). There was also the problem of the phrase “mixed martial arts” being branded into everyones head that when I spoke with people at conferences, even my closest business partners unintentionally said “mixed martial arts” out loud when they were referring to my blog.
At the end of the day, my superb idea to build a brand around the mixture of internet marketing techniques backfired and forced me to switch my blog’s name. Personally, I switched it to CollinLaHay.com because I plan on selling services and product launches in the near future that I can attach my name too, and because I never plan to sell my blog.
Long story short, there is a lot of branding required if you want to build a long term blog. The biggest lesson I learned is that it is incredibly different to compete against a brand name that is already fused into everyones head (mixed martial arts).
Now that I am branding my name rather than Mixed Market Arts, I can get a lot more personal in my posts. Every single reader of mine now knows my name, and it will build my authority when I launch products and companies in the next few years.
A brand is one of the most overlooked portions of a website, but is one of the most important. Millions of people every day visit Google.com, and not SearchEngine.com because Google has branded themselves as the authority.
Branding your website or blog brings a lot of good ideals to your blog. Your traffic will increase as people can remember your URL. They will be more inclined to stay, read, and buy your products because you have built a trust with them. My largest clients have come to me because I have built trust with them on my blog. If I had not built a brand with my blog, there would be nothing separating me from the other thousands of link building / search engine optimizers on the web, and my clients would have gone elsewhere.
I cannot stress enough how big the impact a brand has on the web. I highly recommend you take a look at your own site, and see how you can improve your blogs brand.
If you have any additional branding tips, please continue the conversation in the comments.
I initially wanted to use my name, but my last name is too damn long and people would have a hard time pronouncing it right. I came up with and registered 5 other domains before finally settling with my current one.
Yap, I also prefer to use my own name in my blog. The first consideration is it will be more personal. So, I can write my own post in a simple language. Meanwhile, the reader will give us feedback as they talk to us directly. This helps us to get closer with our readers.
One of the main reasons I used my personal name is because I have no intentions of selling my blog. I had a half dozen readers ask me if I was ever going to sell Mixed Market Arts (as well as dozens more when I announced the URL change). If you ever plan to sell your blog, do not use your actual name as nobody in their right mind would buy collinlahay.com if their name isn't Collin LaHay.
@Collin Actually there are people that woud buy a blog with someone elses name as the domain if the blog is successful and has readership, they could also just do a re-direct of the domain name as well if they are going to stick with the same topics
This is true, however your chances of selling a blog go down if it is personally catered to you. A well established name that is well branded loses part of its equity if it is redirected to a fresh domain, as it will take that domain time to build up to the brand of the older one.
That was my problem – selling the blog. I always had it in the back of my mind that if I got the right price, I would sell the blog, and who wants to buy a blog with my name as the domain?
A good story and one which I think will help a lot of bloggers.
I think one thing you could have done is sell the blog and start afresh with your own domain name. Obviously this means that you would lose the traffic you established but if you got a good price that money could have been spent on advertising your new blog with some money left over.
Also, I have actually seen a few blogs which were using a personal domain name sell on sitepoint – crazy!
I'm surprised that the term mixed martial arts, would have a hard time catching on, however I still feel that you should have put created a different blog for your name and kept the traffic/subscribers that you already have to more effectively monetize that targeted traffic.
Also keep in mind that branding takes time.