Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Series for New Bloggers: Part 3

In the last part of our series I introduced four possible blogging platforms. Now it's time to actually start a blog!

The first step is to decide on a name for your blog. Finding the perfect name doesn't happen right away, and sometimes it doesn't happen until you've been blogging for months! Unfortunately, while you can change the name of your blog at any time, you cannot change the URL, which means you cannot change the address you type into the search bar.

For instance, if you title your blog "Bowling Tips", the blog URL or address will be www.bowlingtips.blogspot.com. Then after several months you realize you don't know very much about bowling and want to change the title to "Baseball tips", you can do that, but while the title on your blog reflects the change, the blog URL or address will not and will remain www.bowlingtips.blogstop.com, which is confusing to readers looking for baseball tips.

This week's assignment, if you will, is to think about a name, so that next week we can create a new blog!

In the meantime, I'm sure our other members and other bloggers have some tips to share about naming your blog that they'd like to share in the comments section.

My personal suggestion is to create a blog with your name as the URL address and try out different titles, especially if you are a writer who blogs and your name is your brand. This is based on something I read once, but I can't find the link to the article, go figure!

So, what's your advice to new bloggers on naming their blog?


3 comments:

  1. That's a good tip to start a blog with your name in the URL. Generally that doesn't change. (Although I may have to change mine if I finally decide to publish under a different, less common name) lol.

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  2. I decided to name my URL for what the blog was about, writing. So my blog is "The Write Soil" and my URL is http://thewritesoil.blogspot.com.

    Tip: Consider the length of your URL for those typing it in. Shorter is better. Here are two examples:
    http://overthehillandlovingit.blogspot.com
    vs.
    http://oldfogey.blogspot.com

    Tip: Pick a URL that you can live with for the long haul.

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  3. Since my blog IS my author website, I did select my name for the address. A search for my name turns it up immediately. It's also the title of my blog. No way someone is missing it!

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