Own Your Brand in Seven Steps

Filed in archive Marketing on June 4, 2010

Have you purchased your name as a URL address yet? We buy the address for our company and our blog and maybe even a key phrase or two, but have you actually bought your name?

I learned this lesson recently when I took inventory of all of the URL addresses I'd purchased - those that I planned to do something with someday.

Do you have any of those?

I have a website and a couple blogs and a few landing pages - one for products and one for services and one for speaking and a few just cuz.

When someone asks me for my web address - I'm torn as to which one to share. Finally a business associate asked: do you own your name?

I didn't. With a last name like Brown, I figured it wasn't available. Luckily, because of my common last name I had started using my maiden name as a middle name 20 years ago and the whole name - my identity - my brand - was available.

So here's how I created one place on the web for all of my accounts so I could OWN MY BRAND:

1. Using Wordpress.com for a free blog platform and using WooThemes, I created a blog/landing page.
2. I saved screen prints or logo images of each of my sites and uploaded them to the media library of the new blog
3. Under each image I included a one line description or call to action so visitors would know at a glance what they'd find at that site.
4. I linked each picture to the URL address of the actual website or blog.
5. In the Blog Roll I repeated each of the websites.
6. Since I also sell products, I uploaded images of each product to put in the side bar with a link to the page where you could make a purchase.
7. I wrote a blog post explaining the purpose of the site and will return to update with general information in the future.

I'll admit - it took a little longer than I would have liked - but it was free and now I have a single spot to refer visitors. Of course, I can always hand pick a site or blog based on their interest, but this main site shows my brand in one location all under my name.

Check it out: Deborah Chaddock Brown.

Bottom line - company names change but our name always stays the same. Why not consider creating a landing page with your name as the address so you have one central location to store all of your information.