Branding your Username

August 1st, 2007 by Connie

In the first post of this series I talked about the importance of creating a brand that includes a descriptive name for your site & a distinctive logo. The following can apply to branding your website/online business & even your own personal branding.

In the first post I mentioned repetition & today we’re going to put that into action. Here’s the key: think of all the ways you can repeat your website’s name or your username. Let me help you count thy ways!

Forum Usernames – whether it’s in the forum on your site or at other forums, create a username that reinforces your website. It took us a bit to realize how valuable this is, but I now use Connie@DigiScrapInfo.com That reinforces my name as well as our site.

Signatures are also a great place to include your site name and also a link if it’s allowed.

*tip* If you want to change your username at a forum, simply send a kindly request to the site admin.

Email Address – web hosting generally offers email with the suffix of your domain name. We were using our first names @ digiscrapinfo.com, but we found that it was being considered as spam by aol & others (to the point where we weren’t sure if the mail was getting thru).

*tip* create a google mail account – Google mail isn’t generally viewed as spam. After I read James Key Lim’s blog post on this, I realized that setting up an email address of DigiScrapInfo@gmail.com solved our problem of being viewed as spam. If you need a gmail invite, send us an email.

*tip* Use Thunderbird to read your google mail. It’s very easy to set up now.

• Download Thunderbird – it’s free
• Under File | New | Account then choose Gmail
• Log into the online Gmail account & click on Settings | Forwarding & POP
• for POP downloading in #1 click on 1 – Enable POP

Social Networking sites – Again, using your username that represents your site/brand will help establish your online persona. James Key Lim lists a number of social networking sites.

As you interact online and become more involved your username will be repeated, reinforced & reiterated building brand. In what ways do you reinforce your username?