Tips for brainstorming for a brand

If there’s one thing I’ve really gotten wrong in the past, it’s registering domains on a keyword basis.

I don’t mean anything obviously spammy, and I’ve only ever registered a single domain with more than one hyphen in it.

But otherwise, while the domains have been good for getting a keyword in there, they really suck as potential brands.

This leaves me with an inventory of long-regsistered domain names - some with no website, others with a partial, experimental, or somewhat developed content website - which I will have difficulty branding.

In one regard, it’s wasted inventory - whenever you register a domain name, you should always stick a couple of pages on there and point a couple of basis links in, so that even if you end up not developing it for a few years, it at least has a search history on Google - making it much more valuable, and leveragable, as an asset for further development.

The worst part of it, though, is the poor attention to branding at the beginning.

I could redirect those sites which are developed to some degree onto brandable domains - but the big sin is that when I was registering these domains 2-3 years ago, there were more brandable options than exist today.

Finding a way to create a new brand isn’t easy, but I’ve been looking at a number of verticals and looking at how other websites have branded themselves.

That way, when I look to make new domain purchases now, I can bear branding potential much more at the fore of my concerns.

Anyway - your website/business is probably based around a vertical or niche which can be resolved to a single keyword.

To consider branding options, look for variants of that keyword, and consider adding any of the following as a suffix:

-box
-center/centre
-com
-content
-control
-daily
-digest
-expert
-forum(s)
-galaxy
-giant
-group
-guide
-guys
-help
-hookup
-hub
-index
-industry
-info
-land
-life
-lounge
-mag
-magazine
-max
-media
-net
-network
-news
-now
-online
-org
-papers
-planet
-port
-preview
-primer
-pro
-(region) [ie, uk]
-report
-reports(s)
-resource
-review
-site
-spy
-support
-talk
-time
-tips
-tx
-watch
-wave
-web
-week
-wire
-workshop
-world

You can opt for a hyphenated or non-hyphenated form - personally I would opt to avoid hyphens where possible due to spam associations, and if you’re looking to create a brand you don’t want to invite any potential negative associations from the off.

Additionally, some people may remember your domain name without the hyphen - and if that’s another site and or company, you’ve just created branding confusion (I made this big mistake with comparative-religion.com - an interfaith site promoting understanding of religions. Miss out the hyphen and you end up on a Christian evangelical site. Bad branding karma!).

While starting with a keyword of some kind as the first part of your brand name, some sites have been more adventurous and placed a prefix at the front of their keyword.

For example:

daily-
ezi-
open-
planet-
(proper name)- [ie, toms-]
pure-
real-
the-
top-
total-
what-
world-

Whichever method you do, try to plan ahead and don’t rush into decisions you can find yourself regretting and wanting to reverse at a later date (like me).

Instead, determine your goals - theoretical, practical, actual - and brand yourself around those. That should give you an idea of how you will need to brand yourself.

Of course, you don’t have to brand yourself with a keyword anywhere in your domain - you can attempt to be lateral, or simply get lazy and make up some stupid nonesense keyword as is the vogue with Web 2.0 companies (or my own Platinax - I now wish I’d branded on a business keyword).

Whatever you go for, look to protect your branding investment by registering appropriate domain extensions.

A UK site/company will usually need the .co.uk, but you should take great care with national domains that your branding won’t be eclipsed by a larger .com. If you can get the .com AND .co.uk (or other relevant national TLD) then your branding potential is great.

Otherwise, you could face a serious issue of branding confusion - you must stand out, be original, and not be easily confused with any other similar domain name.

In fact, register a hyphened form of the national TLD & .com to ensure you can protect your brand against opportunists.

If you’re really serious, you can go for .net, .org, and www[yourdomainname] as domains to help further protect your brand - though .net and .org are generally seen as weak branding platforms.

Anyway, hopefully you’ll find the list above useful. I certainly wish I had something like that to reference a few years back. Maybe then I would be left feeling some of my domains are left wanting for brand development.

After all, on a crowded internet, having a unique and memorable identity has to be a core marketing concern in my opinion.