Should I name my blog to myself or the topic it's about?
Hey bloggers, do you name your blog to yourself or what it's about? And why?
For example, my name is Minh-Phuc Tran, I'm writing about nomad life, should I name the blog "Minh-Phuc Tran" or "NomadVida"?
Some pros and cons I thought of
Name to the blogger's name
- Pros: Tie directly to your personal brand, which has an advantage when you have a good personal brand.
- Cons: People often have to idolize you before they decide to subscribe, they don't subscribe just because of the content.
Name to the topic
- Pros: Better SEO. People may find and subscribe if your blog is about what they're looking for, they often don't care a lot about who's behind.
- Cons: Lifestyle blog & vlog may not work as well as a personal brand.
As for the name, NomadVida rings louder.
As for the content, they'll subscribe if it's good. They'll read beyond the first sentence if it's good. Write to please yourself. To entertain yourself. To enlighten yourself.
Make it whatever you want to make it, but please, make it good!
I named my blog Penguin Latte because I had no idea what I'd write about. Turns out I like to write about a lot of stuff. Creativity, writing itself, art, music, the future of work, personal branding, living the best life possible...if I had named myself "Paul's (whatever) blog," then I'd be stuck to one topic. Giving yourself a name that allows you to explore many topics is giving you a pass to break the rules.
Cheers, and good luck to you.
Hey, thanks for the great advice! Appreciate it!
What reason do you think why naming your blog "Paul's (whatever) blog" would make you stuck? I don't really get it.
I believe @PaulLeCrone’s point is that we often wrongly estimate the kinds of things that will make us interesting to others.
Today, your primary goal may be to write about nomad life but you may find that 2 years from now, that primary goal has changed completely to something far more obscure like your vlog.
In other words, your views on vlogging could drive the most traffic to your blog because people find it far more interesting and consider it an authentic voice on the web than your views on nomadic living, causing your online persona to be deeply associated with vlogging in the minds of your audience instead of your primary interest in nomadic living.
In practice, you wont really get stuck. It will only become a very small branding inconvenience if and when you get popular, which is a good problem to have 🤠.
A couple of companies that underwent a branding change because their main product was far more well known than their company name (which was inscrutable to many people):
Very well articulated. Spot on.
Use a memorable and easy to type name so people can come back to back....
As to my personal blog, I like it to be personal, and given the person I occupy during this lifetime has lots of different interests, I do not want to lock myself into a single topic.
It's more of a personal notebook anyway.
The way I look at it, if your trying to brand yourself into a niche, then use your name. However, the issue with this is if you change direction it’s going to kill your SEO and site credibly. I know, I had to rebrand my site, RyanErickson.com, from a personal site, to a U.S. Coast Guard site, to Project Management. All of that just killed my link ranking.
I ended up making my personal domain a landing page and started a separate project management site. The link building, SEO, and overall search love is slow as hell, but there’s really only two thing to do: 1) keep moving forward, 2) quit.
I named the blog as a pun on my name to make it easier for people to understand; https://thetoulbox.com. Also, got lucky that it ties into my theme of helping others to build their "toolboxes" as beginner engineers. I'd like to focus on building somewhat a personal brand as it also helps my professional brand as a Software Engineer in general. For yours, I like the NomadVida as it seems to align well with building a brand around international traveling, having the "vida" piece. So unless you're goal is to also build your personal brand for professional use, then I'd stick with the NomadVida. Because it'll be easier to sell it later on (the blog) if you are desiring to do something like that.
Good question. I can only tell you my opinion, maybe it helps.
If you name your blog with your name, then you might have explain often times, to your new audience who you are and what you write about (think of building and extending your readers community). A personal brand is not easily transferable.
If you name your blog based on the topic you write about, you have some freedoms like: building a new brand, targeting readers easier. Maybe, more important, such a blog is extendable (imagine you collaborate with guest writers) and even transferable (imagine someone decides to acquire your blog)