Protect Your Brand – It’s Not Hard!

With more and more people going online every single day the importance of “owning” your “brand” online is growing day by day.

The very concept of “brand” has changed significantly over the past few years. While you used to associate the concept with “big business” it’s now something that even a private individual should be aware of.

The internet is a wonderful thing in many ways. If you know how to make the most of it there’s no reason why an individual or small business cannot have as much impact online as a multinational billion dollar corporation. (It is possible – I didn’t say it was easy!)

I’m not a designer, so I’m not going to talk about the importance of the various visual elements of a brand. I will, however, be one of the first to recognise it. If you want people to take your business seriously then you need to invest in its “look”. Hire a professional designer to do your logo and help develop that “feel”. When you get a website make sure it reflects your business. Does it “look the part”?

Just a couple of thoughts .. 

However I do know a thing or two about domains …

When looking at our clients’ domain registrations a worrying trend emerges.

Far too often people register the .cctld (the country code of the country they’re based in) or the .com or the .eu. Note the “or”. They don’t register the full set of domains.

Why not just register them all and be done with it?

Put it in perspective.

If you were to register “mycoolidea” across the more common domain extensions it would cost less than €200 (excluding any discounts and offers you might get).

If you’re setting up a new business then €100 to €200 to secure its “premises” online is a small price to pay. Getting letterheads and business cards printed is going to cost more.

So which extensions should people register?

To retain some level of sanity I’d recommend sticking with the most common ones, namely:

Global:

com
net
org
info
biz 
tel – the concept behind .tel is very different. You can’t have a “normal” website on a .tel, but you can put up a full set of contact details or even embed them in your website. If someone uses the .tel domain name they’ll always have the freshest set of data ..
mobi

Regional:

eu – some companies are putting their .eu domain name to very effective use as a “lander” or “portal” for their entire European presence.

Other:

co – while originally setup as the country code for Colombia .co has been relaunched as a global domain extension. Twitter is using t.co to shorten web addresses, while Overstock is using o.co as part of its online brand.

me – a very popular domain extension for both personal domain names and “call to action” names.