Name Recognition
Do As I Say-Don't do as I did!

Remember Snow White? "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?" Every time we check the search engines for our placement ranking, we're looking into that same mirror.

Imagine my surprise when I did a Google search on "Fun 4 The Money" and found a link to someone else--on eBay, where we do the bulk of our business. A few years ago, when I locked up the domain name, Fun4TheMoney.com, I should have signed up for the matching eBay ID. It was available, then, but I wasn't that smart.

Here's how you can avoid my mistake.

• Once you've locked up a domain name, register it EVERYWHERE--message boards, poker rooms, chat rooms, free sites (sub-domains), affiliate programs, or anyplace else you can think of where potential customers might be lurking.
  
  
• Check out online organizations related to your business and join them all with your domain name as your member ID.
  
  
• Add your domain name to your email signature. Even friends and relatives need to be reminded.
  
  
• Keep "Name Recognition" as a topic on your To-Do List forever. This is a major--and usually free--part of your marketing and advertising campaign. Don't let a week go by that you don't register or post your name somewhere.

So, who's the fairest one of all? You are, of course, but don't let it go to your head.

Copyright (c) 2005, Susan Molthop. All rights reserved.