Top 3 Ways to Create and Build Your Brand – #1: Name

By Loy Okezie On July 11, 2009 · 2488 Comments2009-07-11+16%3A21%3A23Loy+Okezie

Developing a brand image – personal brand or business brand – is one of the most important strategies for success. Corporate brands such as CNN, Coca-Cola, Google, Globacom, Oceanic Bank, Dangote, and a host of others have created a huge impact on the lives of people, social communities, countries, continents and around the world.

Notice the keyword?

Impact! Impact!! Impact!!!

That’s what or how your brand must be, if you’re going to stand out from the crowd and differentiate yourself in your market or industry. There are a lot of ways you can create a personal brand or business brand, but I’ve narrowed them to the top three.

Today, I’ll be discussing the first way to create and build your brand – Name.

Name

The name of your business startup or simply your personal name should be unique if you are to build a successful brand image. If you take a look at successful internet giants such as Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, you will notice that their names are different from conventional words.

If you can, coin a word for your business startup that would become a household name just like Google, Yahoo, Dangote, or Globacom. On the other hand, in order to build your personal brand image, use your name in such a way that people will never want to forget it.

Here are some tips:

Use your personal name in every communication both offline and online via several channels and platforms (Newspapers, Emails, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, LinkedIn, etc). Make people use your name everyday. For instance, Barack Obama is one of the most successful personal brands, having used his name effectively.

Make sure your personal name has a great search results and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) rankings. For instance, my name ‘Loy Okezie’ has been searched over 4,000 times via Google search. What’s yours?

Build a voice around your name and be recognized as an authority in a particular field. For instance, Paul Graham, one of my mentors is recognized as a reputable authority on startups. My goal is to become a reputable authority on Startups in Nigeria.

Perhaps, you can’t coin a word like Yahoo or Twitter for your business startup. But can you fuse two existing words together to form a unique name? Take a look at Microsoft, for instance. ‘Micro’, which means ’small’ has been fused with ’soft’ (short for software) and has built a brand name as the world’s leading computer software.

The guys at YouTube, the world’s largest video-sharing platform brought two words together ‘You’ and ‘Tube’ and tells you to “Broadcast Yourself”. Little wonder Google bought into the idea.

Or maybe you can modify an existing word by removing a letter. For example, Flickr, the world’s largest photo-sharing community removed the letter ‘e’ from the word ‘flicker’ (meaning flash or sparkle or simply the flick of a camera button) to form the word flickr (pronounced the same way as ‘flicker’).

Again, the world’s largest social networking site, Facebook has used its unique name to build one of the greatest brands in the history of the web. Popular words include: Facebook. Facebooker. Facebooking. Facebooked.

Twitter, the largest micro-blogging platform is building another great brand. As a result, we now have new words like Twittering, Twitterer, Twittered, Twittersphere, Twitterific, Twitterama, Twittermania, and lots more.

By the way, do you notice what all these brands have in common? They are described as the ‘largest’ in their different industries, thus you should be thinking of creating a brand that could be described as ‘the largest’.

Other sites that have built a brand through their names include social networking site – Hi5, News site – CNN, Social bookmarking site – Digg, Technology blog – TechCrunch, and Blogging platform – Blogger.

Some notable African web brands include Afrigator (a fusion of the words ‘Africa’ and ‘Aggregator’, Muti (meaning “tree” in Zulu), Ushahidi (meaning “testimony” in Swahili), Ubuntu, Sturvs (coined from the word ’stuff’), amongst others.

Final thoughts

Your personal name or your business name must be unique and well-marketed if you are to create a huge impact. If you are struggling with creating or building your brand awareness, you need to learn the tools and tricks in order to effectively succeed with your branding efforts and strategy.

Photo via flickr by Gerald Patterson