Develop Indy expects its rebranding effort to offer real results, says CEO Scott Miller.  Under the old name, Indianapolis Economic Development Corporation, he explains, the organization was often confused with the state’s IEDC, frustrating staffers and customers alike.

Freshbooks CEO Michael McDerment lists five characteristics he thinks good company names need:

 

1. It’s easy to remember
2. It’s easy to spell and requires no explanation
3. Its describes your business category
4. It describes your benefit
5. It describes your difference

As examples of names that fit that five-point bill, McDerment points to three well-known companies:

• PayPal
• BestBuy
• QuickBooks

McDerment’s own company name, Freshbooks, is intended to convey a fresh approach to "something as tired as accounting", he says.

As a professional ghost blogger and business blogging trainer, I think McDerment’s rules apply to blogs in at least two ways:

Blog post titles:  The title needs to be a pretty good indication of what the post will be about, serving as a strong clue to what the reader can expect to find.

URLs:  "If your business is online, you don’t want to have to explain how to get to your domain," says McDerment.  Your domain name should reinforce what you do.

Develop Indy aims to develop company expansion and attraction to Indianapolis.  What does your company blog aim to do?  Give it a name that says so!

 

Just the other day, a business owner prospect, B. posed a question I’d heard many times before:

 If my website is already showing up at or near the top of Page One on Google
and Bing, what value would having a blog add to the mix?

This question of what value a blog might bring to a business is the sort to which stock answers rarely apply. As I’ve mentioned often in earlier Say It For You blog posts, business blogging must be considered a single tactic in an overall marketing strategy. At the same time, it’s just the sort of question to kick off a discussion of the role a business blog might play in converting "clickers" to customers.

My friend Damon Richards, owner of Port to Port Consulting, would say B. has won the first set of a three-set match, in that he’s "won search". In fact, B. has "won search" without blogging.  B. performs a specialty service in a niche market, and his business name describes the service he provides. It stands to reason online searchers looking for that service will find B.!

Is B. winning the set and losing the match? Apparently so.  "Why am I not getting more business out of my website?" he asks, frustration creeping into his voice.

The second "win" B. needs is to have searchers click on the link to his website, so they can learn more about his business and how he solves problems for his clients. In fact, B. doesn’t know to what extent the second "click" is happening, because he has not set up analytics to give him that information.

Setting aside any judgment on the quality of B’s website itself in terms of content or graphics, adding a blog would keep the material current, offering readers a sense that they’re getting "the latest scoop". It’s much less cumbersome and much less expensive to add new, up-to-date content on blogs than on most traditional websites.

"What Have You Done For Me Lately?" is the title of an article about the Small Business Administration, about new services the SBA provides in addition to business loans. Bloggers for business, take heed. Your loyal customers may know what your core services are, but you can use your blog posts to tell online searchers what your business has been doing lately and what you can do for them!