Burst Blog

So you’re just about to give birth to your brand-new baby blog — exciting! Time to name your little bundle of joy.

But what makes for a good blog name? Here are some tips for coming up with a monikker that you, and the Web, will love.

Pick a name and stick with it

You probably want people to read your blog and to grow it into a healthy little gal or fella (it said its first word!).

The more posts you write, the more your blog gets into the search engines like Google, and the more other people will link to you. As time passes, you build up credibility on the mysterious Interwebs, and this credibility sends you visitors. If you change names down the road, you lose the credibility you’ve built up and have to start over. Try to pick a name you can live with.

It has to sound cool to you

No matter how brilliant your thinking and your writing, our BlogBurst scientists have determined that the most important aspect of blogging may just be posting regularly and sticking with it. If you lose interest in your own name, you won’t continue. Pick something you love.

Details, details: what makes a successful name?

Your blog name should be memorable, and stick as a “brand” or a monikker, like a band name (Winger!). That said, all kinds of names can work. In the olden days before the Web (*shudder*), publications had to have super-snappy titles dreamed up by marketing teams; in the blogosphere, you can look at the top blogs and you’ll see that a lot of the names are funky and random. Look at the big ones: Daily Kos. Scobleizer. icanhascheezburger. Seth’s blog. GigaOM. Random, but all catchy (or at least memorable) in some way.

Like all Web names (”eBay”), there’s no science to what works as long as it’s easy to remember and hard to misspell. Some ideas to consider:

• play off your own name
• play off the topic you’re covering (see next point)
• here are some places to see lists of blog names to get ideas from
  • The Webby Awards
  • The Technorati Top 100
  • Look through blogs you like, and link to the ones in their blogrolls

Make it topical. Or not.

Some blogs are solely dedicated to a single topic. This can be a great thing, IF you’re willing to dedicate your whole blog to that topic; if you don’t want to stay on topic all the time, consider a more generic name. For example, Stuff White People Like or Gizmodo, the Gadget Guide are so topical that the authors have to stay close to those topics; yet In The Pink Texas (written by our beloved former editor, even if she never comes around no more) or, say, Kottke.org are open-ended enough that those authors can write about whatever they choose.

Finally, naming a blog is more an art than a science. If you have other thoughts about noms de blog, tell us in the comments!