Years ago you simply needed to come up with a name and a good product and away you go.
Of course, times change, new marketing methods come into play and now the whole ball game has evolved into a tediously long search for that holy grail of company name, twitter ID, LinkedIn, Facebook vanity URLs and many more IDs and user names spread across a whole plethora of destinations.

(check this list for a snippet of alternative places you might also need to be).

The most important, in terms of brand awareness is, of course the Company name but that’s where the ‘fun’ begins – next step would be the domain name – hopefully, this list will give you a good starting point to help you secure the ultimate in company branding!

1, Make a list of 15 possible names in the order that you would want them

2, Prepare alternative extensions in case the .com isn’t available

3, If the .com has been taken check the site out. If you’re selling baby clothes and the .com is a heavy metal/ punk band crossover appreciation site do you want the 2 to be confused?

4, If the .com is on a holding page contact the owner to see if they want to sell

5, NEVER check the domain(s) until you are ready to buy. Some domain reg companies scrape domain searches and snap up the popular ones

6, If you can, grab the .com .net or .org (if relevant). Next would be your country specific – .co.uk

7, Think out of the box and go for catchy domains wombl.es, get.in, local.tv

8, Don’t go for extensions like .ws, .tc, uk.com etc unless they are the last remains that you simply must have

9, Avoid names-with-dashes-in-them

10, Keep your domain as relevant and as short as possible

 
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