Choose the right name before you sign up.

Once you have determined why you want to blog and what you want to blog about, it's time to choose a name for your blog. Not just any name will do. With the name you choose for your blog, you are branding your blog.

So, take all the time you need to choose a good name, one that describes your blog, and one that is unique. When naming The Helpful Blogger, the name came to me quickly once I decided what I wanted to do with the blog -- I wanted to help others learn the ins and outs of blogging. I wanted to go about it in a helpful manner, so the name just rang in my ears. But, I didn't sign up on blogger.com using that name immediately. Here are the steps I went through to test out my name.

1. I went to godaddy.com and determined if TheHelpfulBogger.com domain name was available. It was. If it hadn't been, I would have returned to the naming process. I think it's important to own the name of your blog. You may not ever use the domain name. I haven't hooked it up to this blog, but I do want to maintain control of that domain name so I don't see it on some other website or blog someday. That would be too confusing.

2. Next, I went to twitter.com and determined if the name was available. It was. If it hadn't been, I would have gone back to the drawing board on the name thing.

3. Before you go back to godaddy. com and twitter.com to sign up for those names, test your name out on a couple of people who tell you the truth no matter what. Tell them the name without any explanation and see if they can tell you back what your blog is about. If there explanation is close, you've got yourself a name.

Since I passed all three tests with the name TheHelpfulBlogger. I was good to go.

Join me tomorrow to see what to do next.....