For the first of a new blog series on digital marketing for academics, I take a look at names, and the big choice between marketing yourself, and your ‘product’…

Names… names are important things in the blogosphere. Your name is the thing that will help you get recognised – help you get noticed among the thousands of other academic blogs out there.

The best blog names are the ones that are interesting, memorable, and maybe even a little fun. They also tell you something about what the blog is about, without the need to even visit it. Some of my favourite blog-names include ‘The Law of Killer Robots’ (Josh Hughes), ‘A Nuclear Notebook’ (Emily Gibbs), and most recently ‘The Queer Frontier’ (Danielle Girard).

But of course this isn’t the only approach you can take to blogging. Some authors will decide to take another approach and instead market themselves first, over their ‘product’. Though I wouldn’t describe this website as a traditional blog, MJRyder.net is a fine example. In this case, I am selling ‘me’ and what I do, though at the same time I am also sacrificing something of the unique and memorable nature of some of the other blogs I’ve described above. Continue reading »