amy cham :: pixels + people

More free stuff: Marketing Pilgrim e-book

Here's another quickie.  Andy Beal posted this notice of a free search engine and social marketing ebook.  The book is a collection of essays entered into Marketing Pilgrim's two scholarship contests for search marketers.

I've read a few of the essays on the MP blog, and they were excellent.  Enjoy!

Free stuff - Rich Schefren's latest plus MySpace on social marketing

Two quick links to some very cool, very valuable, and very free documents:

• Andy Beard links us to Rich Schefren's latest free resource, "The Attention Age Doctrine." I haven't read this one yet, but what I have read of his other work is fantastic!
• Charlene Li gives us a link to a report MySpace put out a little while ago called, "Never Ending Friending," giving their take on how people use social networking sites, and what we can do about it. (Forrester also has a new social networking report out.)

I can't wait to dig into these...go get them!

Making a Name

As I noted before on my old blog, I'm working on a startup with one of my classmates, Stanton Champion.  The idea has changed--we've decided to stick a little closer to home and work on super-simple tools, information, and training designed for small businesses to effectively use the internet--and now we are searching for a company name.  Sitting in a room with lists of random words, we kept getting stuck on the same directions and couldn't come up with anything we really liked.

We have set this question aside for a little while, as we have to make some decisions about our direction for the next few months, but before setting it aside, I built a little Excel tool (downloads file from my site) to help us out.

This file is very simple to use...put a list of adjectives in the first column, and a list of nouns in the second column.  To the right is a table that puts together random combinations of adjectives and nouns, to give you ideas to investigate.  Every time you hit enter after adding a word to a column, or hit F9 (on Windows, at least), the table updates itself with new combinations.

See one you like, jot it down, and investigate it as a name!

Things to consider once you have something you like:

• Is someone already using it?  This is very important, as an established entity can prevent you from using a name or trademark that infringes on their own under certain circumstances.  When investigating potential names, it's always a good idea to start with a Google search to see if anything comes up for that name.  Also, check your local Chamber of Commerce and State Department websites for information on searching existing registered business names.
• Is there a .com domain available?  The first thing people try when looking for a company online is typing in the company's name with ".com" at the end.  Check with the registrars, like Register.com or GoDaddy.com to see if yourname.com is available. When you've chosen a name, be sure to register the .com, .net, and other extensions that you want to have.  This helps to reduce confusion from other entities registering a very similar name (like yourname.net) and stealing away people looking for you!
• Do you want to register the trademark?  If you think you are going to register the name as a trademark, take a look at the rules for trademarkable names.  Take a look at the US Patent Office site for details.

Have fun!  Let me know if you come up with anything good!