Ditch GMail, AOL, MSN and Yahoo — Forever!
Did I get your attention? I sure hope so. This article isn’t really about ditching the the major free email services, but rather a way for me to highlight an extra way for small businesses ( and large ones too for that matter), to leverage free ways to promote their own business.
Let’s run a quick experiment. Being a scientist, I really like experiments (didn’t know I was a scientist? Read more about me) For this experiment, I want you to pull out your business card. What email address does it have? Whose name are you branding? Yours or theirs? You see, the idea for your business card is to brand you, not a fortune 500 company. Now, take a look at your stack of business cards that you’ve collected in the past year. If you don’t have any, that’s OK, just pay attention the next time you see a business card. Now whose name are they branding?
And while you’re looking at the card and the brand, evaluate the level of professionalism and community brand that they portray. Likely what you’ll find is that those that are super professional and brand aware, will have their own brand on the email address, while those that are starting out or don’t know any better, will be branding someone else.
So what do you do to brand yourself? For starters, call the printing press!
You have a domain right? For this article, I assume that you have one. Instead of using your favorite I-love-cats-and-dogs@msn.com, you should really be utilizing your domain name… so if your website is at cats-and-dogs.com you can make a catchy email address for youself, like lover@cats-and-dogs.com or for a general information account you can use info@cats-and-dogs.com or another commonly accepted email address would be sales@cats-and-dogs.com for the sales dept. It is also purrr-fectly (sorry I couldn’t resist) acceptable to use your name as part of the brand - so if your name is Brian Tracy, you could have any of the following - just pick one that suits your taste : brian.tracy@cats-and-dogs.com, btracy@cats-and-dogs.com or briant@cats-and-dogs.com or just plain ol brian@cats-and-dogs.com …. but notice that every single one of them says cats-and-dogs.com … that is an extra hook to get them to recognize your brand and website.
Other than your email address, I highly recommend that you have your website listed on your business card as well. Sometimes there’s not enough room, but if you have a site on your card that isn’t yours, then ditch it too! What do I mean by that? if you have a site like yahoo.com/~cats-and-dogs/ then you aren’t branding you, you’re branding Yahoo. So turn the tables in your favor, and use a website like www.cats-and-dogs.com
Is branding limited to a business card? Absolutely not! Anywhere you put your name (well almost anywhere - your bank might look at you funny if you sign your name with an @ in the middle), is a great candidate for placing your brand. Letterhead, brochures, proposals,email signatures, and auto-responders are some exceptional places to put your brand.
About the Author
Matthew Kettlewell is the President and CEO of Kettlewell Enterprises, Inc. In the past he has worked in technical roles with companies as diverse as Raytheon, on world-class satellite systems, but focuses now on using technology to get top rankings on search engines.
Go now to: http://www.kettlewell.net
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Comments
Hmmm.. I guess I’ve already been “branding” myself:
I have my own website and my email address is myfirstname@mywebsite.com
Thanks for a great article!
Dora Crow






I LOVE this article, it really has some great info to think about. Makes some really great points for the small business person/crafter! Thanks!