How to confuse friends & lose followers

Okay, so I made the jump. After much thought from a session at Affiliate Summit I rebranded myself. Someone told me they were confused because I have three names now. However themed they may be, they are not identical.

I went with the panda mascot theme. (Thanks to those who gave their opinions) So my first step was to register a domain. I thought “Panda Marketing” sounded good. It had a nice ring to it. I guess it reminded me of BumMarketing.com, not that pandas can market themselves. They’re just cute & cuddly like me. *ahem*

But guess what, PandaMarketing.com was already taken. So now what do I do? I did the next best thing, and registered PandaBearMarketing.com and I felt good about it. I set up WordPress, installed the Thesis theme, and created a post on the About page.

So now I figured it was time to change my Twitter name. But wait a minute! It appears that I have too many characters in my brand name. The maximum characters in a twitter username is 15. I was off by three. I thought about abbreviating it to @PandaBearMkting or @PandaBearMrktr. Well, as long as it wasn’t going to be identical, I thought WTH and opted for @PandaMarketer, where I didn’t have to abbreviate anything, just omit the word bear which does not detract from the theme, or concept.

I chose the Marketer over Marketing as I am an affiliate marketer, who does marketing. I thought the difference was distinctive enough for those native to the English language. I mean, you say “Accountant” and not “Accounting” when referring to a person, not their function. Apparently …

there is a difference in the suffix. You say “I am an affiliate marketer” not “I am an affiliate marketing.” Catch my drift? It’s not a big leap.

So when it was brought to my attention that my new brand, if it were trying to be typed out, could be typed out wrong, I was concerned. I was asked “So, are you PandabearMarketer, PandaMarketing, PandaBearMarketing, or PandaMarketer?” I decided to do something about it. This is why I have purchased the available domain that matches my twitter user name, PandaMarketer.com. (It just redirects to THIS domain).

So, now a thought has entered my mind. Why not just move all the posts over to PandaMarketer.com and redirect this domain to that one? It would make more sense, in a way, to match something. So now I pose the question, how much leeway is there in this rebranding-growing-pains?

I want your opinions people! What would YOU do in my stead?

~El Panda

PS: I speak español, so I want it hinted at with my siggy, if-you-will. Don’t mean to throw another log on the ambiguity fire. But I digress. Comments please!

Tagged as: el panda, espanol, marketer, Marketing, panda, panda bear, spanish