Embark on a journey through the treacherous yet rewarding landscape of brand protection in the digital realm, as I recount my personal saga from the naivety of picking a business name to the enlightenment of keyword prowess. Through tales of missed opportunities and hard-won victories, I'll arm you with the knowledge to shield your online persona from the hazards that lurk behind every click and post. Witness the evolution of strategic visibility and grasp the dire consequences of letting your domain name slip through your fingers.
Let's unravel the tapestry of authentic content creation together, stitching integrity into every thread of your online narrative. From the delicate dance of edginess and accessibility to sidestepping the siren call of clickbait, I reveal the importance of content that resonates with your true self—not just for the moment, but for the enduring online legacy you're crafting. Elevate your brand from the sea of mediocrity with a professional email address, a seemingly simple touch that speaks volumes. With nary a clickbait in sight, these insights are your guide to a genuine and polished presence that echoes across the digital expanse.
Embark on a journey through the treacherous yet rewarding landscape of brand protection in the digital realm, as I recount my personal saga from the naivety of picking a business name to the enlightenment of keyword prowess. Through tales of missed opportunities and hard-won victories, I'll arm you with the knowledge to shield your online persona from the hazards that lurk behind every click and post. Witness the evolution of strategic visibility and grasp the dire consequences of letting your domain name slip through your fingers.
Let's unravel the tapestry of authentic content creation together, stitching integrity into every thread of your online narrative. From the delicate dance of edginess and accessibility to sidestepping the siren call of clickbait, I reveal the importance of content that resonates with your true self—not just for the moment, but for the enduring online legacy you're crafting. Elevate your brand from the sea of mediocrity with a professional email address, a seemingly simple touch that speaks volumes. With nary a clickbait in sight, these insights are your guide to a genuine and polished presence that echoes across the digital expanse.
Hey Steve Stine here. Thank you so much for joining me Today. What I wanted to do is talk to you about the importance of protecting your name and your brand, copyrights, trademarks, whatever it might be, understanding that when you first start out in whatever business you're in, sometimes you don't realize the potential that you may have. I think about when I was younger and the fact that I was pretty convinced that nobody would ever know my name at all. I never thought about any of these sorts of things. I remember when I first started trying to build a website and it was called Stine Music Lessons, which, if you think about it from a hashtag or keyword point of view, that's a terrible name because it doesn't even have guitar in it. Stein Music Lessons like what do I offer? Violin lessons or banjo lessons or something like that. I never thought any of those things through. I didn't think about any copyright elements, anything like that when I first was getting started. I suppose in a way, it seems like it would be maybe egotistical to think of it that way, but you have to be honest with yourself. If you're trying to build a brand and maybe that brand is you, maybe it's a name of something too, but if you're trying to be a YouTuber or something like that, oftentimes the brand is going to be your name in some capacity. I went with Stine Music Lessons on a number of different things for a long time, not understanding how important it would be to have the keyword guitar in there Steve Stine guitar. Well, now you'll see more and more a lot of my stuff will have the name Steve Stine guitar. I remember using just different. I'd never thought about the fact of thinking ahead and planning things like this is something you should really think about.
Steve:
Well, let me say this when I first started trying to get online, when I first made the choice that I was going to try and move from the chaos of my life at the time working 70, 80 hours a week and playing in bands and never being home and I had this inkling in my brain that what I wanted to do was give online a chance. And this is back in the mid 2000s. This was a long time ago and I thought, well, maybe what I'll do is I'll just start trying to sign up for every website that I could possibly find and you have to understand that even things like YouTube were kind of in their infancy stages at this point, and so if I could find a guitar or music lesson site, I would sign up, because I kept thinking, well, if I can start doing some lessons online, I wouldn't have to drive anywhere and that sort of thing. And again, this is all very, very early on and so I don't remember the websites that I have signed up for. I do remember the big one was lessonface. com out of New York. They're kind of the main ones that I started working with. But I just thought if I could get signed up with any website out there, maybe somebody from Colorado would see me on some website and want to do some guitar lessons. So it wasn't really helping me to be any less busy. But the good news is is in signing up for all these different websites, it kind of got my name out there in a Google sense, even though I had no idea what I was doing. It actually kind of was working.
Steve:
What I didn't think about doing in the early time and this is what I was trying to get to was getting your own websites. Like you know, your don't main names, you know registering stevestine. com or stevestineguitar. com or you know whatever it is that you're thinking you might use and of course now domain names are so cheap. You know they were a little more expensive back in the day, but now they're so cheap. It's worth spending some money to secure those potential names. That could be something someday and you're not spending a bunch of money. You don't have to design the websites and all that stuff at this point, just as long as you secure the names and if you think about it, you even wanna do those things on social media sites and keep your eye open for any upcoming social media sites where you might need to register your name. And I know it gets to be kind of a hassle because it's just this whole social media world just keeps going and going. But it's worth thinking about to protect your investment. And so you register those domain names again, whatever they might be. You have to get a little creative with your thought process there. Obviously you'd want your name, but if there's anything else in there that might be worth doing, it's worth securing those as well, if you can afford it. Again, most domain names are pretty inexpensive anyway and then going to the social sites as much as you can in trying to secure your name or your brand or whatever it might be.
Steve:
But the biggest thing I wanted to talk to you about was just the idea of the mistakes that I made when I was first getting into this and how, again, I wasn't thinking that anybody would be listening to a video, let alone a podcast, let alone a whatever right, and so I didn't think that through. And there was a gentleman at own stevestine. com for a long time who his name was Steve Stine, and I don't remember what he did. He was, you know, did some sort of a sewing or yarn or something I can't remember what it was or pottery, I don't remember what it was, but something. And then somebody out there bought that name from him and of course, I never thought about that like trying to get ahold of him, because it's his site, you know there can be more than one Steve Stine, and so it never occurred to me. Well, somebody else out there decided to purchase that name and then started using it to direct traffic through my name, without my authorization or anything like that, to start using it to sell product. And you know, it became this whole thing and ultimately we wound up Guitar Zoom and myself wound up working together to acquire the name, and I don't wanna get into it, but we got the name. So now stevestine. com is something that we own, but it sucks that we had to go through that simply because I wasn't forward thinking and you know that's where I started thinking about Steve Stine guitar and Stine guitar lessons and you know that sort of thing. And now you know I own those things and you know you can't own them all. You know there used to be Dot-com and now there's Dot-this and Dot-this and Dot-this and it just gets to be ridiculous. But the point is is just trying to make sure that you're making your life a little bit easier in those up and coming stages by getting yourself registered in whatever way you need to, with domain names, thinking about keywords, going to your social sites, protecting yourself there as much as you can, even if you're not posting. It's worth protecting those names, just in case you need those sorts of things. And I guess the last thing I kinda wanna talk about too is the persona that you are going to utilize on these social sites when you start posting.
Steve:
Like for me, other than the fact that I look the way I look, I mean, I always had long hair and there's nothing out of the ordinary. I don't wake up every day and do something different. I'm exactly who I am, and when I make videos, I'm exactly who I am, and so it makes my job really easy. I don't wake up and try and be something else or act something else or wear something else or do something else, and that was always very important to me as well, because I always wanted to make sure that the content that I create is viewable by anybody, including my kids. I didn't want to put across some sort of persona of being something that I'm not or acting a certain way. And then, all of a sudden, it's 20 years later and I'm, like you know, ashamed of these videos that I made or whatever it might be. And I'm not perfect and I don't claim to be, and that's not what I'm saying.
Steve:
You know there could be somebody else out there that makes videos that have a certain edginess to them, and that's exactly what they do and it works great for them and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with it. I'm just saying what you need to do is think about that when you start making videos. You know, when you start making those videos and you're thinking okay, well, you know, the big thing right now is you know bait thumbnails. You know thumbnails that bait people in. Or you know titles that don't really reflect what the content is going to be about. Or, you know, trying to be edgy in a certain way to get viewers, which always remember. You know, no matter what you do, no matter who you are, more content will attract some people and repel other people. That's just the name of the game, but it's worth thinking about that before you get started.
Steve:
I remember being on tour and talking to somebody that I was on tour with and they were trying to get a YouTube channel going and they asked me you know, I'm looking at trying to do this certain thing, but I want to be really edgy about it. You know I want to swear a lot and make it really edgy, and what do you think about that? And I said, well, there's nothing wrong with it If that's the way you want to go. You just have to understand that once you start that you've got to kind of commit to it and still be okay with that 10 years from now or 20 years from now, unless you reinvent yourself. I mean, if you reinvent yourself, that means you might have to completely separate from what you were doing before, but understand that that content still is going to exist in some capacity. So you know you can't be ashamed of it or you can't be. You know you can't try and hide something, because we know how social media works. That doesn't work at all, so you have to be okay with that.
Steve:
Or maybe that transition would be something that you know would be honest and effective and you know you'd be honest with your audience, and all of a sudden you're doing something different, or you know it's just. All I'm saying is you got to think about those sorts of things when you start creating content, because it's a direct reflection on you, your work, your talent, your business, but your personality, you know all those sorts of things are kind of encompassed in that. So it's worth thinking about a little bit to get started. So hopefully that makes sense to you and at least gives you some idea of how to get started and do some planning for whatever it is that you're trying to do, whether you're doing a YouTube thing or you're trying to get known into the industry or whatever it might be. You know the way you present yourself and the accessibility that you give for people to be able to contact you.
Steve:
You know whether it be an email, which, again, even email is really important. You know, if you've got an email address that's 794063@ gmail. com, it doesn't really say much in terms of professionalism or connectivity. Or you know your brand, you know where. If you have, you know, stevestine@gmail. com, it's better. If you have SteveStine@stevestine. com, it's even better, you know, I mean, that's even more professional. So, and of course, all this kind of stuff costs money and that's the downside. But it's worth thinking about what approach you want to take. You know, maybe you talk to somebody and get some advice on something, but start doing some planning and think about those sorts of things. It's really important. Thank you so much. I know today wasn't very long, but it's something I thought would be really important to talk about with you and try and get you organized a bit and thinking, like I said, doing some forward thinking on what your next plan of attack might be in your journey to developing your business.