Changing Your Blog Name

You may have noticed my blog has had a name change, previously known as ‘Subject Beauty’  now ‘Rinica Writes. So why the name change? 'Subject Beauty' was well umm restrictive and although I’m not 100% happy with my new name it will allow a little more flexibility on the topics I can post. Posting about food or lifestyle isn’t something an audience would necessarily expect from a blog named ‘Subject Beauty.’ Over the next few months I'm hoping to mix up my blog a little and post some lifestyle, fashion, food, D.I.Y and fitness style posts. Needless to say my main hobby and love will always be beauty bumf so for all of those people who enjoy my reviews I can confirm they will remain a permanent feature here on my blog.

Enough ramble. Today I thought I would write up a few tips all of this will probably already be known in the blogging community but for a newbie I was pretty much on my own and a post such as this one would have been a huge help.

1. Choose your name

I’m still not 100% happy with my blog name, and in all honesty I really can’t give any tips or tricks for choosing a name. Throughout brain storming I came up with some fabulous quirky names but sadly they were all taken. The harsh reality is 9 times out of 10 the name you think of will mostly likely be taken. I will however mention the following site http://namechk.com. This site allows you to check a blog name (URL) for it's availability on blogger/wordpress as well as all the social media platforms. Consistency is key, so try to aim for the same name across all of your social media platforms, previously I had to have twitter @Subjectbeauty1 and @Subjectbeauts on instagram so if you can't get your exact blog name see if something similar is available. 

2. I've chosen my name, what now?

Wahey the hard bits out of the way.
Now you'll need to change your blog URL(in blogger) in the left sidebar click settings-basic-blog address and change your current URL too your new name. Simples. Don’t forget to also change your blog title as this appears on the top of the window on a laptop or tablet (when people access your blog.)

3. Make changes 

After changing your URL. You need to change your header, followed by your pages and any places on your blog that reference your old name. There's actually a lot more references to your name than you think (as I discovered) so have a good old check. Changing your header is easy if you have a blank template (like I did) if you don't however contact the person who designed your header and they should hopefully be able to send a blank copy that you can edit in picmonkey. For those of you who have a header with a typed name it's even easier to change.

The next job is too tackle your social media platforms (the bit I was dreading, in all honesty it couldn't have been easier!)

Twitter- Luckily Twitter allows you to change your follow name whilst keeping all of your existing followers (whoo) it’s straight forward go to settings- profile name and change.

Instgram and Pinterest- Again Instagram/pinterest  allows you to change your follow name and keep existing followers

Bloglovin- Perhaps the platform I was the most worried about (as it's my main traffic source.) Access your bloglovin page and DO nothing that's right even though you've changed your blog URL don't attempt to edit/change any info yourself. Bare in mind that at this moment in the process all existing posts on bloglovin will be inaccessible to your followers (as they link to your old URL.) if you change your URL, blog name or anything  you WILL loose followers. Click ‘help’ and contact the bloglovin support team. In your email explain that you would like to change your blog URL name but keep your existing followers clearly display the old URL and the new URL it will replace. In your email also politely ask if they will ‘claim’ your blog in the process (saves a whole lot of fiddling around!) I was fortunate enough to receive an email from bloglovin within a couple of hours (wahey!)

4. Don't forget to change your social media buttons

Edit your social media buttons so they all land in the right place. When you edit HTML you should see a link to your old social media platforms delete and replace with your new link (it’s really that simple!) If your anal like me you may also wish to create a new email address to coincide with your new blog name. Although my blog is PR free, I like to have a separate email for any enquiries, guest posts or challenge’s I’m taking part in.

5. Write a post

Everything’s updated and you’re relatively happy about your new name, creating a post will let existing followers know  that your still you. I genuinely didn’t think anyone would notice when I swapped my blog name, but within the first hour I already had queries and a few confused tweets.

So there's my 5 tips everyone probably knows all this, but when I took to twitter it was a very mixed bag of responses about losing followers, so hopefully this post may prove useful to any bloggers who are thinking about a name change.

Are you happy with your blog name? Do you prefer blogs with one main topic or varied posts?