Being Catchy with Dot CC

Sharon Siegel writes a blog at Sharon.cc.  I found this to be an interesting domain choice and discussed the site and it’s purpose with Sharon.

Mike:  Can you give a little background on your business?

Sharon:  Sharon.cc is a Social Good platform. It’s not a business, it’s a collaborative site which helps people, companies, and places optimally market themselves. Guest posters are encouraged – just send me what you’d like to share with my readers & I’ll post it if I feel they’ll benefit from it.

I’ve been career coaching for about 8 years now, and started sharon.cc to publicly answer all the questions I get asked regularly. I work as a corporate recruiter full time, but have a passion for writing & helping people that I cannot hire (if I hired all my friends I’d be out of a job pretty quickly – not that they’re not all talented people…).

I network job seekers/career changers to advance within their fields & counsel them on overcoming barriers to desired positions/industries. I edit/optimize resumes for marketability and ideal career placement and provide coaching for interviews. In my free time I present at resume workshops for unemployed individuals and like to blog about technology within government and hiring. You can follow me on twitter: @sharondotcc or connect on linkedin. I’m available for speaking engagements, individual coaching, and am seeking a more challenging position myself within the organizational development/social media/HR/ communications fields if anyone has any leads for me…

Mike:  How did you get involved in the job hunting industry?

Sharon:  People have always confided in me & looked to me for advice, even as a child.  My mother would tell you it started when I was in 5th grade, getting a haircut. My hairdresser was telling me her life story, and about how her real passion was to work with the elderly, and she had just completed her degree in recreation therapy. My mother was a director of recreation at a nursing home looking for staff…they ended up working together for 8 years.

I don’t do executive recruiting – I have yet to charge a company for a placement, although I have been told many times I should – so I’m not sure if ‘job hunting’ is the correct term, I’m more of a ‘job placer’. I’ve always found the job search & attainment process to be very logical, and use common sense to help people who aren’t naturals at it.

Mike:  Sharon.cc is your domain.  What made you decide to select a .cc domain?  How has it been working for you?

Sharon:  I wanted a short, easy to remember website that contained my name that would help me stand out of the crowd. Most websites/people/companies nowadays sounding just like everyone else. I try especially hard not to come across as generic (more on that topic here http://wp.me/pWfpN-q).

As that most short urls are owned by people looking to make a profit, most .com’s were taken. As that the type of site I was planning for career coaching & advice, cc = career coaching I thought would be both easy to remember and relevant. I had a feeling I might change my host some day, so I wanted my own domain for it.

Mike:  Did you seek any advice before selecting a name for your blog?

Sharon:  I ran ideas by my husband who’s a marketing and creative genius (http://designsdesigns.com plug for his freelance design firm while we’re at it). He generally has a good idea if something will be successful or not. “.CC” is technically for Cocos (Keeling) Islands, which is an Australian territory as per wikipedia. As that’s an unknown to NY’ers, my primary audience, I felt I was able to ‘make it my own’.

Mike:  Can you share the volume of traffic that your site receives?

Sharon:  I don’t have the heaviest volume, as that I don’t actively seek readers. It’s rather when people come to me seeking career or resume advice, or help finding a job, that I send them to my blog. Although it’s not quite as helpful as 1-on-1 career coaching, generally these are people who only want free advice. Very few people out of work are willing to pay for help (yet then they complain and wonder why they stay unemployed…).

I think everyone knows someone unemployed or underemployed nowadays – and if you send them to my site, it’ll help them.

Mike:  Do you have any other online marketing strategies?

Sharon:  I tag my postings which does bring me some SEO searches that are relevant. I’ve never paid or made any strong attempts to market myself. I can’t see paying for advertising or google ads in the future either. This is a hobby/social good cause, not a business for me as of now. I can’t say I’d never end up career counseling full time, but as of now I’m not monetizing the site.

Mike:  Any other information you’d like to share?

The best advice I can give about domains (or company names, which should be the same thing) is to pick something as short as possible, easy to remember, with no variations of spelling possible (and if so buy the other variation domain(s) as well). No hyphens either. A name that people can remember without writing down and share will get the most visibility. Bringing traffic to someone else’s parked domain or domain for sale will not accomplish much.  I even blogged about it when I created it.

I personally do not believe a .com is required for that…not that thesharoncareercoachingsite.com wouldn’t have been catchy. Oh wait, it wouldn’t be, but sharon.cc sure is…

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