Forum Branding & Short Names

[Cedric]

I wanted to start a discussion today about forum branding and short names. Do you have a short name for your forum, and if so, do you actively market it as part of your brand?

For example, a forum's name could be "Tech Talk Central," and refer to it as TTC. An incorporated TTC into the logo and marketing materials, and it encourages members to use the short name when talking about the forum. A short name is easier to remember and makes a brand more memorable overall.

As for Admin Junkies, we don't officially call it AJ. I may refer to it something in a direct message, but will always write out the entire name online.

I know not all forums have short names, and some may feel that it's not necessary or doesn't fit with their brand. I'm curious to know what your experiences have been. Do you have a short name for your forum, and if so, how do you incorporate it into your branding efforts? If not, why did you choose to go without a short name?

Let's share our experiences and insights on this topic and see what we can learn from each other!

 

[Strawberry]

I'm not opposed to shortening forum names to make it easier to type out if you're referring to it in a post. To be honest, I probably am guilty of using AJ in the past, it's just quicker to type particularly in an introduction thread and you're welcoming someone to the forum. I would probably only shorten it in a thread on a different forum if the name had already been brought up previously in the topic. So for example, if the thread was about Admin Junkies, I would maybe use AJ as everyone will know what I'm referring to, or if I'm quoting a post that directly mentions Admin Junkies, I might use AJ in my reply as the poster will be aware of what forum I'm talking about.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I abbreviate Video Game Challenges as VG Challenges. (I would abbreviate it to VGC but Video Game Chronicles uses that acronym. :V) I will sometimes abbreviate forum promotion as just "FP" and even admin junkies as "AJ" in some cases.

 

[Arantor]

It's varied over the years, but what I find is that people do tend to coalesce around a common shorthand and it isn't always predictable what that will be.

Going for initialisms is very common (such as AJ for here) but sometimes you end up with mutant shortenings, e.g. Simple Machines Forum -> SMF, their home site is simplemachines.org which is often shortened to sm.org.

If you have specific plans to push a certain shorthand (such as the aforementioned VG Challenges rather than VGC) it always seems best to seed that yourself and be consistent about shortening to that rather than letting the community settle on one organically.

 

[ClicketyKat]

Every single forum where I'm on staff is shortened to the initials of the site name. It makes it so much easier when communicating with other staff members to use the initials, especially when typing on a platform such as Slack. Even when greeting new members in their into threads, I find it easier to go with the initials, just in case they see someone else refer to it in another thread and wonder what they're talking about.

Some forums have rather lengthy names and typing it out takes too long. Maybe autofill will eventually handle that for me?

 

[Reverie]

I always tried to have a one word name. If it was two words we typically abbreviated it in discussion. However in general advertising I branded it with the full name.

 

[Heatman]

Even if a forum I'm on doesn't have an official Short Name, I always give it one that I call it. I have called AdminJunkies AJ on multiple occasions and it feels so easy and cool 😎. Also, there's this gaming forum Gaminglatest.com, I refer to it as GL, Referralindexforum.com gets RIF from me and it's kinda part of the official Short Name for the forum now. I call Forum Promotion FP 😜.. I think that's it's official short name too.