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How To Name Your Social Media Business + 20 Creative Name Ideas
Social media platforms, a concept that was unknown two decades ago, are an essential part of our everyday lives today. Even though a few global names dominate the market, it’s not too late to join the social network trend and bring something new to the industry.
According to the latest statistics, about 57% of the global population is on social media and spends an average of 145 minutes on these platforms daily. For generation Z, this number is 4.5 hours a day.This shows that the question isn’t whether you can get people to use your platform, but whether you can make them stay and consistently take up a slice of that daily user pie. YouTube and Facebook still dominate the online landscape overall, but young adults mostly hang out on Instagram, Snapchat, and the merely 5-year-old TikTok.
The success of a social media network is largely dependent on whether they can start trending early on and create a snowball effect with more users drawing in their immediate network. But this word-of-mouth phenomenon can only take off if your brand name is an absolute winner.
It doesn’t just need to convince users, but investors as well who can beef up your early-stage marketing efforts. A whopping 82% of investors say name recognition is an important factor for them when deciding on a brand to invest in.
To help you name your new social media platform, we recommend you try our free Social Media Business Name Generator above. This handy tool will give you plenty of creative ideas to use for your naming process to make sure you zero in on the best one.
We’ve also gathered the best advice on naming your social media business in this article, where we share some name ideas, analyze the names of the most successful platforms, and give you a step-by-step strategy to create your own.
Tutorial for Creating Social Media Business Name
20 Creative Name Ideas For Your Social Media Business
To start, let’s look at some name ideas we found with the help of our Social Media Business Name Generator. Perhaps, you’ll already start to see some common elements in these names that we’ll be explaining later on in this article.
- Nowcast
- Sociout
- Clickbay
- Jinx
- Hubsworth
- Fanfield
- Talkline
- ShareMe
- DigiCupid
- Biary
- Walkie
- Scoutwork
- Netspire
- WeShare
- Spectrum
- MateVidz
- RightTune
- Vivid
- Viraly
- BuzzTalk
20 More Social Media Name Ideas
- ReachMe
- Crowdly
- Inbound Media
- ShareMe
- DigiCupid
- Zoom
- Binary Diary
- WeShare
- Spectrum
- MateVidz
- Right Tune
- Vivid
- Outreach Media
- Viraly
- BuzzTalk
- Now Podcast
- ShareIt
- Social Shout
- ClickMe
- SnapTalk
Name Analysis Of The Biggest Social Media Platforms
There are currently 5 social media apps in the world today that have over a billion monthly active users. Here are the top 10 social networks globally.
| 1 | 2.7 billion | |
| 2 | YouTube | 2.3 billion |
| 3 | 2 billion | |
| 4 | 1.2 billion | |
| 5 | Weixin (WeChat) | 1.2 billion |
| 6 | TikTok | 689 million |
| 7 | 617 million | |
| 8 | Douyin | 600 million |
| 9 | Sina Weibo | 511 million |
| 10 | Telegram | 500 million |
Few people know that Facebook wasn’t the first social network Mark Zuckerberg launched. He experimented with a number of different versions including Coursematch, which allowed users to view people taking their degree, and Facemash, where you could rate people’s attractiveness.
He launched the now known Facebook in 2004 at Harvard University, where within 24 hours 1,200 students had signed up and after a month, half of the undergraduate population had a profile. The name was inspired by the face book directories distributed on campus listing students and university staff.
When Facebook went viral among the users of older generations too, it served as a space where people could find their old classmates and acquaintances as a sort of global “face book.”
Today, the platform ranks as #7 on Alexa of all sites on the internet and has grown into the #1 social network with games, dating, events, groups, listings, and much more.
YouTube
YouTube was founded in 2005 as a platform where people could upload amateur video content and share it with others. As smartphones became mainstream and their cameras more professional by each year, YouTube didn’t just become a top social network but created a new profession.
The highest-paid YouTubers earn more than $20 million in a year working as full-time content creators. The platform gave regular people who otherwise couldn’t succeed in the entertainment industry a way to showcase their talent and personality and make a living from creating videos on every topic you can possibly imagine from cooking, make-up, gaming, science, sports, music, and so on.
The name simply came from the idea that “you” can become the creator and make content previously only seen on TV, aka the “tube.” YouTube democratized broadcasting, living up to its name, and gave a voice to societal groups otherwise not heard.
WhatsApp was released in 2009 as an instant messaging app allowing its users to send texts, voice messages, videos, and other media to each other, or initiate voice and video calls. The app was acquired by Facebook in 2014 and later released WhatsApp Business due to the high demand from companies using WhatApp for their day-to-day business communications.
The name is as simple as the app itself: it came from the words “What’s Up?” aiming at casual texts sent to friends and the word “app” that makes it possible.
10 Key Strategies For Naming Your Social Media Business
Stay Young
The majority of social media users still come from Gen Z and Y age groups who prefer an easy-going communication style from companies. LinkedIn and other professional networking platforms might use a more mature language suitable for business discussions, but still, keep it informal.
The younger your target audience and the more casual your platform, the more slang and humor you can introduce in your name.
Count To Two
Have you noticed that almost all social networks have a name consisting of 2 syllables? Even the outliers like Instagram and Telegram have names with a pleasant rhythm and easy pronunciation.
Your social media business name should be as easy as one-two-three so that anyone can remember it (despite our limited attention span in this day and age), that’s the only way it can create a word-of-mouth trend and spread like wildfire.
Name The Difference
Let’s be honest, social media platforms that don’t introduce an interesting new feature or concept on the market at this point are subject to failure. The competition is high, and you need to give a sound reason for your users to abandon the platforms they’ve been accustomed to and start building their follower base on your new network.
Hint at the key premise of your app in the name to trigger their curiosity. Snapchat did that as they introduced the concept of disappearing content. Onlyfans created a space for exclusive content celebrities, artists, and influencers can share with their fans.
It doesn’t matter if later on, other social apps will copy your feature, it’s only a testament to your success. You can also expand to other features like Facebook did and keep the name because by then you’ll have a solid user base who’s going to pull in their connections.
Engage A Niche
Narrowing down your audience to a niche with specific interests doesn’t mean you can’t go viral. One of the primary factors that connect people and make them form lasting bonds with each other is discovering common interests.
Have you ever noticed how exhilarated people feel at a sports event with technically no stakes in the outcome of the game? That’s because interests like sports or music can create a magnetic sense of belonging. Sportifico and Bandcamp are great examples of connecting these niches.
Don’t Repeat The Trend
If I ask you which social network comes to your mind from the color blue, red, or yellow, you don’t need to think twice to name Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat. That’s because these apps have built such a strong brand association that you recognize them from a thousand miles.
If you use “face” or “snap” in your brand name, people will think of another dominant platform and won’t see you as unique. Avoid any similarities with popular social apps in your brand name and logo and aim for creating a new category.
Mix & Match
Another thing you might notice from our business name ideas and our list of top social media platforms is that they all chose mosaic words as their brand name. Unique name combinations work like a puzzle and engage their listener’s mind, hence they’re more likely to be remembered.
This is probably why 72% of the best brand names are made-up words or acronyms. Combining different words descriptive of your brand also makes it less likely for your name to be already taken.
Know Your Market
If you think going global is the only way to make your social media network grow huge, think again. Weixin (WeChat), a social media app used in China is #5 on the global list with 1.2 billion users which is more than one-sixth of the world’s population.
Vkontakte, a social network popular in Russian-speaking countries, has 66.6 million monthly active users. The word Vkontakte is short for the Russian expression “to be in contact,” which wouldn’t mean as much to foreign users. This shows that you can still get a bite of local markets if you know how to speak their language (not just literally).
Use Our Smart Name Generator
Instead of sitting in front of a blank page trying to come up with ideas, why not make your brainstorming process easier with our smart Social Media Business Name Generator? List down all the key features of your platform and the words you associate with it.
Then enter them in the name generator and start shortlisting the best ideas you can work from. It’s completely free to use and it will surely give you a headstart.
Run A Test
Choosing a brand name can be highly subjective. You need to make sure that it clicks with the majority of people who are going to use it. The easiest way to do that is to run a survey among your potential early adopters and ask them whether they would sign up to a social media platform with your shortlisted names.
Another way to gather qualitative data on your name choice is to let people guess what website your potential name refers to. If most of them guess a social media site or something close, you know you’re on the right track.
Make Sure It’s New
Last but not least, double-check if the name has already been taken by another business. The last thing you want for your launch is for people to associate your brand with another business or get into costly lawsuits. Do your research, and make sure you have the domain name available for your selected name.
Why The Name Of Your Social Network Matters
Social networks normally operate with two types of business models. The first one is a freemium price structure with most features being available for free and other premium features offered with a subscription at a low price point.
The other common business model is selling the data of users and displaying ads for them on the platform. Both of them require a large user base for it to work.
This means that the only way to make a social media business profitable is by engaging a high volume of users in a way that they keep using your app actively and consistently every month (no wonder why we’re so addicted to social media).
Since these platforms are partially built on fulfilling our need for connection, our loyalty to them also depends on how many of our friends and family are using them. Particularly the ones who are close to us or people we consider “cool.”
In order to create that network effect and exponential growth (more people pulling in more people multiplying your users), you need to make it easy for them to:
A. Remember your name
B. Start using your app
Just think of how many times someone recommended a website to you and you never looked it up because you forgot the name. Meanwhile, the name TikTok likely burned in your memory long before you started using it.
Putting conscious effort into choosing a name for your social media network is worth the time, so consider as many names as possible.
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