From Apple’s unmistakable style to McDonald’s fries, a strong brand experience starts with consistency. Yet while McDonald’s restaurants have a signature scent, an increasing proportion of customer interactions take place online, and brands can’t rely on customers to follow their noses. In 2025, it’s more important than ever to own your brand identity across multiple digital spaces, from social media to alternative domain extensions.
Building a consistent digital experience is crucial in generating trust and credibility, as well as brand expansion. Your domain name and social media handles are the source of your digital identity, so choose them wisely.
Case Study: Buffer’s Journey to Buffer.com
In an increasingly competitive digital environment, brands need to own their niche. When you brush up too close to your digital neighbors, your brand is watered down, and customer service is damaged.
In 2014, customers of social media management tool Buffer started contacting the wrong company with customer support enquiries. As Buffer didn’t own Buffer.com, customers were confused about where to find the brand: this lead to poor customer service and an inconsistent brand experience.
For Buffer, this even initiated the long journey to take control of the exact-match domain name Buffer.com. They learned they needed to dominate their digital brand and ensure that customers could find them everywhere and anywhere they looked.
In today’s world, that means owning multiple iterations of your domain name across different top-level domains (TLDs) as well as strategically planning your social media handles. Let’s dive in.
Domain Name: Your Digital First Impression
Domain name has a strong impact on both how new customers find and perceive your brand. To optimize both trust and discoverability, your domain name should ideally be an exact match of your business name, such as brand.com, or brand.ai.
This can’t happen by accident, as many strong, brandable business names are already taken. Domain names are in short supply, so naming your business without considering domain is putting the cart before the horse. Validate potential domain names based on the availability of matching domains.
Alongside the naming process, consider which domain extension to pair your name with. The gold standard domain extension of .com comes with the most credibility, but .com domains are in short supply and can be unaffordable on early-stage startup budgets.
There are two paths to choose if a .com exact match is unavailable or out of budget. You can opt for an add-on word domain, such as getbrand.com or brandapp.com, to bring the .com extension within reach. However, add-on words harm trust for 78% of consumers. Add-on words are rarely a long-term solution and often require upgrades as you grow.
Rather than compromising brand integrity with an add-on word, explore alternative domain extensions for premium digital addresses. Proven extensions must be industry-appropriate and include .io for tech brands, .ai for genuinely AI-first startups and .co for generic use. Matching a strong, short business name with a recognized extension for your niche lays the foundation for a strong and consistent brand identity online.
When to Expand Your Brand With Additional Domains
In an expanding digital world, alternative extensions aren’t just alternatives. They can also be used to build additional spaces that extend your brand identity across the web.
Given that some domain extensions are strongly associated with particular industries or niches, you can use these extensions on top of your primary domain to emphasize elements of your brand. For example, Hubspot redirects Hubspot.org, an extension mostly associated with non-profits, to its Sustainability page, highlighting the good it does in the world. Google.ai takes users to a page exploring how Google is using AI to change the world.
Similarly, less popular extensions can be used for specific brand purposes, such as disney.plus redirecting to disneyplus.com. By owning every relevant iteration of your domain name, you ensure customers can always find their way back to you.
Other brands, including Amazon and Google, use country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) as the platform for their location or language-specific sites. These could redirect, such as how Nike.mx returns users to Nike.com/mx, or stand alone as regionally tailored platforms for local audiences.
For brands with a global presence or the ambition of industry dominance, owning multiple domain extensions doesn’t just optimize traffic and customer discovery. It also presents a ubiquitous brand identity that reinforces trust and credibility, and makes you the number one choice among your target audience.
Picking Social Media Handles
Whether checking the opening times of a local cafe or learning about an upcoming event, consumers assume that social media pages are the place to go for up-to-date information. What’s more, on social media, you can be part of the conversation with your customers, really show off your brand’s personality and build strong relationships with your users. Your profiles must be easy to find and immediately recognizable, to be trusted.
With 4.8 billion social media users out there, exact matches are very difficult to come by. In fact, they’re almost impossible to find for any short, memorable and brandable business name. Due to this, customers neither expect nor require brands to have an exact match handle on social media, and because users rarely visit social profiles through URLs, you can trust sophisticated algorithms to show your account to appropriate users, with or without exact match handles. However, that doesn’t mean anything goes.
Choosing Add-On Words for Social Channels
While add-on words harm trust in domain names, they’re almost non-negotiable in the world of social media. Buying and selling social media accounts, such as on X or Instagram, goes against the platform’s Terms of Service, meaning you may have to get creative.
Keep your social media handle simple by using an add-on word with your brand name, such as hey, hello, get, app, official, or HQ. Your social media presence plays a huge role in your brand identity; thus, your username is a significant component of that identity. When choosing an add-on word, make sure it fits in with the wider picture of your brand. Hey+name is a common choice for relaxed and approachable brands with a strong conversational presence on social media, while official+name or name+HQ are good choices for brands with a more serious, informational, or sophisticated online presence.
Whatever you choose, consistency is a key consideration: is your Instagram name available on X, Facebook, and wherever else you need to meet your audience? Consider registering accounts at growing platforms such as Bluesky or those without your target audience (say, TikTok, if you’re not marketing to younger consumers) to future-proof your brand as you grow.
Startups Need to Own Their Digital Identity Everywhere
Digital dominance looks different for startups with varying ambitions and intentions for global reach. International, industry-defining brands must monopolize their identity, acquiring multiple domain extensions and ensuring ubiquity across social channels. Smaller or local brands can be strategic about the corners they carve for themselves, balancing budget with brand recognition.
Either way, building and owning your digital identity plays an important role in the relationship you build with customers. Buying available domains and choosing social media handles should always influence your business naming strategy. Otherwise, you’ll compromise on brand identity and allow brand dilution as consumers encounter other entities with your name.
