Controlling the message: Why you probably don’t need to worry about .SUCKS

Let’s talk about “Obamacare.” Not the broad, sweeping health insurance program in general, but the word itself. It was originally meant to be derisive, painting the Affordable Care Act as the result of overreaching Executive power. At one point a Democratic Congresswoman objected to its use on Capitol Hill. But then something happened: it gradually took on a whole new life as a universal and sometimes affectionate term for the medical overhaul. The hashtag #ILikeObamacare trended when the bill was challenged in Supreme Court, and President Obama even started using it in his own speeches.

This is a classic example of one side making the best of an attack. They completely redefined it, and now they don’t need to get a .SUCKS.

Sure, if you think Obamacare sucks, you can get a .SUCKS. It might be a hit. The point here is that proponents of Obamacare do not need to register .SUCKS defensively, and neither do you.

Defensive domain registering has been a thing for a long time. It made the news when the .XXX registry reserved Vatican.xxx from being registered, and then implored other institutions to follow suit. Even bigger was Taylor Swift, Inc. buying her name with New Domains .PORN and .ADULT to keep anything unsavory from being attached to her name.

So why not defend yourself with your own .SUCKS?

There’s a very good chance your business and reputation aren’t facing the wave of opposition that Obamacare did. But from the hurricane of health care hype comes an age-old yet important concept: keep it positive. At Name.com we’ve discovered that when we’re not posting regularly on social media, someone will do it for us. That is, that the negativity will rise up over the silence and flood our social channels. When we’re talking about what we do and how we do it, then people engage in positive discourse. If somebody encounters an issue, then the dialogue is more civil and almost always ends in a happier, more engaged client.

How do you get people to pay attention to your message? You keep the conversation about what you and your business can do for customer, the visitor, the follower and friend. You engage, share, comment and post a dizzying collage of transparency. You get a domain name that they can remember. You can put your good deeds and conversational platforms on a .SOCIAL (much like the Vatican has), your entire positive message on a .ROCKS, or use any number of the now hundreds of domain names to control the conversation. And then if someone does get your name in a .SUCKS (which, to be honest, seems pretty flattering,) you’re prepared to overcome it. Or altogether embrace it and turn it into your best frenemy.

But you don’t need to get a .SUCKS.

Unless you do it ironically. That might be cool. There are also those amazing opportunities to put terrible things in their place: CANCER.SUCKS. crime.sucks. thisprequel.sucks. But you do not suck. Unless you’re a vacuum business or the like. Now you can suck more than ever.