For #ThrowBackThursday, a reposting of an article I wrote 3 years ago:

It seemed so simple to me.

ScLoHo.

Google it and 99.99% of the time you’ll find some reference to me.

That was the purpose of creating the word scloho.

But yesterday I was reminded that even some very good friends of mine don’t know how to pronounce it.

SCLOHO is a weird word I admit, and it has a unique origin which I’ll share in a moment.

But how do you pronounce scloho, or SCLOHO, or Scloho or ScLoHo?

When you want to say it, just break it into 2 syllables: Sclo and Ho

Start with the Sc sound like the beginning of Scott and add the Low sound, and you have the first syllable: Sclo.

The 2nd syllable is real easy Ho.  As in Ho, Ho, Ho, the sound of Santa laughing.

Sclo-Ho  Go ahead and say it out loud a couple of times.

And I’ll answer the other questions you have.

If it’s only 2 syllables, then why do you capitalize the L and H?

Why did you chose those letters and put them in that order?

Here’s the background and history:

My given name is Scott Howard.

If you Google  Scott Howard, there are plenty of other Scott Howards around ranging from doctors, to attorneys, to criminals.

There used to be a Scott Howard restaurant in California that was at the top of the Google Search Results, but they closed.

The dot com version of Scott Howard belongs to a real estate agent, also in California.

And there is a fictional Scott Howard, the main character from the movie Teen Wolf staring Michael J. Fox.

Back in the 1990’s when I was setting up my first email account I decided to create a unique name instead of something like ScottHoward24 or whatever Yahoo was suggesting.

If you take my first and last names and add my middle name and you get Scott Louis Howard.

Get creative and shorten it by only using the first two letters: Scott Louis Howard.

Throw away those extra letters and you wind up with: ScLoHo.

ScLoHo developed into an online persona.

A personal brand.

When I joined Twitter it was short enough to leave me with 134 more characters to play with when I tweet.

A few years ago when I decided to start my own marketing consulting firm, ScLoHo Marketing Solutions was born.

And I protected myself by registering ScLoHo on a few hundred social media sites and bought a few domains with ScLoHo too.

My wife and kids now call me ScLoHo, and you can too if you want.

Or I answer to Scott too.