Getting The Most of Twitter Mentions with CamelCasing
Standing out from the stream
When you’re not recognized as you want it can be the worst. On Twitter though when you’re recognized as you want it can be for the worse. If you’re not CamelCasing your Twitter handle, you might be your own worst enemy…
Okay it’s probably not that dramatic, but it is like setting up people to mispronounce your name. Wouldn’t you have done everything you could to have your high school driver’s ed teacher call you “Watanabe,” not “Wannabe,” if you could have. That’s what CamelCasing can do for you on Twitter.
What’s CamelCasing? It’s what it looks like or as Wikipedia says:
…the practice of writing compound words or phrases such that each word or abbreviation begins with a capital letter… — Wikipedia
In CamelCasing an uppercase letter acts as a space. The reason engineers use CamelCasing is a space would break identifiers. It is for the same reason that you can’t use a space in a twitter handle. You can see it everywhere in our code for First Draft.
CamelCasing also make words, names, and brands stand out when skimming through endless tweets.
It’s why the world’s most recognizable brand writes their handle @CocaCola, not @cocacola. See the difference?
It works for names too:
@NoahKagan ≠ @noahkagan
@JoeRogan ≠ @joerogan
@ElonMusk ≠ @elonmusk
Twitter will do its best to make sure your handle appears as you want it to. If you entered your handle unCamelCased Twitter’s autopredict converts it to uncamelcased. For example, if a follower starts out CamelCasing your handle, but then accepts the aut0-predicted handle. Your handle ends up uncamelcased. The reverse positive situation ending in CamelCased is true too.
It’s like this real life example from a few months back. I tweeted about looking forward to Eric Ries upcoming book. I typed out the tweet about The Leader’s Guide, but then hit tab to accept Twitter’s suggestion…
Eric Ries handle went from being entered as @EricRies to @ericries…
The same would’ve happened for Eric Rientstra, shown in the autopredict above, but not for Eric Riehl.
This happens because in Eric’s account settings his handle is entered as ericries, not EricRies. As shown here:
It’s an easy fix to go from a name that might be interpreted as @EriCries to a concrete @EricRies. The fix is simply entering your brand’s or your username the same, but CamelCased.
There’s none of the risk associated with changing handles in this case. No risk of old tweets pointing to a now empty account. No risk of lost followers. No risk of friends and fans mismentioning you after the change. That’s because @EricRies is the same as @ericries, with no risk of misinterpretation.
That’s the simple solution to give your brand a leg up on standing out from the stream.
(Have a friend that could use this tip? Please Tweet or Recommend it below)
🙏
