Patrick Barbanes

Should You Spell Your Name Wrong On Twitter?

This post is about Twitter, and the spelling and misspelling of one’s name – and why you might want to intentionally create a Twitter account with your name spelled incorrectly.

Let me give you an example.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with him, Ed Bennett (@EdBennett) is to healthcare in social media what Ringo was to the Beatles: the steady backbeat to some of the best things happening at the time – music in the case of the Beatles; adoption of social media in the case of healthcare.

Ed is the Director of Web Strategy at the University of Maryland Medical System in Baltimore. I spoke with him by phone recently and he’s as humble as he is knowledgeable.

He’s one of the driving forces behind a lot of what’s going on out there. (I hope he agrees with my description, or I’m in a lot of trouble. He might want to be John or George. Or even…Paul.)

Just recently, he gave a presentation on the role of social media in healthcare marketing during the #totalimpact conference. In October, he’ll be part of the American Hospital Association’s annual Connections 2009 Conference, in a workshop called Patients in the Digital Age: Key Tactics for Taking Your Marketing Online.

So, people seek Ed out. Nice problem to have. Problem, because sometimes people seeking him will make a very common spelling error: typing his name as Ed Bennet (one t) instead of the correct Ed Bennett (two t’s). I even saw a tweet during the #totalimpact hashtag conversation on Twitter, in which his name was spelled with only one t.

Now, if someone goes to twitter, wants to Follow him, and types in Ed Bennet (one t), well…they’d have trouble finding him, right? Twitter would show a list of other people whose name might be spelled Bennet, or show a result that no one could be found with that name.

So Ed did a smart thing: he created TWO Twitter accounts – one with his name spelled correctly and one spelled INcorrectly.

He uses the account with his name spelled correctly, of course, for his tweeting.

But here’s what you’ll get if you search for him as Ed Bennet with one t:

This – as the beer commercials used to say – is “Brilliant!” He has only two tweets here, as you can see: in reverse chronological order, the first letting people know they’ve found the wrong spelling, and the second directing them to his correct account name. Anyone finding this account on Twitter will immediately know what to do: ignore this account, and go find Ed using his real name!

So, if you know that your name is often misspelled in a certain way, you might consider learning from one of the best, and doing what Ed Bennett did. Because even on Twitter sometimes, it don’t come easy…

5 Comments to Should You Spell Your Name Wrong On Twitter?

Ed Bennett
September 19, 2009

Patrick, Thank you for the fun post – I enjoyed being Ringo for a few days on Twitter. Of course this also applies to organizations. Grab various versions of your name and point them to your main account – before someone else does!

pbarbanes
September 20, 2009

Ed – Yes, you’re right, it does apply also to organizations – very similar as someone else pointed out to me to the registering of domain names that are various misspellings or versions of a company’s name.

But did I see you say that nobody wants to be Yoko (in my eyes, a real artist and pioneer)?! LOL

Leave a comment