Title case your words to help your target audience, consciously and subconsciously, easily recognize your brand or name in print or online.
What is Title Casing?
Title casing, for the purpose of this article, is capitalizing the first letter of each word (small or large) in your website addresses. For social network website addresses, this means title casing the distinctive portion of your name in the address.
Title casing makes it easy for people to recognize or read your name with little effort, consciously and unconsciously.
Here are a few examples:
- www.homesinlasvegas.com or www.HomesInLasVegas.com
- facebook.com/bobshomerenovations or facebook.com/BobsHomeRenovations
- twitter.com/sherryshomecare or twitter.com/SherrysHomeCare
- fb.com/growingsocialbiz or fb.com/GrowingSocialBiz
- linkedin.com/in/suecockburn or linkedin.com/in/SueCockburn
Note: For Facebook, you can use fb.com in place of facebook.com to tighten things up.
Title Casing, Help For The Brain?
When a website address or social network website address is not title cased, it requires conscious effort for us to read it to see what it says.
Title casing the first letter of each word causes each word to stand out and be distinctive, rather than blend in with all the other words.
When web addresses are title cased, our brains ‘see’ the distinctive portion of the addresses with virtually no effort. Each word stands out or pops.
Title Case Everything?
Yes, title case all website addresses, including social network website addresses and your domain name, when they appear:
- In text online (hyperlinked or not). For instance, emails, eNewsletters, blog articles, about information and descriptions, etc.
- In print marketing and correspondence. For instance, letters, invoices, flyers, business cards, posters, newsletters, magnetic car signage, billboards, newspaper or magazine ads, etc.
While you may not want (or have room) to list in print every social network you are active on everywhere, be sure to include the major ones. The ones most important for your business.
If you have social networks that you are rarely active on or inactive on, don’t include these. They won’t help your brand, and they may even hurt it.
Are Custom Social Network Web Addresses Needed?
Yes! Some social networks have you create a custom social network web address when you set up your account. Others do this for you.
Others do this for you. Usually, these preset web addresses are changeable. But, until they are changed they include a string of numbers or letters that make the web address long and difficult to use, like on business cards. They don’t represent your brand well and look unprofessional, even if they are title cased.
Almost all social networks allow you to create a uniquely branded website address. Most do this at the time you create your account, others after you have done so. While others may require time or something specific to occur before you are allowed to set up your custom web address.
The process for creating your uniquely branded website address varies with each social network.
To see how to create or change your custom Facebook page web address click here.
Custom/branded social network addresses are needed for title casing to work well for your business.
Where possible, create your usernames using title casing from the get go. This way, your address will pop in the browser bar when people visit your social network.
However, some social networks (LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.) don’t allow you to create a title cased website address. The more critical piece is to ensure that where your web addresses appear in text, online or in print, they are title cased.
Note: Social network addresses are not called such on most social networks. For instance, LinkedIn profiles go by the name Public Profile URL. Facebook pages and Twitter use Usernames.