Twitter Account names for Fictional Characters

[EthanStanislawski]

I'm consulting for a web series that features ~6 well established characters, and I would like to establish a twitter stream for each character before the start of the new season in a few months. The characters all have first names but no last name, and the web series's name (Naked In A Fishbowl) is too long, and the acronym NIAF is not well-branded yet. What would be the best way to pick Twitter handles for cast members (BonnieNIAF, Jean NIAF? BonnieFishbowl? Bonnie_NIAF?)

[damionbrown]

JoelHit, the article you link has precious little if anything to do with what Ethan is asking.

It sounds to me Ethan as though it's more to do with branding and practicaility -- albeit within the confines of the max character length that Twitter allows in a username. So the question reall is, do you want to be pushing the idea of an acronym in order to unite the character accounts -- or will there be enough recognition fed through from the web series itself?

I'd be inclined to suggest everyone sits down and has a good ol' brainstorm about this. For example, might there be a way for the series to feed its audience to one character's Twitter feed, and then via @ replies and mentions within that feed, spin off and "discover" new characters?

What I guess I'm saying is, you've got a great opportunity to explore methods of storytelling as well as marketing. That, to me, is more pertinent than the idea of tagging all characters with an acronym.

If pushed, I'd say that appending "fishbowl" to each character's handle would be a nice and sticky way to tag them, based solely on resonance (a fancy schmancy way of saying, "it sounds funny, so do it")

Bear in mind that the shorter the username the more you can say in a retweetable tweet. So keeping the number of char's in a username as low as possible is an approach that also contains some wisdom.

Sounds like a fun project anyhow! Best of luck with it!

[RyanOD]

One thing to keep in mind here is the amount of work required to manage a Twitter channel well. To keep a single channel fresh takes a lot of time. Trying to keep seven channels fresh (the six characters + the channel for the series) is going to be a ton of work. The last thing you want is for your social media channels to reflect poorly on the series. Social media channels that go dormant due to lack of resources never reflect well on a brand.

That being said, would it make more sense to roll all the characters under the nakedinfishbowl account?

If you choose to move forward with Twitter accounts for every character, I think I would opt for [CHARACTER NAME]_Fishbowl or [CHARACTER NAME]Fishbowl (Bonnie_Fishbowl or BonnieFishbowl, for example). Here is my reasoning:

1. NIAF is already owned and somewhat branded. You probably don't want people appending @NIAF to posts about your series.
2. [CHARACTER NAME]_Fishbowl or [CHARACTER NAME]Fishbowl is easy to remember.

Good luck! This is a tricky one...