#LifeLessons

Using hashtags on Twitter

Definition: The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. It was created organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages.

Using hashtags to categorize Tweets by keyword:
• People use the hashtag symbol # before a relevant keyword or phrase (no spaces) in their Tweet to categorize those Tweets and help them show more easily in Twitter Search.
• Clicking on a hashtagged word in any message shows you all other Tweets marked with that keyword.
• Hashtags can occur anywhere in the Tweet – at the beginning, middle, or end.
• Hashtagged words that become very popular are often Trending Topics.


Using hashtags correctly:
• If you Tweet with a hashtag on a public account, anyone who does a search for that hashtag may find your Tweet
• Don't #spam #with #hashtags. Don't over-tag a single Tweet. (Best practices recommend using no more than 2 hashtags per Tweet.)
• Use hashtags only on Tweets relevant to the topic.


So, there you have it. Not a bad blog if I do say so myself!

Fine. I’ll try and write some of my own thoughts on the subject…

When Pat said he was working on a blog about hashtags I couldn’t quite figure out what he wanted to get out there, but then I started noticing more and more how products, television shows, and users on Facebook were using #. I’m not really that up on Twitter, but from what I’ve been hearing more and more people are using it. For our business we started a Facebook page a few years ago to keep people up-to-date with what’s going on and I think it has really helped our business, but when discussing it with someone recently they told me that we should really have a Twitter account too as most young people are using that more now. First of all, how dare they talk to me about “young people” as if I’m no longer in that category?! Gall Darn rat scallions. Secondly, I think it’s time for me to figure out this whole Twitter thing.

If you haven’t read Pat’s blog, cycle back through our list of blogs here and find “#.” When I first read it, I was extremely confused, but then I read it aloud to my brother…and that’s when it really shined! Is “shined” right, or is it shone?! When Twitter first came out I was talking with one of our fellow bloggers about it and we were trying to decide what the past tense of “tweet” was…they figured it was “twat.” I probably should have done more research on Twitter…

The # Blog that Pat wrote really did nail the use of it in a lot of ways, and the information I posted above helps define how to use it for those of us who really have no clue, but for my blog I decided not to fill it with sentences using #sentence, but what I found when I searched for certain things using the # symbol. The most obvious one for the writers of this blog would be #LifeLessons, so that’s what I centered a lot of my searching on.

I first searched #bananadaiquiris, and surprisingly…there are quite a few people who use this hashtag, I think we deserve some royalties! But most of those were along the lines of how people had just got to town and couldn’t wait to meet up with “Kathy!” #bananadaiquiris…apparently there are not a lot of men confident enough to saddle up to a bar and order the most delicious cocktail known to man, or woman! But, as usual, I digress.

I also had asked all of our faithful readers to tweet us using the #BDandLL or just @BDandLL…turns out you are all a bunch of assholes that don’t really care about our blog…or our feelings. I’m over it, as long as you keep reading!

So, I came to search #LifeLessons. I “re-tweeted” some of the best ones I found during this search so you can check those out on our twitter feed which can be found under “Banana Daiquiri’s on the Go” to your right here. But a lot of these were links to other articles such as “33 life lessons learned by my 33rd year,” and different series where someone would write about the life lessons learned from different television shows or movies, which are great but what I was looking for were posts from individuals. Twitter is supposed to be a feed for people to get out what’s happening right now in your life, and most life lessons take a while to sink in. None of the articles on life lessons learned from television shows or movies were done about currently airing shows, they were done about shows that we watched when we were younger, they ended, and now we’ve had some time to reflect upon them. The point is that life lessons aren’t learned in the moment, they’re learned upon our reflection of the past. Once we open our eyes to learning these life lessons, I think it means we’re ready to move forward from them. But some lessons such as not to shower after being maced, are instantaneous!

We’ve had our Twitter account open for something like two years now and we only have about 150 tweets or so, not a lot when you think about how much truth and knowledge we’ve dropped on all of you through our blog here, but we’re just figuring out this Twitter thing, Pat obviously has the best handle on it, so we may have to rely mostly on him for life lessons on the go, but as we reflect back on some of our past blogs and look towards our future ones, hopefully we’ll have some quick life lessons we can shoot your way in 150 words or less!

One of the articles I found while searching #LifeLessons was, first of all way over my head, but secondly, it made some awesome points. It talked about how we often live our lives centered too much on the past or the future and don’t spend enough time living in the now. A lot of us, myself included, look at our past as a way to figure out our future…and that doesn’t always work. Sometimes it’s best to leave our past in the past, and although we can always benefit from a plan on what we want our future to be like, the saying goes, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” So, live in the now, drink banana daiquiris, make mistakes, learn from them and move on. It takes time, and we may need to live in the past for a while to get over some of the crap life throws our way, but don’t miss out on too much of the stuff that’s happening right now. I know I’ve wasted enough time thinking about things I can’t change, and planning for futures that may never come, and from reflecting on this I know that I’m happiest when I’m living for the day, the now. Que sera, sera. Carpe Diem, and all of that! Tonight, we’re going to drink too many Banana Daiquiris, go clubbing and make some mistakes. In a week or so, when I’ve had some time to learn that I’m too old to club, I’ll let you know what #LifeLessons I learned!

Also, I drive school bus and I’ve decided that it’s never too early to start learning life lessons, we’ll hold the Banana Daiquiris…but I’m going to put a new life lesson on the wall of my bus for the kids to see every day and also have a box where they can leave their own life lessons that might make the wall as well. We have a poster on our wall at our business that my mom had found a long time ago that says, “I’ve Learned…” at the top and then has all of these responses from individuals of all different ages, maybe that’s where we got the idea for this blog in the first place?! But I will tweet some of the lessons learned from the kids riding my bus…that is if they aren’t like my friends that read this blog and actually respond! Want to drop some life lessons on our youth with me? Tweet us @BDandLL or comment on this blog!