Hashtag Heaven

Well, I learned one important bit of information at the Arkansas Women Bloggers Unplugged Conference. Everyone is on Twitter! The bloggers at the conference were in “hashtag heaven”!

Every time a new speaker came to the front of the room, that person’s Twitter handle was announced. All the bloggers were encouraged to use a certain # for tweets about the conference.

Wow! Was I feeling behind the times.  As I looked around the room, I seemed to be in the minority as a non-tweeter.

No, I don’t have a smart phone. I don’t have my ears pierced either. No tattoos. And I drive a sedan, not an SUV. I guess I march to the beat of my own drum.

The whole social media monster is much bigger than I realized. It’s not that I didn’t realize it. I just had never seen it in action like I did at the blog conference.

It took me a long time to get on Facebook. Since I got my Facebook page, I have enjoyed keeping up with people form the past.  I really like the first day of school when everyone posts pictures of their kids. I eventually even got a Facebook page for Pork Chop Tuesday.

I have a love-hate relationship with Pinterest. I love it because it is like getting hundreds of magazines on my computer every day. I hate it because it is like getting hundreds of magazines on my computer every day. It is really more of an addiction than anything–visual addiction.

So, Twitter. I had no clue how to “do” Twitter. Saturday night I chatted with my new room mates about all things Twitter.

They were all such sweet ladies who had just gone through a spider crisis when we met. (Something about a nest of baby brown recluse spiders hatching and scattering all over the cabin! We got a new cabin.)

Here we are just after breakfast. I was trying to show off my cool new tee shirt!
l-to-r me, Alicia, Jeanetta, Cyndi, and Katie.

They were all “tweeters”. I started asking questions and they tried to answer. Finally, I said, will one of y’all SHOW me what it looks like?! So Jeanetta and I sat down and surfed around her feed.

After encouraging words from my new friends, I decided to give it a try. They suggested I just “follow” for a while.

I came home and signed up for my Twitter account. My camp buddies immediately showed support by following me.

Twitter moves really fast! Today I saw a friend giving a “tweet-cast” while she was at a cooking demonstration!

I’m not sure how I like it just yet. You know, the common thread of the conference was to “be authentic” “be yourself”. Did I cave to peer pressure or am I exploring who “I might be”? The jury’s still out on that one. (Boy, I have used a lot of quotation marks in this post.)

If you would like to see my tweets, you can follow me @PorkChopTuesday. Don’t expect a lot of awe-inspiring tweets just yet.

I’d be happy to hear any suggestions you might have. Are you constantly plugged in or do you check your feed only a couple of times a day? Do I add #s to my blog posts? Do you follow just people you know or celebrities?