#

Do you recall my new year's resolution from 2012? It was to tweet more! Well, it is all too sad to report, I have a total of 24 tweets. #pathetic. I seriously didn't have anything to tweet about. Do you really want to know if I'm painting my toes hot pink or about to take a bite of a chicken sandwich? No, I didn't think so. Plus, I didn't have any motivation, until now!

I work for IBM, in case you didn't know, and we are in a competition to get the most followers on twitter over a period of two months. People, I have over 100 followers and 72 tweets in just two months. It's because I have something to talk about...#cloud #ibm #ibmpulse #apm. It might not interest you, but if it does you can find me @cmfrancese (I still use my maiden name at work!). I'm not winning the competition, but it's fun! The grand prize is an iPad!

Now to my point, the all too famous hashtag! I'm finally getting up-to-speed on twitter, I'm trying to learn the appropriate uses of the @ and # symbols and I'm relying on Hoot Suite to shorten my urls. It's a learning process. And then of course, I see the # on Instagram and Facebook. I guess it applies there too? To me, it's like saying a word that everyone is using. For example, in the 90s the word of choice might have been "totally." So today, on twitter, I would make sure and use #totally. Not sure if this is how the rest of the world sees it, but it works for me.

What will they think of next?

If you have some twitter tips, I'd love to hear them!

Christina Francese

@cmfrancese

IBMer, mom of a 3 year old, Triathlete, Austinite living in San Antonio, marketing, cloud, social media, APM (opinions are my own)