Tag Archives: Twitter

Life’s Little Instructions

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One thing I am not is a quotes guy. As I have explained extensively, I find quotes both overused and corny. I am not one to recite them, write them down, or share them over social media. However, I do have one exception when it comes to quotes. For seven years, I have had a desk page-a-day calendar based on the famous “Life’s Little Instructions”.

Before I dive into story time, let me educate those out there who are not familiar with “Life’s Little Instructions”. Basically, the concept of “Life’s Little Instructions” is to educate a person in one or two sentences about the lighter aspects of life. Some of the instructions are helpful, some are funny, some are witty, and some are just downright stupid. To illustrate what these instructions are like, check out the entries from the past five days: Politeness is called for even when you dislike someone (3-6) / Don’t go looking for trouble; it will soon find you (3-5) / Give people a second chance, never a third (3-4) / Laugh more. Frown less (3-2 and 3-3) / Don’t finish other people’s sentences (3-1) . Get the idea? Okay, let’s move on.

This is an example of what a daily instruction looks like.

This is an example of what a daily instruction looks like.

Every year for Christmas for as long as I can remember, my mom would always buy the three of us kids a page-a-day calendar. For me, themes ranged from this day in sports to bible verses to Jeopardy trivia. But that one Christmas seven years ago my mom decided to try something a little different and got me the “Life’s Little Instructions” calendar. As a freshman in college, the little bits of advice helped to keep me in line while also giving me a laugh. Each morning, like never before with my previous calendars, I looked forward to ripping the previous day off to see what the new instruction on the new day said. I enjoyed these instructions so much that as the next Christmas came around, I asked my mom to get me the same themed calendar.

The evolving then started to begin. When I got my second “Life’s Little Instructions” calendar six years ago, I decided that I wanted to share the daily wisdom. Because texting had just started to pick up steam, I used that avenue to spread the advice. Because she bought me the calendar, because I knew she would appreciate the little sayings, and because it was a great way to communicate with her on a daily basis, I started to text my mom the daily “Life’s Little Instructions” tidbit each morning. Although it started out a little rough namely because my mom did not truly understand text messaging and because the texts arrived at 4:30 a.m. for her (during my college years I would get up to work out at 5:30 a.m. and in Montana we are one hour ahead of Washington State), she quickly started to enjoy them. Not only were the instructions good, but it also let her know that her son was okay and up and ready for the day. Presently, my mom is still the first one to get my “Life’s Little Instructions” piece of advice each morning.

It is me with my very special calendar!

It is me with my very special calendar!

Seven years ago I started to get the “LLI” calendar, six years ago I started texting them to my mom, and then five years ago another development occurred…I got a Twitter account! Even with my disdain for sharing quotes on social media, I went ahead and started tweeting out the little instructions each day. I did this because the quotes are really not quotes in the first place…they are instructions. I simply just put quotation marks around the advice to let my followers know they are not my own words. Secondly, I wanted to do something that kind of gave my Twitter account its own special twist. Just like how I sign off each night with “Don’t Blink”, sharing the daily “LLI” gave my account more personality. Thirdly, I just wanted to tweet them because many of them are actually useful while others provide a good laugh. So, it just seemed right to start that little tradition and five years later it is still going strong.

The sharing of my page-a-day calendar has branched off once more since Twitter. Fifteen months ago I got an Instagram account. Knowing I needed to do something to make me constantly update my account, I decided to take a picture of my calendar each day. After I text my mom the daily advice and after I tweet it out, I Instagram it. I take a picture of the specific date, apply the “rise” filter to it, caption it with “Life’s Little Instruction for (month, day)”, and then upload it. I never realized how many people would actually enjoy the Instagram version of “Life’s Little Instructions”.

While my mom responds to about 30% of the “LLI” texts I send her and while I will occasionally get a reply or a retweet when I tweet out the instruction, nothing compares to the response I get from sharing it on Instagram. In particular, nothing compares to the response I get from females about them.

Each day on Instagram I can always count on several “likes” and at least a couple comments on the advice for that particular date (mostly all from women). I have had girls text me and ask “Where do you get those pictures of advice from? They are so cute. Do you know where I can get my own?” Today a friend of mine messaged me and she asked if I could picture message the advice I shared on Instagram earlier this morning. About a few times each week, someone will come up to me and say that they look forward to checking Instagram each morning to see what the instruction will say for that day. If it is a weekend and somehow I forget to upload the day’s instruction right away, people will check in with me to make sure I am okay…and then tell me to get it up ASAP.

Where my calendar sits in my room.

Where my calendar sits in my room.

So what does it say about me that I like something just as much as a bunch of females? Well, I rather not think about that. Instead, I just find it cool that I have started a little tradition that a lot of people enjoy and even depend on. A calendar that my mom purchases for me each year for about $10 yields a much higher return on investment than I could ever calculate. Thank you for sharing with me “Life’s Little Instructions” each morning. Keep the reaction coming! Don’t Blink.

15,000/1,500 Club

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This morning I hit a huge milestone for myself when I simultaneously sent out my 15,000th Tweet and my 1,500th Instagram picture.

This morning I pulled off my biggest social media milestone to date as I managed to hit the 15,000 Tweet mark and the 1,500 Instagram mark at the exact same time. It was truly a day of celebration for me as I managed to coincide these two accomplishments with one tap of the “share” button on my phone, putting a successful end to a personal campaign that I started to eye last week.

At around this time one week ago, I became aware that I was approaching my 15,000th Tweet and my 1,500th Instagram. Upon this realization I immediately thought it would be pretty cool to hit both of these marks at the same time. However, a week ago I was at around 14,800 tweets and 1,425 Instagram pictures, thus I was 200 and 75 posts away respectively from the big milestones. It was at this point where I decided that I would just continue to post as usual to both Twitter and Instagram, knowing that by going at my regular pace I would naturally come upon both marks at around the same time.

My strategy roughly worked. On Monday of this week, I found myself about 20 Tweets out from 15,000 and 25 Instagram pictures out from 1,500. Well, if you know me, even though I Instagram like it is going out of style, I am more known for my prolific Tweeting. Also, Tweeting in general is just something that is much easier to do than posting pictures to Instagram. For most people who utilize both social media services, one Instagram picture is equivalent to about four Tweets. For me, the ratio is a little lower, probably one Instagram picture to every three Tweets. Even at that ratio, I knew I needed to slam on the brakes when it came to Tweeting and amp up my Instagramming if I was going to hit both milestones at the same time.

Yesterday came and I found myself 10 tweets away from 15,000 and 19 Instagram pictures away from 1,500. Now was the time where I really needed to buckle down and force myself to tilt the scale towards Instagramming more. But I couldn’t control myself…I tweeted a few times when I didn’t really need to and then mindlessly replied to my followers via twitter as well. When I got to my 11 a.m. meeting I realized I was three tweets from 15,000 but 15 pictures away from 1,500. Now was the time more than ever to get serious.

I put myself on a “Tweeting Freeze.” I mapped it out and made a plan. I told myself that I would only tweet once that night to promote my blog post, once the next morning (today) to send out my daily “Life’s Little Instruction,” and then finally of course my dual Twitter/Instagram post that would commemorate the benchmarks. So obviously I had the Twitter half of my plan but what about the Instagram half? Well, that part was very simple…post like crazy!

I get annoyed when people Instagram continuously in a short amount of time, filling up the feed with several of their own pictures in a row. However, when it came to Tuesday and today, I became a hypocrite. I started posting the most insignificant content possible. Oh, is that a milk truck? Let’s Instagram it! Should I take a second picture of our office’s blown up dinosaurs? Definitely. Go take a picture of my boss’ mini Christmas tree? You bet! How about snapping a picture of my key chain? Trashy, but I better do it anyway! It went on and on like this until at about 10 a.m. this morning I had caught up and was finally ready to send out my ground breaking post. I was at 14,999 Tweets and 1,499 Instagrams.

I knew exactly what I wanted to do to commemorate the milestone visual wise. I have always laughed at the Wilt Chamberlin photo of him marking his 100 point game by simply holding up a piece of paper with a hand written “100” sloppily depicted on it. Although extremely tacky for such an amazing feat, the picture has lived on in history. In a tribute to Will, I wanted to go for the same thing. On a piece of printing paper I jotted down “15,000 TWEETS” and “1,500 INSTAGRAMS”. Off to the side in small letters I wrote “Don’t Blink”. My co-worker Jerek snapped the picture for me and then I drafted the text to go with it: Thank you for your support! This is my 15,000th Tweet and 1,500th Instagram. Don’t Blink. I then sent it out to the world via my two favorite social media outlets, successfully completing my 15,000/1,500 campaign.

I apologize to everyone who follows me on Instagram. I cluttered up your feed simply for the pursuit of my own personal milestone. Rest assured that I will go back to posting at a more normal rate. As I said in my post this morning, thank you all so much for following me through social media. It has and will continue to be a fun ride. Don’t Blink.

Instagram #HashTags

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Hard to believe, but there is now something that I love even more than Twitter hash tags. After I sang my praises about them and even devoted a whole blog post to the usage of hash tags on Twitter, I have found something that I love even more: Instagram hash tags!

I admit it, I am head over heels for Instagram hash tags. I could (and actually have) spend hours jumping from one hash tag to the other on Instagram. But let’s back up for a second…

If you are not familiar with Instagram or have never used the service before, you need to get it. Since last December it has been my favorite iPhone app and I really don’t see it changing for me anytime soon. Over the past nine months I have posted 1,100 photos on the service, I seriously can’t get enough of it (search me @BrentReser). It is the Twitter of pictures, a way to express yourself in rich detail that 140 characters could never touch. Instagram is so amazing and revolutionary that Facebook bought it for $1 billion dollars. That is saying something. I could go on and on about how much I just love the whole concept and idea behind Instagram but I have actually already written a post on that subject too. Instead, I want to talk more about a specific feature of the app, hash tags.

Just like Twitter, you can use hash tags each time you post. They follow the same basic principle for both services…namely to put a subject or theme to the tweet or picture. So obviously if you took a picture of a cat, you would use the hash tag of #cat. This is at the very basic roots of hash tagging on Instagram. Just like Twitter, many people will abuse the hell out of hash tags and post twenty to thirty different ones per picture. Keep in mind, there is no character limit for Instagram captions so people can take the abuse up several notches. One girl I know can take a simple picture of herself and come up with twenty-five different hash tags to accompany it! Of course, using a great deal of hash tags is a great way to gain followers as the more HT’s you have, the greater the chance is that someone will find you.

But enough about the excessive use of hash tags, I want to talk more about the beauty of them, more about why I can spend so much time searching them. Instagram has over 50 million users. With this very large user base, millions and millions of pictures are posted to the service each day. When you have a picture pool this gigantic, you are going to have pretty much every single subject, activity, hobby, and concept covered. Softball fan? Search #softball and browse the ridiculous amounts of softball pictures that come up. Like koalas? Type in #koalas and prepare yourself to see pictures of koalas in all the zoos across the nation. Want to go to school at Notre Dame? Get an idea for campus life by searching #NotreDame.

The appeal of doing an Instagram hash tag search is that you will find real, personal, and creative pictures. You aren’t doing a Google images search where you will find a bunch of boring, commercialized photos of whatever subject you typed in. Instead, you will get pictures from around the world taken at the front lines by people just like yourself who used the exact same device as yourself to take the picture. Better yet? You can interact with the people who took the pictures. I say it freely, I have no problem asking a question or making a comment on someone’s picture that I find fascinating. I love the dialogue that ensues and the social networking that occurs. It is also a great way to gain followers and learn more about the world.

But what do I love to do the most when I search Instagram hash tags? Look up food! I like nothing more than to type in a certain food and see the different versions, creations, and presentations that are captured. Last week I searched #froyo and just went nuts looking at the crazy desserts that people have made across the nation. I thought I was a froyo pro but after searching on Instagram I learned that I am a mere amateur. With all the different filters that Instagram offers, capturing something like froyo is really art. Sorry if that sounds corny but it is true. I must have “liked” fifteen different pictures while going through the thousands that were pulled up as the result of my search. Here is another fun one…this past Sunday I ate at HuHot (a Mongolian grill). I searched #HuHot on Instagram and once again I was blown away by the plates that people had made for themselves at HuHots across the country. Even though by the time I looked at the pictures I had already finished my meal and was stuffed, I still appreciated the array of different plates that people were digging into at the time. Last night I bought popcorn at the movie theater and because I like popcorn you can probably guess….I looked up #popcorn. Again, the different variations of buttered popcorn, colored popcorn, candy popcorn, and even frosted popcorn just made me happy. Today I really went on a limb and searched #corndog….some real interesting pictures there!

We have dubbed #GoGriz as the official hash tag of Grizzly Athletics at work. I look the tag up daily to see the pictures our fans are submitting. They are so awesome and I have been able to connect with more people in the Missoula community because of it. If you are visiting a new city be sure to search the name of it. You will find great ideas on what to do and you will even get to know people who are currently tourists as well. This again provides a great opportunity to interact with people who are undergoing the same experience as you are and even offers chance to actually meet up with someone if you are daring enough. The possibilities are endless.

Instagram is building on what Twitter first created and, to use a cliché that I absolutely hate, is actually taking the concept of connecting strangers to a whole new level. Instagram is hip, it is trendy, and it is fun…but most importantly, it is useful. Start utilizing the hash tag feature and see how it really can add something to your life. Don’t Blink.