@kissmygumbo here. Try explaining to your visiting parents why you woke up early on Monday to get on Twitter. Never mind…Dad never touched a computer and Mom (who will read this), does fine on…er…uh…e-mail. Explaining Twitter=FAIL. Seriously, the world should freaking stop on Mondays so I can tweet all day – LOL. Why? Because, of this cool project I’ve created with Carson Daly called #militarymon. The purpose of #militarymon is to recognize our men and women in uniform, their families, our veterans, and honor our fallen on Twitter. This day is also important for military support causes like Soldiers’ Angels, the Armed Forces, Milblogs, Military businesses and for people who just want to show their gratitude for the troops. No…not just another excuse for me to be on the computer or my iPhone (it is sad that I don’t need an excuse).

On May 18th, Carson and I merged our ideas and created a brand new hasthag. A hashtag is a word you put somewhere in your 140 characters you are allowed to write on Twitter with a #before it. Trackers recognize what word follows the # and before you know it, you have a trend that the world watches. Before Carson and I put our collective beer infested brain cells together, we each had our own #. It has taken each of us a few weeks to get everyone on the same page as people got used to the original hashtags. Our goal is to become a trend that gets notice of the world (yes, people notice Twitter trends).

Reasons we have not trended thus far:
* not everyone was using the same hashtag
* it takes a while to get something like this off the ground (I’m making this up – but sounds good)
* people are RT (retweeting=copying someone’s tweet) or just hitting reply to people’s tweets. That does not count in a trend from what I’m told.
* iPhone and Iran news both came on a Monday Grrrr

What great things have come out of this already:
* The Milcommunity has grown so much stronger (people are following each other)
* Those who serve are glad to know people are behind them
* Our Veterans on Twitter have appreciated getting acknowledged for their service
* Military support organizations are getting recognition
* Milblogs are getting recognized
* We joined forces with #hunkalert to recognize our men in uniform (need to do a babe alert for the women).
* People are shouting out and honoring military members and thanking them

What we can do to make this a trend:
* recruit news stations and large celebrity Twitterers
* do not use RT
* do not just hit reply to someone’s tweet – start fresh! each time
* use #militarymon all day on everything you write

The future:
****** Twitter isn’t going anywhere and this community and trend will only continue to grow. I suspect that more celebrities and news organizations will take notice and pretty soon, “all the cool kids” will join in for this craze that is here to stay! #militarymon

If you want to follow some of the Military Twitterers click here and here.

Also check out this great post from Maja Stevanovich.

c/p at Hooah Wife and Friends

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