Be a 3-Day Socialite!

The Susan G. Komen 3-Day® has been all over social media in 2014, bringing our followers info and images from the Komen 3-Day on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest and here on the 3-Day® blog. But some of the very best content we’ve seen on our social platforms has come from YOU –our walkers, crew members and supporters – and to that we say, “Keep it coming!”

With two events left this year, we want to encourage everyone to keep the conversation going with us on social media. Here are the best ways you can leave your social footprints in 3-Day-land.

Hit Us With #Hashtags! – If you don’t know what a hashtag is or how to use one, fear not. We published a handy tutorial post a few weeks back that gives you a quick-and-dirty how-to on hashtags. When you post status updates, tweets, or photos having to do with the 3-Day, remember to always include #The3Day. We also have hashtags for each individual 3-Day event:

Participate in Photo Challenges – For each 3-Day, we have a daily photo challenge, asking you to post pictures on Instagram related to each day’s theme. You can post as many times as you want (always using the appropriate hashtags, of course), and at the end of each day, we’ll choose 3 of our followers’ photos to share on our Instagram page.

But My 3-Day Event is Already Over This Year… – That’s okay, keep posting anyway! If you follow us on Instagram or Facebook, you know that we share shots all the time from events that happened weeks or months ago, and you can too. It’s an awesome way to relive the amazing memories from each event and to get yourself and others excited about 3-Day events to come.

I’m Just a Supporter…Can I Play Along? – First of all, there’s no such thing as JUST a supporter. Every person who cares about the 3-Day—whether walker, crew member, volunteer, cheering station champion, or friend or family member applauding from home—has a place at the social media table. And in fact, following the 3-Day on social media is hands-down the best way for folks back home to feel like they’re there in person, tracking their loved one’s progress and rooting them on with thumbs-ups, hearts and encouraging comments.

Like, Comment, and Subscribe! – If you are active on social media, chances are you are doing this already, but one of the best ways to show your support for what we and your fellow users post is to like posts and reply with comments. This goes for 3-Day participants and non-participants alike. Follow the 3-Day (and each other!) on Facebook to make sure you never miss a post. Subscribe to the blog and our YouTube channel. Retweet us on Twitter and tap-tap us on Instagram. The more you engage with us, the better we’ll be able to create content that you want to see.

Have questions about the 3-Day’s social media? Message us on Facebook, write on our Facebook wall, or tweet us @The3Day.

Through the Eyes of Seattle 3-Dayers

What an amazing Day 2 we had in beautiful Seattle! On the Susan G. Komen 3-Day®, we love hearing your stories and seeing the event through your eyes. The following ten photos have all been posted on Instagram with the hashtag #SEA3Day (confused about hashtags? Check out this post) and we wanted to share them with you. We also do an Instagram challenge on all Komen 3-Day events — you can learn more about that here. Please continue posting your 3-Day® photos and thoughts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram because we love connecting with you online! (Don’t forget to use #The3Day.) See you on social media!

Hashing Out #Hashtags with #The3Day

Remember the old days, when the pound sign was just a way to indicate a number? How times have changed. These days, that little crisscross symbol has an entirely new function and a new name: a hashtag.

susan g. komen 3-day breast cancer walk blog hashtag word cloud

Created at www.tagxedo.com

What are Hashtags? – Put simply, hashtags are identifiers that are used to group together posts on social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) that relate to similar topics. Say you want to go onto Twitter and find/follow all of the posts about the Super Bowl. You can search for #superbowl, and any public posts that include that identifier will show up in your search results. Unlike a full internet search, where you would go to a search engine like Google or Yahoo and search for the term “Super Bowl,” then get links to a bunch of websites, instead, you search for a hashtag within a specific site. The results for #SuperBowl in Twitter will be different than the results in Instagram.

A Secondary (and Less Functional) Use of Hashtags – Incidentally, hashtags have also taken on a secondary purpose: punchline. Often now, you’ll see people post about some topic, then to punctuate the underlying emotion, or add an afterthought or meta commentary about the post, they include a hashtag. For example, you could post a picture of your smiling, food-covered toddler on Instagram with the caption, “We’re pretty sure she liked the spaghetti! #bathtime #laundrytimetoo”. You say something with the post, then add a little extra commentary with hashtags. In cases like this, the intent of the hashtag is not to group your post with other posts of the same topic, but to quickly and succinctly add a funny, poignant or impactful gist to your comment.

The Possibilities are Limitless – Anyone can make a hashtag, but there are a few rules and practices that go along with creating a hashtag: letters and numbers are okay, but no spaces or punctuation (except dashes and underscores); capital letters can be used to show separation between words without affecting the function of the hashtag (i.e., #SesameStreet and #sesamestreet are seen as identical in the eyes of the internet, but the former might look a little nicer); try to keep each hashtag short and to-the-point; using too many hashtags can dilute the impact of your post, so choose wisely. But beyond that, the possible hashtags you could come up with are boundless as the World Wide Web itself.

Soooo…What Does This All Have to Do With the 3-Day? – As you (hopefully) have noticed, the 3-Day has been using hashtags in its posts all year to pinpoint its place in the social media space. Hashtag #The3Day has been all over Twitter, Instagram and Facebook as a way to identify and group together posts about our event—ones that come from us, as well as posts that come from our followers and supporters. Aside from the primary #The3Day hashtag, we also have hashtags for each individual event (#MI3Day, #TC3Day, #PHL3Day, #SEA3Day, #ATL3Day, #DFW3Day and #SD3Day). Hashtags allow you (and us) to easily browse through our social media platforms to find other people who are talking about the 3-Day. Or should we say #The3Day.

Instagram Photo Challenges – One specific hashtag-driven activity that the 3-Day has started is an on-event photo challenge for each of the seven 3-Day events. Be sure to check out our Instagram @Komen3Day to play along!