Tuesday, May 23, 2017

The Origin of #KeepTalkingMH



A few weeks ago, while I was on Twitter, I noticed that a lot of people have hashtags that they’re trying to promote related to mental health. For anyone that isn’t aware, a # plus a phrase is used on Twitter and other social media sort of as a search term.

For example, if you wanted to look up your favorite band, you can go on Twitter and do a search for #bandname and you will see all of the posts that others have made about the band. I hope that makes more sense; I know I had a heck of a time when I first started out.

After being online for a while and seeing the work people were putting into their hashtags, I noticed that it seemed like everyone was trying to promote their hashtag about mental health or mental illness. It made me wonder if there was a way to bring it all together into one hashtag, therefore making the mental health community even stronger. So, I started thinking about ideas, and I came up with #KeepTalkingMH. There’s a website called www.twubs.com where you can make sure there isn’t anyone else using your desired hashtag. If nobody else is using it, then you register it. I recommend paying the $9 fee to have exclusive rights.

My hashtag started to become popular. I picked a certain day to try and get it trending, and although we didn’t get there, we did have some exciting things happen. Celebrities like cast members from Mike & Molly, Kevin Smith, former WWE superstars and announcers, they all tweeted for us that day.

Since then, the popularity has grown. It’s easily found on Twitter, and it allows people to have a voice and talk about how they’re feeling. So, here I am today asking that you jump on the bandwagon and tweet #KeepTalkingMH today and every day!
Remember, it must be an original tweet, you can’t just retweet someone else’s.

To all mental health advocates out there, please consider using #KeepTalkingMH instead of creating a new hashtag. If we had just one hashtag that covered the entire spectrum, and everyone started using it, we could make a change in the way people view mental health.


You’ve been challenged! Keep using #KeepTalkingMH always and often and let’s see if we can get our message out there! 

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