#USEME

Hashtags. Use ‘em.

And with that, you could go ahead increase my bounce rate, leave the page, because that’s the meat. I led with the meat.

However, hear me out.

I’ve hired two artists through hashtags this past year. I search for specific tags, something I have in mind, and I write to those of interest.

I hired @miguel_mota_carmo, with whom I’ve worked several times now, the designer behind my baby, The Beat. Most recently, I hired @todd.w.germann, whose art and wit absolutely fascinate me.

And you know what? I also made a friend! Searching the #wset tags, I found @vitamin.vino and wrote her to be like, “Hey, you’re in NYC, seem cool and I want to taste wine with you.” She graciously agreed to meet up and I think it’s safe to say, there was an insta-connection.

NOW, there are some rules:

Only the true and just a few.

I’ve had a client push me to hashtag things that were completely unrelated to our content just because they were trending–hot hashtags. But this negates why I love them, as they become meaningless, useless.

Use only what is relevant to your post. Don’t spam me.

What a true New Yorker I’ve become in such little time! Friendly, but also very fuck you if you waste my time. Don’t fill the hashtag stage with fluff. Only the true and just a few.

#Hashtags don’t replace content.

Focus more on the actual content than the tagging. Because you know what happens to good once it gets too good?

Live. Laugh. Love.

There’s a lot of potential in a #. But once it becomes too massive, you’re just another post among millions, lost in a sea of sameness.

Use them wisely. And if you don’t know how and/or don’t care to learn why, hit me up, friend. I’ll help you out! I’ll help make your hard work be seen. Focus on the practice. Focus on the art.

As Seth Godin says in his recent book, The Practice:

We can spend a lot of psychic energy willing the weather to be perfect. We can spend just as much time living out the bad weather in advance, suffering ahead of time, knowing that the outcome we seek isn’t going to happen the way we want it to. We want it to work out so badly, we now need it to.

It’s easy to see the absurdity of attachment when we’re talking about the weather. The thoughtful alternative is resilience. To be okay no matter how the weather turns out because the weather happens without regard for what we need.

But what happens when we substituted the market acceptance of our new project for the weather? Or perhaps what the boss or the critics will think? When we get really attached to how others will react to our work, we stop focusing on our work and begin to focus on trolling the outcome instead.

Winemakers, I am calling you out.

Don’t produce what you think I want. Produce what you can, what’s best for your situation. If that means adding a few particles of sulfur to ensure we’re good to go, so be it.

I can’t stand this bullshit of people being so snobby about their natural wines while eating shit or buying into other mass-market traps.

Not hatin’, just sayin’…sometimes a few particles of sulfates are going to do a wine a world of good. And trust me, you’re consuming WAY WORSE SHIT out there.

Wait, weren’t we talking about hashtags?