Be Careful How You Hashtag

When I had Mason, I swore I wouldn’t be one of those moms who blasted social media with my baby’s photos. Even during my pregnancy, I’d share a “bump” photo every now and then, but tried to keep it to a minimum because, let’s face it, it can be annoying! So, when I had my new baby boy home with me and he was resting peacefully, I found myself taking a lot of adorable pictures of him. I wanted to share them, but I wanted to make sure I was doing it in an “appropriate” way so I came up with a few hashtags that I would use with each post (to Instagram) and was confident and excited about sharing my photos of my sweet little angel baby!

Although I LOVE social media, I wasn’t super knowledgable about how to use these outlets for things other than keeping up with friends. For example, I thought a hashtag (#) was just a way for me to keep track of my own photos…like organize them. So, I tagged Mason’s sweet baby photos with #MasonJames, #MyBabyBoy, and #MJB. Things were working out perfectly, until one day I accidentally clicked on the #MJB tag and I then realized why people used hashtags. I quickly learned that the tag takes all photos with that same tag and groups them together. Well, I did not know that Mary J Blige (MJB), the Grammy Award Winning “Queen of Hip-Hop Soul”, went by the hashtag #MJB… so, can you guess what was grouped in the middle of all these photos of this celebrity? Random photos of my little, precious Caucasian baby boy sleeping on my couch! He was amongst pictures and videos of R&B singers, rappers, MJB herself, etc. which was SO NOT what I was initially going for!!!

Although many of you probably had no idea that this even happened, I was so embarrassed for 1) Being so dumb when it came to social media and 2) “Tagging” my baby in such a WRONG group on social media. Although it may not sound that bad, but moms, especially new moms, are so caught up with emotions, guilt, fear, sleepless nights, etc. that this just rocked my world at the time (lol)! I felt so stupid and uncool! haha

So, next time you go crazy with your #hashtags, make sure you know what you’re getting into!