Did you miss me? After a rather long holiday hiatus, it’s time to “Get on the Good Foot” again and get my blog on!

First up: ever wonder how in the world to participate in a Twitter event?

I know I talk about doing wine twitter tasting often on this blog because I do a few of them each month (for example #WineStudio on Tuesdays and #WineChat on Wednesdays). But what exactly are the nuts and bolts?

This has come up because an online community that I am part of “Healthy 2015” is using Dr. Mark Hyman’s book, The 10 Day Detox Diet.

At Dr. Hyman’s “Twitter Party” TODAY Tuesday Jan. 6, 2015 at 4pm Pacific Time, guests include numerous doctors, online personalities aka The Blender Girl @TheBlenderGirl, and celebrities Maria Shriver @MariaShriver (see the complete list below).

Dr Hyman’s website offers the following tips on how YOU can particpate in this “twitter party” and they look spot on to me:

Start by logging in to Twitter OR by creating an account

Unlike Facebook, you don’t have to have an account to check out what’s happening on Twitter. But if you want to participate, comment, ask questions, or win prizes, you have to have an account. It will take a minute or two at most and that includes adding a profile photo. It’s free.

The stream on twitter can be a bit overwhelming so in order to sort through the chaos, people use hashtags to find particular conversations.

If you like wine, for example, you’d search for #wine. Or #Chardonnay.

Each Twitter event has its own hashtags for example #ChampagneDay. Or #WineStudio. Or #WineChat.

For this event, the hashtag to use, is #DrHymanChat. This is the tag that will sorts tweets into one place. If you want people to see your comments or questions, you MUST add this hashtag to every tweet.

1. To find the conversation, type #DrHymanChat into the search bar at the top right. Directly under “Results”, make sure you select ‘All’ not ‘Top’ tweets.
2. You can refresh the page to see all of the commentary LIVE as it happens. Feel free to ask questions, reply to other comments, favorite (that’s the star) and RT (ReTweet) or MT (mention –used to paraphrase).
3. ADVANCED: Don’t start a tweet with @name (for example @artpredator) unless you want that tweet to only be seen by a limited audience. What you want to do if you want to address someone is to put a . in front: .@artpredator

What makes Twitter work is following interesting people. You might start by following me of course! I’m @artpredator. Send a tweet about who you are and why you are following me and I’ll probably follow you back. Or RT or MT or favorite one of my tweets and that will get my attention too.

Here’s a sample tweet by a friend of mine Kristofer Young, DC @FxMedChiro who is participating (follow him!)

In addition to following Dr. Hyman, you might also follow these folks who are participating in the “Twitter Party” (but don’t expect them to follow you back). Note that links are to website where you can find a link to their twitter feed or search for them in the search bar. Once the Tweet chat starts, you can easily follow people who interest you.

Mind Body Green @MindBodyGreen

Maria Shriver @MariaShriver

The Blender Girl @TheBlenderGirl

JJ Virgin @JJVirgin

Dr. Terry Wahls @TerryWahls

Dr. Eva Selhub @DrEvaSelhub

The Chalkboard Magazine @ChalkboardMag

Experience Life Magazine @ExperienceLife

Gluten-Free School @GFreeSchool

Dr. Aviva Romm @AvivaRomm

Dr. Jill Carnahan @DocCarnahan

Gluten Free Gigi @GlutenFreeGigi

EmpowHer @EmpowHer

The Handel Group @HGLifeCoaching

Vida @JoinVida

I find it useful to have several windows and/or tabs open to track what’s going on. If you get into Twitter events like I am, you may use something like Hootsuite to help you follow along.

Have fun! And Happy New Year!