Have you ever heard of a Tweetstorm? “A Tweet-what?” you may say. Well, let me enlighten you. A Tweetstorm is a concerted effort on Twitter to get as many people as possible to all tweet the same hashtag during a small time frame in order to give that hashtag extreme popularity, landing it on the ‘Trending Topics’ chart.

The Muskwa Club and I are organizing a Tweetstorm for #SaveTheVaquita on New Year’s Day, January 1st, 2014 from 5:00 pm to 11:59 pm Pacific Time (8:00 pm to 2:59 am ET). During this time, we would like for everyone to tweet about the critically endangered Vaquita using the hashtag #SaveTheVaquita. Also, you can include some eco-conscious celebrities in the tweets, like the incredible @LeoDiCaprio or my favorite singer Moby (@thelittleidiot) so they catch all of this Vaquita buzz.

A Tweetstorm is similar to a petition, but interactive and with more immediate results and potentially a much wider audience. A great example is the Tweetstorm for #SOSMauisDolphins, which garnered almost 12,000 tweets, landing at number 5 on the ‘Trending Topics’ chart, ahead of Beyoncé and Lady Gaga. If we only get a fraction of the tweets that they did, ours can still be considered a success. My goal is 1,000 tweets, but goals are meant to be exceeded.

“Ugh, this social media stuff isn’t for me,” you could be saying right about now. Even if you are a firm believer that social media is only for teenagers and balk at the thought of yourself tweeting, the least you could do is email the flyer below to your friends. But to all you tech-savvy people out there (basically everyone that is reading this), please participate. I would not be nagging about this so much if I didn’t think it was one of the best ways to help the Vaquita. So mark it on your calendars, check out this countdown a few times to remind you, share the flyer increasingly frequently, and get your tweeting muscles ready! If you have been on the border between getting a Twitter account or not, please get one, even if you delete it after the Storm. Thanks so much from the Vaquita!

And don’t forget to follow me (sidebar under ‘Stay Connected’)!