TWITTER: FOLLOWING VS. LISTED

I tweet a lot: professionally for my job, continually for the blog, and constantly to keep in touch with good friends. And lately, both professionally and not, I've been asked what the difference is between following a person and listing a person. I have my own complete list of pros and cons for both as well, and so now I indulge and we shall wax philosophic on tweeting. (O yeah, I went there.)

The basics are this: many people, almost all bloggers, and most businesses, tweet, or have a page on facebook. I tweet a number of ways: through my twitter page, through text, and also through the platform TweetDeck. And it is because of TweetDeck that I'm a huge fan of the list.

The twitter list function was founded in 2009 as another way to "follow" people without having them show up on your main feed. You can create your own list or view other people's lists at any time. Why do I like the list? Because it keeps my main twitter feed clean. I tend to only follow close friends, or people and organizations I connect with frequently. I don't follow very many people, but in total I'm looking at over 100 people's twitter accounts through TweetDeck. Likewise, some of the twitters I want to follow tweet over 60 times a day; following them can feel like you've just opened your email with pages and pages of spam waiting to be opened, when all you wanted to do was read your best friend's email. A list allows me to follow them without being weighed down.  

For the blog, I want quick and easy access to upcoming film, literature, and other blog news without having to see it constantly. With listing, I can select when and how many tweets I want to see. Additionally, using TweetDeck I can see them all at once. It makes digesting large amounts of varied information much easier.

What do your lists look like? Mine are very simple: good to know, authors and blogs, austen-bronte-gaskell, celebs, and all followed. In these 4 categories I can place almost any twitter user and be able to view their tweets in real time without following all of them. TweetDeck makes retweeting from these lists super easy AND will shorten URLs for you. It also has the ability to make a list of all your @mentions, or #specifichashtags which is invaluable during the rewatches and gives me the ability to quickly reply to my blogging peers.

On the other hand, if you do follow a lot of people, you can make lists that would categorize the people you follow. Think about it as the above way, simply reversed.

But isn't following better? Professionally, yes. At work, our goal is to get more followers to share our mission and connect with the local community, which often means following others first. We only have one list and that's resources for the organization, many of whom we also follow. And while I do consider this blog a professional venture, I use twitter more as an information tool than a promotional hub. As such, I'm not nearly as interested in the amount of followers I have, but that I am giving interesting and appropriate information out through my tweets. This also doesn't mean that if I start by listing an individual I won't end up directly following them.

I am all for learning and all for changing. There is something to be said about the friendly follow back. People liked to be followed and many individuals will follow others back if you make the gesture first. But remember, getting followers really shouldn't be the only goal.

All things considered, using lists becomes much easier and more of an option when using a platform like TweetDeck. It all depends on your perspective, preference, and your personal tweeting philosophy.

OOTD - I can't believe I'm doing this

Beware dear reader! This is not a normal Heather post! Well, it will be characteristically Heather; however, it is not about what we normally cover here. Today, I'm doing my first (and probably only lol) OOTD, which stands for Outfit of the Day. Trust me, I am not a fashionista. Sure I love Chanel as much as the next girl, and shopping, and most of the time I try to coordinate my colors, but on the whole, my fashion posts could never be a fantastic as Casee's or Anika's. (Who, by the way, have totally sucked me in to fashion blogs.) I do though, have a little fashion story to tell you today.

A few days ago Anika (whose blog is always so inspiring and fun to read) posted a piece about the nude fashion trend. I have always been a fan of this trend. I love the light pink hues of it mixed with soft and dark greys. Somehow, I think its not so far away from my staple South Hampton nautical feel. Wanting to follow this trend is actually the reason I bought this particular dress from H&M. Sort of. Unlike the other piece I'd bought that same day (a thin stripe blue dress), Mom talked me into this one. She loved it. And she loved it so much, I thought "hey, it might look good; I'll just get it."

And you know what? It sat. It sat in my closet for 3 months. Every time I put it on, thought I'd wear it to work, I took if off. I thought it looked too childish or too frumpy. Says something about buying clothes you don't love, right?

Fridays are casual day at work, and yesterday I just seemed to not care. I put caution to the wind, threw on a white tank under it, put jeans on and went to work. And go figure! I got more compliments yesterday on the shirt/dress than basically any other outfit I've ever worn. I was so surprised, so shocked, that my thoughts about the dress ran in contrast to everyone else's, that I just had to tell Anika and thank her for giving me the final little push I needed to wear the nude-pink dress out of the house. I finished it with these shiny little shoes and made a fashionista for the day.

O! And I figured, why waste a great shot of my desk?! Yep. That is all the #REsense info on the white board. Yep. I do have a Lord of the Rings sword on my wall. My Keep Calm poster? What you can't see is that the line ends: And stay pretty.

SNOW DAY, MY WAY

Well, dear reader, today is actually a snow day for me. All that nasty winter weather they said hit the North East? Well, I'm mid-east, just above and to the right of DC, and we got hammered. Needless to say, it took us a good 5 hours to plow ourselves out. Hey, with 9+ inches and a VERY long driveway, it takes that long; and with all that winter sun and exercise I feel wonderful and tired. Its such a nice feeling to have.

Now that the sun is going down, and the heating blankets are on, I feel like I should share what I did on my snow day. First, we of course, plowed and shoveled like we've only done a handful of times before. And we complained like we ALWAYS do, even with a half inch. 

Then, I finished my fall quilt. I know, its way after fall, but quilting takes a long time! My mom is one of those women who is a master at those fine craft arts: croquet, sewing, quilting -- she has magic hands. We've done many quilts together, but this one was the first I did all on my own. I wanted reds and oranges, lots of print, and for it to really feel like fall when you looked at the completed quilt. (I still think the back looks like pumpkin pie too!) The entire blanket is hand-quilted by momma-dear and I, and I have the needle pricks to prove it.  The solid squares have maple and oak leaves with acorns, as do the corners where the rope meets up. It's a thinner quilt, but still amazingly warm.

Now, if chilly, winter, craft projects are not your cup of tea. There is always my last post, which was the January Brush Set. And don't worry, no actors or themes are really featured in this one.

What else will I be doing? I plan to snuggle up with the computer and start typing out the six pages of story I wrote a few days ago. Hopefully, I'll find another sentence to share with you soon. But, oh dear, Tristan and Isolde is on and I just saw Henry Cavill step on screen. All motivation is lost. CRAP.