When the universe has your back

Blanket is the Garter Ripple Squish with 3 strands of sock yarn held together

Do you ever have one of those moments/weeks where you just feel a bit overwhelmed? Pulled in so many different directions at once. So many things whirling around in your head that you don’t know where to start?

There are many parallels that I can draw between knitting and tarot (two of my favourite things to do during quiet moments). That’s a blog post for another day, but sometimes - quite a lot in fact - the daily card that I draw has a habit of being uncannily on the nose.

This was the card I drew the other day - the Seven of Wands - which is all about finding courage and inner strength. It’s also a really great reminder to look to yourself for advice and help - not to rely on others for support. To be your own guiding light as it were.

I took this as a signal from the universe to undertake a mass unsubscribe from a ton of business-y type email lists. Things I’d signed up to, to get free worksheets or PDFs. Things that were filling up my inbox with a metric ton of (often contradictory) advice. The ‘must do’s or even worse ‘must not do’s’ were starting to put me on edge and make me doubt myself.

So I spent a happy hour unsubscribing from lists, as well as muting or unfollowing a bunch of accounts on social media that were just getting to be a bit too much. And boy, do I feel better for it.

A good spring clean was just what I needed to freshen up my socials and to give me lots of new ideas and inspiration to follow.

It made me think about the issue of seasonality and social media. I know that the accounts I follow in autumn/winter are perhaps very different from the ones I want to see more of as spring approaches. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing necessarily. All things go through seasons - including ourselves - and so to me it makes sense to have that reflected in my social media feeds.

What do you think? Do you like to see the same things all year round or do you find yourself going through ‘seasons’ too?

Social media - what a difference a year makes

This time last year I was in a very different place with regard to social media. Things with Twitter had reached breaking point and called for drastic action. I nuked my account and started again from scratch.

And it proved to be such a great decision. In the space of a year I have rebuilt my account to roughly the same number of followers as I had with my 9 year old account.

The difference being that I ruthlessly curated the content I saw there, and crucially the content that I interacted with. Mindful of the fact that Twitter will share my likes/retweets with others I was careful not to interact with content that others might find triggering - Brexit, Covid and other hot button issues in the UK.

Not that they aren't important, but I knew how fragile my own mental health was feeling coming out of the pandemic and that the only way I could stay on Twitter, and enjoy being there was by being strict about what I allowed into my bubble. Knitting, otters and funny cat memes are the order of the day now, and my day is far better for it.

Please note this is different to putting my head in the sand. I stay informed by reading and from trusted news sources. What I don’t need is to be sand blasted by the hose of other people's opinions and hot takes.

This time last year, my Instagram by contrast felt completely dead in the water. I felt similarly stifled but couldn't bring myself to delete my account, as anyone who has painstakingly inched over the 10k followers threshold will understand.

Instead I cut back the number of accounts I followed to almost zero - and started again. Just following those whose content either uplifted, inspired or entertained me. Drastic yes, but my goodness it was like a breath of fresh air.

Side note though - it did earn me a shadow ban for a few weeks as I deleted more follows per day than the algorithm was happy with, so I’m not sure I can entirely recommend it as a course of action.

As we moved into 2023 though, things started to feel different yet again. The whole twitter atmosphere has undoubtedly changed as a result of the site’s new owner and a lot of people have either left or are interacting far less on their accounts.

Instagram by contrast feels a lot more vibrant - the Reels are obviously here to stay and maybe, who knows I’m actually starting to like them a little bit. It feels as though people are allowing themselves to relax and let go of the quest for Instagram flatlay perfection a little bit, and embrace the fun and more spontaneous side of the platform again. Instagram have also responded (finally) to concerns about account security and have introduced a new system for helping people to recover hacked/locked accounts.

What will this year bring? Who knows quite frankly but change is inevitable, it always is.

Now more than ever it’s important to connect with people on more than one platform, or via email/DMs. Rumours of Twitters imminent collapse are almost certainly exaggerated but it does no harm to make sure that you are subscribed to your favourite folks’ newsletters, just in case something drastic were to happen.

I know there are a few alternatives to Twitter popping up - Mastodon and Hive being the two that I have come across - and created accounts there. But honestly, the thought of starting again from scratch on another social media platform is more than I can bear right now. I want to spend less time on social media in 2023, not more.

How about you? Have you used one of the Twitter alts, and if so what do you think of it? Do drop me a comment and let me know.

And if you’d like to make sure you stay abreast of what I’m up to please do subscribe to my weekly email. I try to share snippets from the online world that have caught my eye, what’s on my needles and general random thoughts that I might not get around to sharing anywhere else.

And my other online hangouts are:

Twitter - as EverydayKnitter

Instagram - as LouiseTilbrookDesigns

On Instagram and borrowed audiences

It’s no secret that life on Instagram is pretty tough at the minute. Tried and tested posting strategies just aren’t working as they used to. And even when you do jump through all the hoops that Instagram seemingly requires of you - hello Reels - you still are left with engagement stats that make a ghost town looks positively vibrant.

There’s no doubt that Instagram is going through a midlife crisis and seems to have forgotten what it wants to be. In it’s quest to be like the other cool platforms it has ended up like someones Dad at a hipster party, slightly awkward and out of place. Desperate to be relevant in a room full of indifference.

Hopefully it will sort itself out soon and until then we just keep plodding on, trying to connect with our audience and to catch up with the people that we have come to enjoy hanging out with there.

I have seen a lot of weeping and wailing though from some quite big accounts. Obviously people’s businesses and incomes are taking a huge hit right now, especially those whose businesses centered largely around selling to their Instagram audience. And a lot of comments along the lines of ‘we’ve earned that audience’ or Instagram owes it to us to sort things out’.

And wow, that’s quite the statement to make. Yes, of course we have worked hard to acquire an audience on Instagram and we’ve certainly put the hours in to generate those likes and comments and sales. But, make no mistake, those people are still Instagram’s audience, not ours. At best we have borrowed them for a while.

It is very literally a case of building a platform on someone else’s land. Unless you have moved those people across onto your email list or other platform - that you own - then they aren’t your audience.

As attractive and photogenic as that Instagram basket is, it’s a good idea to move some of your eggs out of it. At least until Instagram gives it’s head a wobble and gets back in the game.

An email list is one way of doing that, another is through the use of Facebook Groups. Yes, I know it’s another Meta-platform and yes, I know that you still don’t own that either. But an active, engaged Facebook Group is still a really good way, right now to connect to your people. Whilst there is undoubtedly a demographic that prefers to be Facebook-free, over 70% of Facebook users say they visit the site at least once a day. An active Facebook Group with dynamic and new content is a great way to be visible and to show up on people’s social media, in a way that Instagram at the minute just can’t do.

I recently dusted off my 20k-strong Facebook Group - the Everyday Knitter group. I archived it in 2020 in a mid-pandemic state of overwhelm, back when everything just felt too much. But I missed it. I missed the daily connection with people, with friends. And I missed that feeling of belonging to a community. So I resurrected it and I’m thrilled with how it has just picked up where it left off. Sure, we lost a few members along the way and I had some dormant accounts to clear out, but of 20k members, 11.5k are classed as active in the group (according to Facebook’s metrics) and we have lots of chatty and engaged members in there on a daily basis.

Facebook Groups are something that I feel really passionate about, I really do think they can help small businesses connect to their customers in a meaningful way and that’s why I have written the Grow With Groups course.

If you have had ‘start a Facebook Group’ on your to-do list for ever, but have always been reluctant to give it a try, or you don’t know where to start then this is the course for you.

Why not take a look and see what you think? We start on Monday 4 July though, so don’t wait too long.

Moving on

This week I took the rather drastic step of stepping away from my Twitter account of over 10 years and starting afresh. A drastic action certainly but it wasn’t an impulsive one. Rather it came about by a gradual process of realising that I wasn’t happy with something, and then setting about the process of working out how I could rectify it.

In doing so I came across this article by Tim Denning which perfectly summed up my attitude to Twitter and encapsulated my feelings emboddied in that tiny blue bird logo.

Over the years, off and on I have spent a lot of time on Twitter and have certainly made some great friends there. Friends that I would really miss if I were to leave the platform completely. However, of late I had found myself needing to take more breaks from the app, and of longer duration as it was really starting to affect my mental health. Partly that was due to my actions - I had followed a lot of news and politically active accounts all of whom were equally outraged at world events as I was. The problem of course was that I was struggling to process my own emotions during the past few years, and adding in other peoples anger and outrage wasn’t really helping. In addition the Twitter algorithm as we know is geared up to keep you on the app as much as possible - and outrage keeps you there a lot longer than cute photos of otters - so that’s what it shows you.

I recently took an unplanned break from Twitter which extended into a week as I found myself increasingly reluctant to log in, even though I missed catching up with pals. The answer was obvious - if something isn’t serving you or doing you good - stop it or do it differently.

For me that meant creating a new account, and setting it up with care and intention. Following those people that I wanted to keep in touch with and creating lists so that I can do that effectively without having to rely on the chaotic main feed. You can find my new account here if you want to see what I’ve been up to. My old one I’ll keep up for a little while before archiving it.

The whole process has got me thinking about other things that have changed or I have moved away from over the past few years. I ditched my Facebook group of over 20k members in favour of a much smaller but much easier to manage Mighty Networks community, and in 2020 I moved away from Ravelry. Something that previously I would have thought was unthinkable and would spell certain death for my business.

In fact, nothing drastic happened at all. I’m still carrying on writing and selling patterns, still connecting with the knitting community and friends around me. I’m just doing it on terms that serve me better. The world didn’t end just because I ditched Ravelry.

And at the end of the day I think that’s what it’s all about, and it’s taken the chaos and upheaval of the last 2 years to show me that. It’s OK to evaluate what’s going on in your life and what helps - or hinders you. And it’s OK to discard perceived wisdom or advice in favour of what suits you.

How we spend our days, is after all, how we spend our lives. And for me, that means spending my precious minutes on things that make me feel good for hours.

An impromptu break

The joys of a weekend off.

I hadn't planned to take a social media break over the weekend but on Friday I found out that Saturday was #DigitalDetoxDay.

It seemed like a good prompt to pop my phone in a drawer and remove temptation, and to be honest it was such a good feeling that I extended it into Sunday as well.

I used to regularly take social media breaks but at some undefined point I stopped, probably around the time Covid started - convinced that I'd miss some vital nugget of information.

Of course, we all know that it doesn't work like that. You tell yourself that you are keeping up to date with vital information but really you are following gossip, argument and a whole lot of partials informed speculation.

Definitely not good for the mental health.

So, instead I had a lovely, calm weekend. Well, the usual preparing for back to school kerfuffle, but at least my brain was clearer and better able to deal with it.

I read a book - the Strawberry Thief by Joanne Harris and started a new sock yarn blanket (because... Why not?)

And more importantly, I felt in a better place to write, journal and set a few new moon intentions for the month ahead. (Today is New Moon in Virgo if you follow that sort of thing)

Now I just need to take that New Moon energy and channel it into some healthy online habits for the week ahead. Starting off the day here, rather than doom scrolling on Twitter sounds like a good start to me.

Vero for crafters - first thoughts

As with any new social media platform there has been a lot of discussion swirling around the interwebs this week about Vero - the new(ish) social media platform which aims to put the "social" back into social media. With an emphasis on sharing content and things which are important to you, Vero has actually been around since 2016 but has recently been talked about by a few key Instagram influencers and everyone's curiosity has been sparked.

This weekend saw Vero struggle to cope as the Instagram crowd, many of whom are frustrated with the algorithm, spam and promoted posts, flocked over to see what all the fuss was about.

I joined up on Sunday and I have to say that so far, I really like what I see there. When you post an update you have to decide what it is you are sharing. Is it a book you are reading? Is it a photo you want to share? Is it a film you went to see at the weekend?

Once you've done that you can chose who you share it to. Share it with all of those who follow you? No problem. Or for people you know (either in real life or online) you can choose to "friend request" them - the same as for Facebook. So, in theory you could just choose to share something with your close friends - although I haven't really tried this yet.

The way that this type of sharing really comes into it's own though is in the "Collections". Tap the folder icon at the top of the screen and you'll see a handy list of what people have shared with you in chronological order. (I'll repeat that bit for emphasis - In Chronological Order!).

You can see what photos people have shared with you that very morning. You can see a list of book recommendations that have been shared - like your very own personal library list. This side of the app really appeals to the part of my brain that likes to categorise and organise and it pleases me immensely.

Will it take the place of Instagram? I very much doubt it, Instagram is far too large and too embedded to be easily ousted. But, for now at least, it provides a fun and social aspect to social media that has been sadly missing from Instagram and other platforms of late. I don't know about you but it feels like a very long time since I felt a sense of fun whilst using Instagram.

For a while, there was Ello that a lot of Instagram people joined. But for me that never really felt as though that's where "my people" were. There were lots of beautiful images from photographers and artists but I never really felt as though my little woolly, crafty world found a niche there. It all felt too polished and just a little bit cold. Vero on the other hand feels like sharing a coffee with you best friends. Sitting round chatting, talking about what you are working on, sharing a book recommendation or planning a trip out. it feels like social media should be.

There has been a lot of discussion that Vero intends to monetise the app and will introduce some form of "paid" access. It is hardly surprising that an app will need to make money and from the reading I have done Vero have been very open and transparent about how they intend to do this. Clicking through to buy products (ie  from a book recommendation) will generate income for the site and it may be that they introduce an advert free version or a subscriber version with additional features.

Again, that doesn't really bother me at all as long as everything is clear and up front. If I had the option to pay for a chronological version of Instagram I'd have had my hand in my pocket a long time ago.

I know that some people have had problems accessing the site as they have struggled to cope with the sudden influx of new members but, for what it's worth, I really like what I see there. And I'm really excited to see how it pans out in the coming months.