Attending the technology workshop lead by Jessica Skultety of Quilty Habit made me think about how my use of social media does not relate to my blog name. It also made me think about how my blog name and social media user names may be working at cross purposes, and thwarting my desire to be noticed. Right up front I will admit that I blog to be noticed, and hopefully to form connections in the quilting community. I don’t have a business to promote. I am not selling my work. I don’t do long arm quilting. I just want people to find value in what I post, and to notice me as a result.
When talking about getting noticed I should declare that I am a big fan of Michael Hyatt. I found him when Evernote retweeted something he had posted on Twitter years ago. I have been following him ever since. I read his book “Platform: How to Get Noticed in a Noisy World” when it first came out. I later went on to join Platform University, and have been a member there for nearly two years.
It was based on the suggestions in Michael Hyatt’s book that I started my blog. He recommends obtaining one’s own real name as a domain name if at all possible, preferably with a .com extension. He also recommends using WordPress and self hosting. I had owned terrischurter.com for years, yet I was reluctant to use it for a quilting blog because I did not already have name recognition in the quilting community. I am planning on pointing terrischurter.com to my hexylady.com domain eventually. I just have not gotten around to it yet.
Having looked around the quilting blogosphere it seemed to me that short and catchy names that related to the world of quilting were the preferred urls. Having discovered the love of hexagons, and feeling quite committed to them, I decided to grab “hexylady.com” when I found it available. I had noticed that the twitter name “hexylady” was taken, though never actually used. I had no real interest in Pinterest or Instagram at the time, so I didn’t even think to check them. I already had a Twitter account of “terrischurter” and decided to continue to use it.
I made a conscious decision to use my full real name for all social media accounts moving forward. I chose to do this because my real name is always available to me thanks to the fact that it is so unusual. I also decided to make sure that that my full name appeared whenever I responded to a comment on my blog. At first I only used “Terri” when I responded to a comment. Now I use “Terri Schurter”. I figured that over time my real name would become associated with my blog url. I am now considering a way to make my full name more prominent on my site, such as changing “ABOUT” to “ABOUT TERRI SCHURTER”
During the quilting technology workshop one of the attendees said she could not find me on Instagram, and I said, “I’m terrischurter.” And she said, “Nobody will find you that way.” That’s when I started to worry.
After the workshop I decided to check and see if “hexylady” would be available on Pinterest, and much more importantly, on Instagram. I could not obtain the name on either site. So I tried a little experiment. I changed my real name on Instagram to “Hexy Lady” to see if someone could find my “terrischurter” account by searching for “Hexy Lady”. That worked fine as long as they put in the space between the two words, which they might not be likely to do. If they simply typed “hexylady” I could not be found. Then I tried changing my name to “HexyLady” and it worked just fine. So I am going to leave my name as HexyLady for the time being. 
On Pinterest I tried changing my real name to “HexyLady” using the place provided for a first name. This did not have the desired results, so I changed it back to Terri Schurter. I don’t think it will make that much of a difference because I feel as if Pinterest is much more of a way to gather inspiration than a way to share my work.
I am not 100% sure about using HexyLady as my real name on Instagram, but I can always change it back.
What are your thoughts on using Social Media in the quilting community?
I think my husband would object if I used my real name everywhere. But if you google my name a bunch of stuff shows up–including instagram, pinterest and facebook.
Long ago I realized that if my name was anywhere, I could be found. Google “Terri Schurter” and you will see that there are two of us in New Jersey, but they are BOTH ME. Haha. I’m the only one in the country. The advantage of having such a name is that it is always available. The disadvantage is that I am always traceable. I’ve decided that I want to be noticed in this community, and that means opening myself up to a bit of risk. I’m not going to hide under the covers I’ve created.
I do try to keep my personal and blog stuff separate but I’m learning that since my town has an unusual name that it would be easy to “find” me. I’m wondering more and more if I should just go with my name versus blog ID.
See what I wrote to Barbara above. We can all be found. Some of us are just a little harder to find than others. If your name is available I say, “Go with it.”
I’ve been wondering about those same things for a while now. I also started blogging (and have not kept my goal, but am going to try harder) to meet other creative people, see what everyone is working on, especially sewing and quilting. I didn’t organize well at the beginning but I think I should now give it some more thought. Half of my social network presence is under a blog/IG ID and other stuff is personal. I agree with Ashley’s comment – i sort of kept things separate but I’m sure I could be “found” if someone wanted to. As long as it’s people that share my interests, that’s fine, but I will admit to some concern about putting so much out there about myself, especially since i have a family so they could be affected. But then, I’ve probably watched too many episodes of Criminal Minds!
Blogging is hard to get started with. We want to have it all figured out. But I just started doing it one post at a time. I decided to write about my thoughts and process in a way that would be interesting for me to look back on… kind of like a journal. I simply hoped that others might find it interesting. Just get back in there and write what you feel. The rest will take care of itself some day when you have the time to organize it. For instance, I don’t bother to categorize my posts. I should, but I don’t. One of these days I am going to go back through all of my posts and look at them and ask myself what categories apply, and then I will tag them and keep doing so moving forward.
If we try to figure it all out ahead of time I think we can get stuck because we are afraid we are not doing it correctly. Better to get a few things wrong and have your blog out there than to hold back because of fear.
Good point about Criminal Minds. I don’t think anyone is really interested in doing something bad to us.
I forgot to add, I’ll look for you on Instagram. My new favorite!
You won’t see much from me on Instagram… just seven pictures so far, but I do hope to gear up. BTW, I decided to make a page on Facebook. Search for “HexyLady” and you will see the page. It is just going to be a mirror of my blog for people to stumble upon in Facebook, but it is another step in reaching out.
It’s really interesting to see about your experiences with this. Definitely food for thought for my own social media and web presence!!