Good Etiquette Revisited – Day 6 – Jennie

Today we welcome Jennie from Clover & Violet. Jennie and I have known each other for nearly a couple of years now which seems hard to believe. So I’ve been a long time admirer of her beautiful blog and creations. She also writes beautiful patchwork and embroidery bag patterns and her work is one of my main inspirations to learn embroidery.

I’m Jennie and I blog {mostly about quilting, sewing, and my cute kids!} at Clover & Violet.  Since I’ve already posted before on Blogging Etiquette, I’m not going to revisit my whole post, but there are some things I’ve been thinking about over the last year.

 1. Be Intentional. 
Everyone has a different opinion of what should and shouldn’t be shared.  My advice is choose what you will share and what you won’t, then be consistent.  For example, you won’t ever see a full picture of the front of my house or know what kind of car I drive.  Do I think these details are crucial to my safety, not necessarily.  However, in making sure I don’t over-share, I pick a few things that I don’t ever want to appear on my blog, and I keep those things private.  By making these decisions beforehand, I make sure that I never display everything about my life {and my children’s lives} inadvertently.

 2. Kid’s Pictures through Flickr. 
Because of Pinterest, I don’t directly upload my kids’ photos to my blog anymore.  I have my Flickr Pinterest disabled, and put my kid’s pictures there.  I am not highly concerned that someone will pin a picture of my child…but sometimes people do things like that without thinking about it.  Also, since many of my photos of my children are of them with quilty/sewing items, I’d rather just the item be pinned, so the photo of my child is through Flickr and cannot be  pinned.

 3.  Have a Blog Life.
When you’re writing your blog {or any other social media}, ask yourself “would I tell this to the cashier at the grocery store?”, “is this information I’d give to my spouse’s boss?”, etc., because you never know who is reading your blog or other website.  This goes for personal details as well as just self-censorship.

 4. Private Sites aren’t Private. 
You probably know the saying “you’re only as strong as your weakest link”, well, the same goes for privacy.  You may have a carefully thought out, random, strong password and a private Facebook page…but if someone on your friends list isn’t as careful, everything you’ve put on Facebook is now visible to who-knows-who…  We’ve all heard of {or maybe even had} individuals’ credit card numbers getting stolen from big companies while their cards and documents are secured or shredded at home…well, the same thing can happen to your pictures and info, even if you’ve carefully password protected them.

 5. Delete, delete, delete. 
Perhaps it is true that if you put it on the internet, it will be there forever, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to have unmonitored accounts in your name.  So, if you’re no longer going to use Facebook, delete your account.  If you’re no longer going to check that e-mail, delete it {if you want to keep it around, consider forwarding the e-mails to your current account, that way you’ll know if something is going on}. Really, this whole post can be summed up in two words: be conscientious. Enjoy blogging and social media, make friends, but always keep both eyes open!