My Blog
Pulling into the parking lot we see a large gray building. There are double doors to what appears to be a warehouse and they are wide open. Walking in the building brings sounds of barking that can deafen your ears. There are dogs. Not just one or two guarding the place. This place has 40 dogs all locked up in four by four foot kennel cages. This is the Oak Ridge Animal Shelter.
I’ve been bringing my daughter and her friends here for over a year now. I thought it would be good for my Katie to do some real work and not just sit around the house. She enjoys bringing her buddies and of course they always want to bring home a furry friend. Katie makes sure all the dogs that can, get a walk in. Some dogs can’t get walked and there is a notice up if the dog is dangerous. There are signs on all the kennels that are just flipped over to show the dog has been walked. Some of the big dogs can be a little more challenging for the girls. They are all 8-11 years old and even some little dogs are strong for them. The dogs get walked around the yard and if the dog has a lot of character, or a cuteness factor, the girls bring the dog to a small fenced area to play with. After the dogs are walked, the girls make sure all the dogs get a small treat. Then it is off to the cat rooms. There are two of them. If you weren’t familiar with the building, you wouldn’t even see the second room. It’s more like a large closet. Some of the cats in these rooms are strays and can be feisty. They give a warning with a low growl or hissing noise. Other cats you can tell were removed from previous owners for abuse. It is not always a pleasant experience. The girls have learned all the cats need love and they try to hold or play with them as much as they can. Sometimes it is a real treat for the girls to see kittens. If the kittens are too young, the shelter locks the cage so the mother cat can tend to the babies. I was shocked the other day when I saw about 50 kittens being kept. It was like an explosion. The staff is part of the Oak Ridge Police Department. They are all great with the animals and they are used to Katie and her friends helping out. Other volunteers do work to care for the animals too. Going to the animal shelter is an educational experience. It is a place that will bring a lifetime of memories to my daughter.
0 Comments
10 Twitter Tricks to Lose Followers and Tips to Keep and Gain them
By Scott Frostholm Available for hire Everyone is trying to gain followers. These are ways to lose followers. Losing followers has some benefits like if you want to change the type of audience you have. Instead of the re-creating your entire account, you can do the items on this list and people will drop off your list. First, you need to mark your profile private so others can’t follow some of the crazy and not so crazy things I will list. To mark your profile private, go to settings, security and privacy, then click on the box that says, Protect my Tweets and save. Then you need to adjust your notifications if you want to be notified of new follower they need permission to follow you. Let’s get started on how to lose followers, and the opposite ways to gain followers. 1: Don’t follow back: When someone follows you, it is nice when people follow back. Some people might think it is just plain rude not to follow back. Celebrities can get away with not following back. However, if you are not a celebrity, people will just drop you like you don’t exsist. That is an eerie feeling. There are twitter accounts that if you join, you can follow each person in that account, and they claim they will follow back. To find these accounts, go to the search feature and type in followback. So if you want people to drop you like crazy, just don’t follow them back. On the other hand, if you want more and more people to follow you and stay following, follow back. It’s usually a simple trick of clicking a follow button. There are sites that people can see who is not following. The people that use these sites are bound to drop you if you don’t follow back. Example: Twitnerd.com 2: Unfollow all your followers: This method of losing followers can actually be against Twitter Guideline if you do it wrong. You are just not allowed to unfollow too many followers at once. Twitter will say they do not have a limit to unfollow, however if you unfollow too many users at once it is considered aggressive and your account can be suspended. Twitter does not want you to have an automated or bulk method to unfollow 1000’s of people at once. They prefer that you unfollow so many people manually. http://tinyurl.com/ny9mhu4 There is also a limit of how many people you can follow in one day. That number is around 1000. Again, if twitter believes you are aggressively following people, your account can be suspended. http://tinyurl.com/c343xru There are a couple sites that can help you unfollow others, or you can do this manually. http://www.justunfollow.com and http://tinyurl.com/on8objt Other people can go to the sites mentioned and see you unfollowed them. Some may get sensitive and even write about you. To gain followers, follow people you find interesting or the people that follow you. 3: Swear like crazy. There are still some people in the world who don’t like to hear swearing. So, in your tweets, swearing will get others to unfollow. Of course, there are people that might follow others that swear. If you adjusted your privacy they won’t be able to follow you. Time magazine did an article with statistics about swearing. 35% of most cursing use the letters F, C, and K. http://tinyurl.com/jwtg4mg If you want to clean up the language you see on twitter, I found the easiest way is to scroll down your timeline and mute or unfollow the people you see swearing. To keep your followers, don’t swear unless your followers don’t mind the cursing. Twitter has some rules about how much you can swear or excessive profanity. However, I personally don’t believe these are followed. Swearing may not be the best way to lose followers. It is one of the options you can use. 4. Post the same tweet constantly. One of the most annoying things a twitter person can do is to tweet their product 20 times a minute. Twitter calls this spam along with other unwanted behaviors. http://tinyurl.com/m7ar325 Plus twitter makes it difficult to post the exact same tweet constantly. If twitter thinks you are spamming it is a good way to be banned or suspended. Marketers get around this with slight variations. Followers will see right through the tricks and unfollow people that tweet the same topic. I personally unfollow the people that say gain 5000 followers. The spam just clogs up the timeline and it’s hard to read the important tweets. The opposite of keeping or gaining more followers is to change the subject occasionally. I might tweet about business for a few tweets a day. Then I will tweet about interesting thoughts, facts, news, or hobbies. People want real tweeting people, not robots. They want to know you have a life beyond an obsession. 5. Make up a language: I was going to say tweet everything in a foreign language. If people don’t know what you’re saying, chances are they won’t want to follow. A foreign language is not a good example because millions can speak most languages and twitter now provides translations. This has really opened up the world of twitters. There is a site, or many, that allows you to sort your followers by a language other than English. http://tinyurl.com/on8objt Making up a language has to be the best way to lose followers. No one but you will know what you are saying. (unless you share your secret language with someone). You could just type random letters and words or all numbers. People will unfollow because they have no idea what you are saying. Do I need to show an example? Ok, geen rie vim houe nar. Something like this you can tweet and it means absolutely, nada (or nothing). To keep or gain followers, just make sure your tweets make some sense. 6. Never ever tweet. There are many accounts that people open and just don’t tweet anything or stop tweeting. They forget about the account, don’t understand twitter, or just have nothing to say. I will reference the same site again to unfollow or find the non-talkative people. If you don’t talk for months at a time, your follower count will drop. http://tinyurl.com/on8objt I have let my site go for a few months without a tweet. About 25% of my followers left. To keep or gain followers, it is good to tweet 3 times a day. If you miss a few days you might be ok, but missing a few months will give you fewer followers. Staying silent is a good way to lose followers and you won’t be suspended or banned. Twitter has no rules about how long an inactive account can be open. You won’t really bother anyone with this method. 7. No profile pic: I follow very few people with no pic. The account might have a white egg (like an egghead) showing or just nothing. The accounts that I do follow with no pic must be very interesting or someone I really know. I at least like to follow others that have a logo, self pic, or just something nice to see. There are no penalties for not having a pic, and chances are non-pic accounts just had no intention for adding one. The process is easy. Just click on settings and edit your profile. If you want to lose followers, delete your pic and maybe even your profile. People will have no problem unfollowing you if they have no idea who you are. This site has the option of sorting who has and does not have a pic. http://tinyurl.com/on8objt Some people will post a fake pic which others may or may not unfollow. The fakes can be of anything and many are uploaded by fans of celebrities. Just be careful. I personally wouldn’t want to be sued for posting a fake pic. 8. Posting Evil, Dead, or Disgusting pics. Not all disgusting pics are evil and not all evil pics are disgusting. I knew a girl that lost her two year old son. It, the dead son’s picture, was on her profile pic. I’m not talking about just a regular picture of a boy riding eating baby food. I’m talking about the actual boy laying dead in the casket, pale and lifeless. I followed her for a while because she was interesting. I just could not stand to see the photo of the dead all the time. Creepy. I don’t have a description of evil or disgusting pics. In many cases the topic is someone’s opinion. X-rated photos should be avoided. No reason to be banned over a picture. The point is posting photos people don’t want to see is a good way of losing followers. If you want to keep or gain followers, just show pics you would be proud to show your mother. 9. Insult others: This is a great way to lose followers. Twitter might also ban or suspend you if you insult people too much. Twitter also makes it very easy to insult people. There is the @ sign that most people just use for email. If you use the symbol before the twitter name, it is the same as talking to someone or mentioning them. This is a little different than DM or direct mail because followers can read the @profile. To do this, start a tweet. For example, my profile is 1bizz. So to tweet to me do: Hi @1bizz you have a great day. And the best part is you don’t need to follow the person to do this. DM messages are not as quick to compose, although it doesn’t take long. DM messages also need you to be following that person to send one. So, to lose people, just insult them. They will drop you quickly, unless they like the insults. To keep or gain followers, the opposite would be to compliment others. Or just communicate with others. It’s more fun to follow people that know what you are about. 10. Politics, Religion, and Taking a Stand: If you want to lose followers, and possibly attract similar interested followers, talk about issues. Save the Whales is more important to some than to others. Some strongly and actively do things to help and learn. And others will unfollow just with the mention of it. This is the same with religion and politics. People have different views and beliefs. Some political people are elephants and some are donkeys. And other people are something else or nothing at all. Religion to some people is very personal and others like to announce their beliefs any chance they get. To lose followers, change the info in your bio and talk about these subjects a lot. Expressing your interests once or twice might not do it. To gain or keep followers, as I mentioned earlier, have variety. People will want to follow from different points of views if the content isn’t always the same. These are the 10 ways to lose followers with some suggestions to gain and keep them. These tricks may also be used on other social sites with some variations. Follow me on Twitter @1bizz and check my business website www.infosf.weebly.com. |
Archives
October 2014
Categories |