Aaron Hoos

This is a series I’m writing on people you need to be paying attention to and following on Twitter. I’ll talk about who they are and why they are among the few people who show up in a special column on my TweetDeck interface.

Who to follow: The first in my “You Should Follow” series is @IAC_Heather.

About her: @IAC_Heather is Heather Villa, a business and productivity coach, accountant, and basically a genius. (Disclosure: She’s also a client, vendor, and friend — yeah, it’s convoluted). Check out her site at HeatherVilla.com.

Why follow her: I like following @IAC_Heather because her tweets are real. Other people tweet valuable insights and pithy quotes but Heather is Heather on Twitter. Although I love inspiring quotes, Heather’s tweets are demonstrative of Twitter use that is embedded in life. She isn’t just tweeting because it’s good for business; she’s tweeting because its a way for her to connect and engage with people. She’s connecting, talking, joking, ranting, networking, and basically (IMO) doing what Twitter was originally designed for.

If you’re not following Heather, you really should be. Follow her at @IAC_Heather.

I love economics. Yeah, I’m weird that way.

Most of the time, my interest in economics is reasoned and applied at the organizational level. But national and international economics is still fascinating. Although I’m sure macroeconomics isn’t compelling to everyone, I think it’s still important to stay current because it’s such an influencer of microeconomies.

In this thought-provoking video, Joseph Stiglitz talks about why GDP is flawed as an economic barometer. It’s a good lesson for businesses, too. What barometer for success are you using and is it measuring the right things?

s.

When I’m not writing for businesses, I’m writing for magazines, which requires me to pitch article ideas. The problem is: Editors want to see writing samples (“clips” is the lingo) and I’ve got a bunch and I want to send more than one or two but I don’t want to send a 10MB file of PDFs to editors.

So I hunted around for a solution. Posting them on this site is one option but I don’t want editors to feel like they have to download each file to open it. I want to make it easy for them to quickly review a couple.

So, in hunting around for a solution, I came across drop.io. How have I missed this? I mean, I’ve heard of it but never heard about how exciting it is and it certainly isn’t on the tip of anyone’s tongue… but I think it should be. It’s the most comprehensive, robust, brandable, user-friendly free file-sharing tool I’ve ever seen (and to call it a file sharing tool limits its capabilities).

It’s easy to create a “drop”, it’s free up to 100MBs, it has a variety of really useful permissions and password settings, and there are extra features coming out of the wazzoo. So, you can use it like I am to do some showcasing. Or, you can use it to collaborate with your team — and they can upload and comment on files or not, depending on your permission settings. Or, it has a bunch of other uses and even comes with a paygate so you can sell one-time or recurring access to information and files. For a new business starting up, I would consider this to be an essential tool in their operations (along with tools like Zoho or GoogleDocs).

Few sites really inspire me with the profound number of business opportunities that I think are untapped. Drop.io is one of those sites.

Check it out. Create a drop. Imagine the possibilities.

(I hate that I have to say this but in case you’re wondering: No, I am not receiving any compensation or special consideration for my glowing review. This is a completely unsolicited recommendation based solely on how impressed I am with their awesomeness).