Online Blog Success! ... FINALLY!

I graduated with my bachelor's degree a year ago. I haven't been working because of my fibromyalgia pain. Our plan was for me to take this year to "get healthy" and then get a teaching job for the 2013-2014 school year. Well, that hasn't happened. I've had countless doctor appointments, multiple medicine trials, and all sorts of tests done, and we're still no closer to a solution to managing my pain.

I started this blog and its corresponding Twitter handle back in late August. I started my website and Facebook page in October. In January I started my FibroTips4Chicks blog and I started my Etsy site in February. And made no money from any of it until yesterday! I had my first and second Etsy sales in a matter of hours and my site views rose significantly. 

I've known that building a brand can take years, and I'm still not where I want to be by any means, but between my blogs, website, and Etsy site, I've had almost 27,000 views since August! That means I've averaged over 110 views a day, which is (from what I've read) a pretty decent traffic flow for a first-time blogger!

In terms of making money with my blogs, site, and Etsy shop, I'm right around $150, which I am thrilled about! The reason I started all the online stuff was so I could have an income from online endeavors by the time I wanted to stay at home with my kids (in a few years). But the fact that I'm getting to start making money from it now makes me feel incredibly grateful!

Thank you so much to all of you for helping me get to this point! I can't tell you how much it means to me to have my dream start coming true!

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." --Gandhi

Media: Playing Up Terror Too Much?

Well, this week has been a doosie! And the media has been right there to help us through it. Well...maybe the media didn't exactly help us through it, but it was there.

The other day CNN made a huge "exclusive" announcement that there had been an arrest made in the Boston bombings. An hour later, they announced that the FBI had just released a statement saying that they would appreciate it if the media would vet their sources before releasing statements, because there had not been an arrest made. I was on Twitter and suddenly there was a flurry of activity of people trashing CNN's horrible reporting!

1. ChickOpinion ‏@ChickOpinion17 Apr

   So now, #CNN says possibly definitely not yes maybe there hasn't been an arrest or not. Ha. #breakingnews stories are irritating.

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   11:45 AM - 17 Apr 13 from Ohio, US · Details

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   Andrew Kaczynski ‏@BuzzFeedAndrew17 Apr

   RT @intelwire: My sources are telling me the bomber definitely has skin.

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   11:47 AM - 17 Apr 13 · Details

1. ChickOpinion ‏@ChickOpinion17 Apr

   I think #CNN should pluck daisy petals: "There has been an arrest, there has been an arrest not..." #broadcastnewsfail #CNNReporting

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   11:52 AM - 17 Apr 13 from Ohio, US · Details

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   Scott Conroy ‏@RealClearScott17 Apr

   Where was Lennay Kekua on Monday afternoon?

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   11:58 AM - 17 Apr 13 · Details

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   Armchair Quarterback ‏@Armchair_QBs17 Apr

   #CNN reports the #Jets are Superbowl favorites.

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   12:27 PM - 17 Apr 13 · Details

I understand that reporting on a "breaking news" story is complicated because you're always getting new information. But, since the CNN fiasco on Wednesday, all reporters on all networks have been saying things like, "We don't want to give you false information, so we won't give you specifics until we check the facts again." Why didn't they do that in the first place?

Not only has the media been rushing information, they haven't exactly been comforting during this time of unsettlement. I know that it's not media's job to sugarcoat everything, but I don't like feeling like I've just gone into an action movie when I turn on the news. Here are some of the headlines that the usually laid-back ABC has used this week:

On Monday night, the title "Terror at the Boston Marathon" was said in one of those movie announcer voices. It was so unsettling! I felt like they were drawing a little bit of the wrong kind of feelings to the story. It was not a feeling of tragedy; it was like an action movie.

Yesterday morning and this morning the GMA headlines were also read like movie titles. It felt incredibly creepy. Yes, the headlines are accurate, but do they evoke the right kind of feelings that tragedies like these should evoke in people?

Both the President of the U.S. and the Governor of Massachusetts spoke yesterday about pulling together as a country and a community to get through this crisis (as well as, of course, the crisis in Texas). The media is not making me feel the same way the president and governor did yesterday. I do not feel reassured with "TERROR" in all-caps. Sure, it's accurate, but the media also has the opportunity and responsibility to decide how they are going to make the public feel. I don't like feeling on edge all the time, and I feel like that's where the media is taking us.

So, kudos to the reporters and anchors who have stayed strong through all of this. Thank you for being (mostly) reliable and working through the nights to keep us up to date on everything that's going on. To the public, I think we need to remember the people who were killed in the bombings and the officer who was killed last night in the shootout in Boston, as well as the people who were killed in Texas. We need to make sure that we keep this in perspective.

Stay safe. Stay strong.

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." --Gandhi

Boston

The bombings at the Boston Marathon yesterday were horrific. I never thought I'd see footage like that in my entire life. The images coming out of Boston looked like they were from a war zone. I felt so sad seeing something so joyful turn into an afternoon of pain and suffering.

Twitter was swamped with people sending thoughts and prayers to Boston. "#PrayForBoston" and "#BostonMarathon" were trending within minutes. Twitter was also swamped with people starting to play the blame game. Muslims were upset because "#Muslims" was on the national trend list. A tweet that I saw said, "Did #WhiteBoy trend when Lanza was caught in December?" Another one read, "Anyone who thinks that Muslims are responsible for this obviously forget McVeigh. #shame #RememberOKC."

One of the people I follow on Twitter, an army wife from Colorado Springs, said that she was tired of people blaming "her American people" for the bombing and she wanted an apology from ABC, NBC, and CBS. I asked her what she meant (I'd been watching all of those, as well as FOX, to try to get all the information) because I didn't understand. She said that those three networks had already said it was the "conservative right" that was to blame. I disagreed with this, seeing as I had been watching those for the last hour and had heard nothing of the sort, but I thought her reaction was a perfect example of the way people react in the wake of tragedies like this: they don't want it to be one of "their" people and they take everything they hear and twist it to fit what they need to hear at that time. It's easier to blame some other group, some other skin color, some other country. I don't fault this woman for her initial reaction; it was a horrible day and our gut reactions are not always the most reasonable. I wrote back to her saying that I hope it's not someone identified with a particular party, too.

Maksim Chmerkovskiy, a professional dancer on the hit TV show "Dancing with the Stars," tweeted, "Hard to dance on [a] day like today, but I hope we'll show whomever is responsible for #bostonbombing that we're stronger and unaffected!" I really do think that the show must go on and it's important that we get together and stay strong. But unaffected? No. We must allow ourselves to be affected by this event to ensure that we do come out the other side stronger.

So. I am not a fan of blaming people. I know that other people are. Some of the most popular people to blame for the Boston bombings have been President Obama, Muslims in general, and terrorists. But is it the right time? I feel like I did after the tragedy at Sandy Hook: is right now the appropriate time to talk about what our government "should have" done? While I understand that we will absolutely need to discuss this, are the first 24 hours the right time?

For now, let's hug our relatives, help out strangers, and pray for the victims of the bombings in Boston. If we allow ourselves to start blaming each other and arguing about who the "mastermind" behind all of this was, it doesn't matter who the person who did this is: they have already won. If we allow them to bomb our cities, turn us against each other, and break our collective resolve, they win.

We cannot let them win. We must find the person who did this and bring them to justice. And we must work together.

Stay safe. Stay strong.

"Be the change you wish to be in the world." --Gandhi

Graphs and Stats: Twitter

I am obsessed with social media. I blog, tweet, +1, like, pin, and promote everything. Last week I shared this photo of my phone's social media folder. -->

The first thing I do when I wake up at 5:30am is turn my phone on (I sleep with it off so that my brain doesn't get fried by whatever is going in my phone lol), get my new notifications (from everything), and check Twitter.

I blog every morning while I watch the morning news. During that time I'm on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

Throughout the day, my phone is with me constantly. I respond to tweets, comments, +1s, messages, repins, and conversations as soon as I get them.

I tweet while I watch live shows like Good Morning Tri-State, Good Morning America, Early Start, Starting Point with Soledad O'Brien, Live with Kelly and Michael, The Lead with Jake Tapper, Piers Morgan Live, and ABC World News. More often than not, I get tweeted by the anchors or the PR of the show!

Last night I was on Twitter during the season premiere of Dancing with the Stars. I don't watch the show (I had to quit when I started ballroom a few years ago--their technique makes me want to die) but Twitter was blowing up during last night's episode. It got me thinking about Twitter and I started Googling stuff about Twitter this morning.

While I was researching I found twitaholic.com. I decided to see my Twitter statistics and found this very interesting stat:

I am the top ranked Twitter user in Northern Kentucky. Me. This blew my mind! 

I realized that my social media networking "strategy" is: tweet. So I started digging for more Twitter stats and found this amazing report from October 2012 by beevolve.com. 

The average user has 208 followers. I have 446 followers. The graph below (from the aforementioned report) shows that I have more followers than over 87% of Twitter users. 

I am, however, below target when it comes to how many followers I have (446) in relation to how many tweets I've tweeted (4,922).

According to our next amazing graph from this beautifully done report, I am in the top 4% when it comes to how many people I follow (1,148).

The other graph I found interesting shows that I'm going about website thing all wrong. Family and technology are the top two categories to talk about on twitter. For women (obviously more of my target audience), the top three categories are family, arts, and entertainment. Maybe I should have named my site "FamilyChick" or "ArtsyChick" or something instead pushing the envelope by trying to have too many opinions.

So, why does finding this out do anything except waste three hours of my morning? It means that now I can have a more targeted approach to Twitter, and so can you! One of my biggest "problems" is that I talk about current issues instead of family, music, and TV. Am I going to start peppering in some more fluff? Sure! Will I start watching Dancing with the Stars to up my ratings? Well, that's a harder question. ;-)

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." --Gandhi

Addict Unplugged

Last Friday, I read an article by Craig Kanalley of the Huffington Post: "National Day of Unplugging" about unplugging from social media for 24 hours. I decided to go ahead and take part in the unplugging and report my experience.

First off, I read the article wrong. It said, "from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday." I started at midnight Friday night and went to midnight the next night. Oops!

A screen shot of my phone.

I have made social media a huge part of my life within the last six months, or so, because I'm trying to build my own online brand: ChickOpinion. I blog almost every morning, I tweet all the time, I'm on Facebook multiple times a day, I'm on Pinterest a lot, I play Words with Friends constantly, and I'm trying to increase my presence on Instagram, Google+, and the New Myspace. Even since I started this post, I've checked my Twitter a few times, Facebook once, and played in two Words with Friends games.

On Saturday, I woke up around 6:00am and immediately turned my phone on. My "routine" is to check Twitter for the headlines even when I'm still laying in bed! I almost hit my Twitter app and then remembered that I couldn't do social media. For a second I thought, "But how am I supposed to know what's going on in the world?!" Panic. But then I realized that I have the ABC app, the CNN app, and the WCPO (local ABC) app. So my headlines were saved!

My fiancé and I went to Louisville for the day to meet with our wedding ceremony officiant, as well as celebrate my dad's birthday and my fiancé's little brother's birthday. On the two hour car ride there, I kept getting Words with Friends notifications and couldn't play! My fiancé and I actually talked the whole way there instead of our usual car ride protocol: Josh listening to Pandora while I mess around on my phone. It was nice!

After we talked with our officiant, I was desperate to tweet about our ceremony plans! I was so excited and wanted to share it with everyone! But I didn't.

We celebrated with my family and then drove to Josh's family's house. On that 30 minute drive, I can't tell you how many times I reached for my phone to check Twitter or Facebook. I kept stopping myself, but it started making me realize just how addicted I am to social media.

On the way home we hit traffic. The last 10 miles on the interstate before we got to our exit took us 50 minutes. This is where the mistake of "sundown to sundown" came back to bite me. It was 8:30pm and dark; I was thinking how great it would be if I could get on Twitter to see what was going on with the traffic. Turns out that I could have checked!

Sunday morning when I woke up I realized I'd had a dream about not being able to tweet. I had 27 new notifications on my social media networks.

But now I have a bit of a conundrum: I don't have a job, so I'm doing a lot of online stuff to try to make money: blogging, Etsy, and writing articles. But when I'm anxious to the point of having nightmares about not having my phone with me so I can tweet...I think something is wrong.

I grew up without TV until I was 16. I didn't have a cell phone until my senior year of high school. How is it that someone who grew up knowing only the "little things" in life that you have when you don't have a screen in front of your face, be so addicted only eight years later?

How do you build your online presence to the point of being successful without becoming addicted?

This is something I am definitely going to explore. I feel like a lot of people must have felt this way on Saturday. Yes, I'm committed to building my online presence, but I really enjoyed getting to spend time with my family without having my phone glued to my hand. There has to be a happy medium, and I'm going to find it.

I have no intention of living every moment of my life with a phone in my hand, but I have every intention of being incredibly successful.

Did you take part in the National Day of Unplugging? What's your story?

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." --Gandhi