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Monday, October 31, 2011

Happy Halloween and Finally a Diet Update!

Alright my la-la-la-la-lovelies, I have a 2 month 65 Gram Diet update. :)

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Snaps to Jenn

I hear from quite a few people interested in alumnae initiation now, and I love to read and respond as much as I can. It just so happens that I've heard about the first one of the ladies writing me got green lit to initiate, and it also happens to be with the very sorority that I'm a member of - right down to the same alumnae chapter/association!

I don't want to post her full name so I'll just abbreviate her as Jenn and say congratulations!

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Zombie Fasion Blog

I Googled my blog, to see what would happen and I was so excited to see that I got used as a referral video on quite a lot of other pages. One that really made me smile was a fashion blog post about zombie make up! That's not exactly what I intended the smokey eye video for, but, hey, I LOVE ZOMBIES so I'll take it! :D

So I wanted to send some love and smile back to the post at http://www.famous-flowers.com/?tag=zombie

And if you missed one of my first post on making the quick and easy smokey eye look, here it is for you.


I also noticed that I'm showing up a lot in hair bow and adoption pages, which is very cool too. In fact, I'm dumbfounded to find 19 pages that return on Google with my exact url to this blog. But then I found my vlogs on a site in India and I'm not sure what to think of that one. It's neat to have an international audience, but at the same time, who in India would care what I have to say? Most Americans don't and I would imagine I have less commonality with the people of India - but I still welcome you all and thanks for watching!

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

I Have to Chuckle

I know I just made a post, but this situation happened since then and I had to make commentary.

You know you're on your way to being a person in the public eye when the haters come out. As some of you may have seen, I did a video on alumnae initiation a few months ago, and I flat out said that if you want to do AI, don't use the forum GreekChat, because they are insanely nasty there. I've even had friends in a local sorority that was turning into a national sorority, they went to GC for advice and got torn to shreds and told they had no business becoming a national group.

Instead I recommend the forum GreekFriends.freeforums.org. I don't get paid to say that, this is my personal opinion after witnessing and experiencing so many users getting attacked on GreekChat for asking simple, valid questions. The bullies are just crazy tolls there, and my stance is that they are the worst thing on the internet to ever happen to Greek Leadership Organizations. They have so much useless, unjustified hostility there that it's inexcusable - especially when a lot of their targets are likely teenagers, and this country has lost enough of them due to bullying. I will say that not every user is like a "meanie," but the negativity far out shadows the validity of the forum for me, and many other users/former-users.

Now I assumed that sooner or later someone on GreekChat would complain to me about this video. It just seemed impossible to avoid, as it's like a fight club over there and they live for drama. I anticipated a user or admin from there contacting me, trying to make me change my mind, or just flat out insult me. But what happened was far more poetic.

A big draw in for people to join GC is that if you search for something fraternity related on Google, the forum and its archives show up many, many times over. GreekFriends won't show up unless you search specifically for it my name, spelled as all one word, so it can be much harder to find. So, GC gets lots of attention, has lots of users, and it's like a Wild West of a forum there; you may strike the right place and fit right in, or you may ask some innocent question and get your head handed to you. I experienced the head-handing, and was told via private messages to look at GreekFriend for a less evil alternative - which I did, joined, loved, and still adore.

I also don't really blog about which sorority I'm in, because, for one reason, I don't want people to think that I can automatically write them recommendations, or help them become alumnae initiates or anything like that. That's mostly stuff done on a local level that I can't always do much about, or have the time to devote to. My sorority is out there if you want to follow the clues and connect the dots, but I also don't find it appropriate to potentially make money by singing the praises of my specific sisterhood. That's something I do privately for free, and I'm a member of several Greek organizations with the academics. It's not my intention to influence anyone to be swayed to want to join my sorority just because I love it so much, I want to help you to get thinking and make the right choice for yourself.

Back to blogging, I'm not shy to say that I keep an eye on my hit counts, and I am able to see the link that refers the hits to my page. This helps me decide what new videos to make and who to market to. My alumnae initiation video is my most popular Greek Life piece, and it's slowly worked its way to over 100 views as of last week.

I happened to get busy and stopped watching my stats, and just logged in to check on them for the first time in at least 8 days, hoping to get a new video idea. I noticed that I suddenly had 308 views on my AI video. I saw right beside it that there were 8 "dislikes" that weren't there previously, so without even having to check I knew exactly where all these viewers came from. I did check my stats to see that I was correct, and GreekChat has sent me over 200 new viewers. My AI blog post is now my most popular at 228 views (usually I can't beg people to come to the blog, they just want the videos as they search on YouTube and subscribe that way).

The funny part is that I also found a few dozen new private messages thanking me, asking me for advice, and telling me their AI stories. No one has commented or said anything negative to me other than the 8 who disliked the video (I don't even care about it, so I just turned the comment voting off so that some poor girl looking into AI doesn't see that and think everyone hates alumnae initiates). But this really shows the power of bullies, and how they unintentionally end up helping people in an instance like this. They brought some people to me who were truly grateful to learn about AI, and that's what I wanted from this video. So whatever slamming or negativity they may be ranting about on their forum (I won't go there ever again, but I can see the thread name from my stats page) it's fine with me because I'm helping people get where they want to be.

I just really have to chuckle at people who think that their negativity, or clicking a thumbs down icon, is really going to hurt me or stop me from doing something that I find to be positive. I seriously consider warning people not to use that forum as a positive too, because it would be like seeing Jedi's and only witnessing the dark side - it serves the good Jedi's no help at all and makes the entire population look bad.

But I always appreciate a viewer, no matter where they're from, so keep up with being haters GC, because you're helping me help people in the long run. For the people just viewing to complain and spread your negativity, do you not see how that is a perfect example of what sad, busy bodies you all are? "Love me or hate me, it's still an obsession." ^_~




Just to share my current stats with everyone, the first two posts listed had about 2-3 hits on them before October 8th, where I had a surge of 94 hits in one day:

Posts

More About Alumnae Initiation
Jun 13, 2011
229 Pageviews


A Bit More on Sorority Recruitment
Aug 23, 2011
52 Pageviews

Adoption Update - Hearing Back
Apr 20, 2011
8 Pageviews

The Photos I Use
Mar 15, 2011
5 Pageviews


Traffic Sources
http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/showthread.php
178 Clicks
http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/showthread.php
30 Clicks
http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/showthread.php
9 Clicks

And it goes on and on, but it's not worth all the copy/pasting. This is hilarious to me as they trash talk GreekFriends all the time but can't stand anyone speaking out against their bullying. No H8. :)

I Need to Update!

Wow it's been three weeks since my last update on this blog! I've gotten to overwhelmed with school and birthday season that I'm starting to slip and run out of ideas about what to post.

Anything anyone is interested in? Product reviews, greek life questions, details about me, anything?

If you are interested in things more along the creative side of animation, photography, and so on, I'm working a lot more in my other blog animatimon.blogspot.com with tutorials and art and things of that nature.