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refocusing estherfoxdotcom

Posted on April 28, 2013 by phillynikongal • 0 Comments

Oh hey there.

As you might have noticed, I haven’t been around much.

Mr. Fox and I went to Florida back in March, and then his gall bladder tried to kill him so time was spent in the hospital. Then I launched Philly Loves Lacquer and tried keeping up with that. I fell behind in both my online classes due to hubby’s illnesses, and thankfully both my teachers are graciously lenient to my surprise. I managed to launch a website I had been working on, Paul Meyer Studios. Then hubs was back in the hospital for a crippling kidney stone, and I got behind even more. After that debacle, I started getting ready for my first restock at PhLL, and right before I reopened the Etsy shop, my asthma decided to rear it’s ugly head and put ME in the ER. And now it’s today.

Needless to say, it’s been an eventful time since the last non-Instagram related post I made. And honestly, blogging hasn’t been on my mind at all. Well, I take that back. Blogging at estherfox.com hasn’t been on my list of priorities, however, I had been rolling around the idea of starting a nail blog. If you know me, you’ll know that I adopted an obsession with nail polish last November thanks to a friend, and it’s been all downhill (in a good way of course) since. I’ve been battling dry skin and brittle nails for quite some time, and I’ve only recently fixed the problem with the help of daily moisturizing, cuticle oil, and 2500mg of high potency biotin once daily. I am finally at the point where I want to swatch my whole collection and then some.

So that brought me to a dilemma yesterday. While I was in the shower, I seriously considered archiving the entirety of estherfox.com and combining my identities into “phillyloveslacquer”. But then I remembered that I like to rant about shit on here and on Twitter, and I don’t want that associated with my business. I eventually decided that, rather than scrapping EFDC and making a new blog, I would instead segment EFDC into the areas that I want to continue writing about: life, health, nails, and the occasional bitch fest.

My reasoning for wanting to bring nails into EFDC is because there seems to be somewhat of a lack of interesting *honest* reviews. There are tons of nail bloggers, and I get annoyed with several things: one, the bigger bloggers are all blogging about the same things (and while it’s nice to see different takes on one color, it does get a bit annoying); two, I see more and more “products used in this post were provided for an honest review” and less “I bought this with my own money and I just want to talk about it honestly”. Don’t get me wrong though, because I don’t mind company-endorsed reviews. My issue with it lies with the fact that I feel like a lot of these review posts are too fluffy and robotic. I mean, surely there must be *something* wrong. It can’t all be rainbows and ponies.

You may be thinking, “but, don’t you make polish too? aren’t you going to send your stuff to some bloggers?” And you would be correct. I have every intention of sending my stuff to some nail bloggers (some of my favorites in fact!!). But I went to great lengths to make sure that the bloggers I was sending stuff to were part of the few honest reviewers out there that’ll let me know if I did something wrong so I can fix it.

And I digress. I seem to have lost my train of thought.

Oh yeah, refocusing!

I am going to be making a few changes here on EFDC. If you don’t want to read my nail posts, you don’t have to. You’ll be able to subscribe to a separate RSS feed/mailing list for those if that’s all you want to read. You will still be able to subscribe to everything though, if you so desire. One of the first projects on my list of things to do is an indie polish challenge. Using xoxojen.com‘s indie shop list, I plan on going through all of them and buying 1 to 2 bottles (this will obviously be a slow process, since money is rather tight these days) to swatch and give a brutally honest review. If I don’t like it, I’m going to tell you why. If I love it, I am going to shout it from the roof tops. There may be snark. I may start a war in the indie polish world. But, I would think that most people would extend the same brutal honesty to me if they were in my shoes. As I mentioned before, if I don’t know what’s wrong, it can’t be fixed.

My return to the blogosphere may not be exactly like how I imagined it when I first started estherfox.com, and even though I am NOT a big fan of change, sometimes change is good. And I am confident that this change will be better in the long run.

So, for now, I shall catch you later.

If you’re a new reader, you can subscribe to my email list here. It sends an email when I post a new post. Or you can follow me on Bloglovin. Whichever you prefer

esther fox dot com refocusing blogosphere blogging change

Filed Under: Just Me

My Life in Numbers

Posted on November 30, 2012 by phillynikongal • 0 Comments

When I started to get people signing up for #projectreflect12, a gal named Devon signed up her blog You Had Me at Neurotic. Her most recent post got me thinking, so I decided to be a bit of a copy cat.

0 – kids I have with Mr. Fox

26 – the number of years I’ve been on this earth

10 – the number of cities I’ve lived in during my lifetime (East Windsor, NJ; Las Vegas, NV; Henderson, NV; Carmel, IN; Lafayette Hill, PA; Peoria, AZ; Phoenix, AZ; Surprise, AZ; Indianapolis, IN, and Philadelphia, PA)

2004 – the year I graduated high school

9 – the number of schools I attended before college (two elementary school, four junior high schools, two high schools and one vocational school)

2 – the number of colleges I’ve attended to date

4 – the number of universities I’ve been accepted to but couldn’t bring myself to attend, let alone afford

6 – the number of times I’ve changed my major in college (in order: architecture, graphic design, pharmacy tech, business administration, photography, web development [current])

2 – the number of times I’ve been married and divorced

3 – the number of years I’ve been happily married to Mr. Fox

4 – the number of cats we have

1 – the number of times I’ve truly been in love

8 – the number of cars I’ve owned since getting my license at 18

9 – the number of hours I spend on the computer on a daily basis

15 – the number of minutes I spend in the shower

4 – the number of blog URLs I’ve owned and actually blogged on (fotograficrhyme.com, thefoxtrot.net, indynikongal.com and estherfox.com)

811 – the number of photos I’ve taken on Instagram

18,366 – the number of tweets I’ve made since joining Twitter in April 2010

1 – the number of cups of coffee I have on a daily basis (peppermint mocha Dunkin Donuts K-cup with vanilla Coffee Mate Natural Bliss creamer)

244 – the number of days I’ve been soda-free, as of this post

110 – the number of pounds I would like to lose

2122 – the number of songs in my iTunes Library

5 – the number of books I’ve read this year

7 – the number of hours of sleep I need to function

7:30 am – the time I *try* to wake up each morning

11:30 pm – the time I *try* to go to sleep each night

life numbers interesting things right now

Filed Under: Just Me

how to lose your customer base

Posted on August 20, 2012 by phillynikongal • 58 Comments

So, I had heard through the grapevine about a new BBQ joint that opened back in July in Bella Vista called Blue Belly BBQ. I love BBQ, so I was all set to tell Mr. Fox about it so we could go try it the next time we were out that way.

That is, until tonight, I happened upon a retweet from Mikey Ilagan of a tweet made by Allison Berger on Twitter, about a review she made on Blue Belly BBQ’s Yelp page earlier this evening.

Wanting to delve deeper into this, I took a look at the attached screen shot of what exactly Blue Belly BBQ tweeted, and was flabbergasted.

Conveniently enough, they pulled the tweet shortly after posting it, but obviously not before it hit the Twitterverse.

You would think that, seeing as this restaurant is in its “infancy” (in that they’ve only been open a few weeks), they would want to keep up a good rapport with their customer base, rather than choosing to get butthurt over a 3-star review on Yelp.

If it’s one thing I’ve learned in the few years I’ve been on Twitter, as well as the research I’ve done on brand management, you NEVER want to misrepresent your brand as a butthurt whiny twat on your business Twitter account. I mean, haven’t people learned? And then having the gall (although it got deleted) to talk shit about their customers on said Twitter page? AND THEN talk shit about them to other patrons?

I get the fact that Blue Belly just wants to vent, and that’s all fine and good. There are places to vent about customers anonymously that don’t affect your business, one of those being Not Always Right . But when you’re a brand new restaurant trying to gain traction in a big city like Philadelphia, you don’t want to trash talk your customers on your Twitter page, especially when your Twitter account is an extension of your brand, especially when you advertise the link to your Twitter account right on your homepage.

And here we have local ~~brewing company~~ patron, joining in on the ~~trash talk~~ commentary. Basically saying that Allison had no right to leave the review based on one experience. Well, I don’t know about all of you, but if I go to a place once and have a less-than-stellar experience, then hell yeah I’m going to leave a bad review (or write a review here or send it to Philly Phoodie) and not go back.

Defending a business owner’s right to vent? Like I said above, that’s perfectly fine to do WHEN YOU’RE NOT ON A PUBLIC FORUM USING A TWITTER ACCOUNT WITH YOUR BUSINESS NAME ON IT TO BUILD YOUR BRAND.

Edit as of Aug 20, 2012 – @MellodyBrewing wrote me an email this morning asking me to clarify that he is actually not a business, but someone that left the corporate world to follow a love of beer.

As it turns out, another negative review was left on their Yelp page a a few days ago, and Blue Belly decided to trash talk them as well. So it didn’t actually start with Allison’s review. It started with Jane T’s review.

Now, I know that I don’t have any pull here in Philly when it comes to local restaurants. But I would like to think that the small group of us on Twitter could spread something like this like wildfire. I know that I will never eat at Blue Belly BBQ because of this. I won’t even give them a chance, for fear that I be ridiculed on Twitter should I dislike the food and make a bad review about it. I guess I still find myself confused and flabbergasted at the fact that this business would even do something like this. I mean, really?

Please pass this around. I doubt they’ll apologize, but hey, who knows? Oh and, before anyone gets on here and defends Blue Belly, stop and think for a moment. If you were a freshly started business trying to build your brand, would you do something like this? I don’t think so. There’s venting, and there’s shooting yourself in the foot.

[hr]

As of 5:40PM EST on August 20, 2012, Eugene Giuffi, the owner of Blue Belly BBQ and Cochon, both admitted and apologized to Allison, in a public tweet on their timeline.

But of course this was not before he joined a thread on his business Facebook page. Although, that was after he deleted a half dozen or so comments.

Honestly though, regardless of the fact that Eugene made a public apology on twitter, he still made the tweet in the first place! And as many people tend to forget, Google remembers everything.

blue belly bbq butthurt bad customer service twitter

Filed Under: Esther Eats, Random Rants

The Great Purge of 2012

Posted on January 1, 2012 by phillynikongal • 0 Comments

So, right before the year became 2012, I decided to do a “cleanse.” A purge, if you will.

No, not what you think. I don’t have an eating disorder.

I unfollowed/blocked 30+ people on Twitter and I unfriended 40 or so people on Facebook.

The fundamental reasoning behind this was to try and start the new year off with only people who give me the time of day. And not because they want/need something from me.

That being said, I might have unfriended/unfollowed/blocked you on whatever service it is that I mentioned above. Don’t necessarily take it personally, as I have no real hard feelings, I just didn’t want the clutter. There are a lot of things I don’t care about or care to read about. I don’t need to see you tweet on auto-pilot with the same link to the same articles/blog posts you posted weeks ago. If all you use Twitter for is to push your Foursquare posts to it, that’s fine, but I don’t want to see them in my feed. If you’re a photographer and all you post are links to OTHER work NOT done by your self, so long. And most importantly, if you preach about embracing social media and using it properly, and you can’t even reply to people who engage with you, than you’re doing it wrong, and being unfollowed.

I’ve also unfollowed/unfriended people that just piss me off. Which, actually, seemed to be a pretty substantial number. I don’t need negativity and drama in my life. And I am sure I am being a hypocrite when I say that, because I have a tendency to vent a lot of my frustrations over several networks, and I’m sure that people often get sick of my rantings as well. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t practice what I preach about deleting/blocking people who’s status posts I just don’t care about. You can block me, and I can block you too! That’s the beauty of Facebook really. If you’ve hidden someones posts, and that someone unfriends you, then you won’t even know it unless you go to send them a message or post on their wall.

The moral of the story here kiddos, is that I needed to clean house. Kudos to those who were fortunate to stay on the nice list. If you weren’t, well, then, email me or something. I may be able to tell you why.

great purge 2012 facebook twitter unfriend dislike unfollow block

Filed Under: Just Me

#reverb11 and #resound11 day twelve – 12 things

Posted on December 12, 2011 by phillynikongal • 0 Comments

Today’s #reverb11/#resound11 prompt comes from Geekin’ Hard:

What are 12 things your life doesn’t need in 2012? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 12 things change your life? (Props to original Author: Sam Davidson) If you did Reverb10, how are you making out on your 11 Things from last year?

Hmm.

When I think about trying to make a list of 12 things I don’t need in 2012, it becomes such a daunting task. Like, how do I know what constitutes one thing? Or, what if one thing includes several smaller things, that could potentially EACH be one separate thing?

Ah well. I think too hard about it.

So let’s go down the list and see how many I can get.

1. Stress: I’ve had a lot more stress in 2011 than I care to think about. Some of it important, most of it trivial. Between work and school, marriage, family and friends, and other things going on in my life, it’s a lot to make me just SCREAM. With the new year coming, and new beginnings, I hope to eliminate most, if not all, of the stresses in my life. I know it’ll be hard work, because there will always be stress. Life is eternally meant to be not stress-free. But I have changed my outlook on a lot of things, so here’s hoping.

2. 100lbs: I’ve battled a struggle with my weight since 2007. As the years went on, it went higher and higher, through a mix of emotional eating, and well, just eating in general. In 2010, I joined a gym and started really working on it. And then things happened and I decided I’d rather eat. And I know what you’re thinking, “Esther, you cook all of these delicious foods, how will you continue Esther Eats if you work off your weight?” Well, I’ll just make healthier meals. And, “Esther, everyone says they’re going to join a gym on January 1st, what makes you think you will stick to it?” I can’t promise I will stick to it. But it’s a start.

3. Fake people: I’ve dealt with my fair share of fake people this year. I would love to write them off completely, but I know there will probably always be fake people any where I go. I just need to know what to watch out for.

4. The Internet: I spent an exorbitant amount of time on the internet this year, between Facebook, Twitter and other things. I would like to cut my internet time in half, if possible, in 2012. So much time is wasted on there, and I can be doing much better things with my time, such as crafting, knitting, and any of my other hobbies.

5. Processed Foods: this *kinda* goes along with #2, although this is a general thing I would like to eliminate. Mr. Fox and I have done the smart thing and eliminated a lot of processed, unhealthy foods from our diets. We cook more at home, we eat out less. We use more real foods as opposed to things with additives and chemicals. We’ve taken high fructose corn syrup completely out of our diets. So I would like to continue this into 2012 by adding more real food.

6. Finish this list.

Yeah, I’ve gone with five things, and I can’t think of seven more. How sad is that? Though, in my defense, I think the five things I came up with are pretty damn good.

So we shall see how this goes. I will edit this post if I come up with any more stuff.

reverb11 resound11 twelve bad things life stress

Filed Under: #resound11, #reverb11, Just Me

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Tag Archives: twitter

refocusing estherfoxdotcom

esther fox dot com refocusing blogosphere blogging change

My Life in Numbers

life numbers interesting things right now

how to lose your customer base

blue belly bbq butthurt bad customer service twitter

The Great Purge of 2012

great purge 2012 facebook twitter unfriend dislike unfollow block

#reverb11 and #resound11 day twelve – 12 things

reverb11 resound11 twelve bad things life stress