Chad "Ochocinco" Johnson's Life in Ruins

As some of you may have heard--whether you watch Celebrity news stations or Sports news stations---of Chad "Ochocinco" Johnson and his life-changing weekend he (and even his wife, Evelyn Lozada) have been experiencing.

[Brief background] For those of you who don't know, Chad Johnson is famous first and foremost for his skills on the football field. His wife, Evelyn Lozada was on VH1's Basketball Wives as she had been married to NBA player Antoine Walker for 10 years before they divorced. She began dating Chad Johnson later on and their relationship was shown on the TV show. I didn't watch the show, but from what I heard the couple was very loveable together--so much so that VH1 offered the couple their own spinoff called "Eve & Ocho" and was set to premier on September 3, 2012.  The couple married on July 4, 2012 in Saint Martin, but what was to come for the couple was something I don't think anyone predicted.

Fast-forward to August 11th: Evelyn Lozada found a Walgreen's receipt that showed her hubby had purchased condoms---but they weren't used with her. This led to an argument, which then escalated into Johnson head-butting his wife, leaving her with a 3 inch laceration on her forehead. She was taken to the hospital and is fine in terms of the injury.

As for Mr. Johnson's stupid actions, of course the consequences starting appearing rapidly. Not only was he dropped from the Miami Dolphins, he was removed from "Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Miami Dolphins", VH1 pulled the plug on "Eve & Ocho", and his wife is now filing for divorce after 41 days of marriage.

He was the reason for his own fall and I don't feel sorry for him. In my opinion, I think everything he "lost" is all justified. There is absolutely NO EXCUSE for violence against women (or anyone for that matter). She's lucky it stopped at that and didn't escalate into something even worse.

I was on Twitter the other day and #OchoThatHoe was a Twitter Trend and I could not have been more pissed. How are people turning this situation into a joke? Domestic abuse isn't a joke. There's such a lack of respect for the party that suffered---and is still suffering---from this whole ordeal. You don't have to go through domestic abuse/know someone who has gone through it to know it's not a joking matter!! Plain and simple.

This isn't something people need to make light of. I firmly believe that Mr. Johnson has everything coming to him that he deserves. For the people who think that Mr. Johnson's consequences are overboard, I could not disagree more.  Hopefully this will make many men think twice before even hurting their loved ones. Nothing ever justifies domestic abuse. I understand this was his first time "being in trouble with the law" or inflicting some sort of abuse on anyone for that matter----but that 1 situation is just 1 too many. This is something we have to be tough on.

My thoughts and prayers are with Evelyn Lozada and anyone who has gone through domestic abuse/know someone who has. Anyone currently in an abusive relationship, please find the strength to get out while you can, there is no reason for abuse to be justified.

Sorry this post was long, but this was something I just HAD to say something about.

-Chanel T.

How to Personal Brand Yourself on Twitter

If you have been reading my posts, you would know that I have a Personal Learning Project that centers on Personal Branding on Twitter.  My goal was to create @CHANELspeaks, tweet about celebrity news, and work on establishing credibility with the help of the amount of followers as well as tweets with the latest news.

March 2nd marks the birth of @CHANELspeaks and I had until April 20th to gain 100+ followers. Considering I had made an account last year (just so I could see if my Public Relations teacher was going to be on time to class), and had only 22 followers, I just didn't see the point in Twitter and wondered who would even want to follow me. However, with my new perspective on Twitter and how it can benefit myself from furthering my understanding of the power of social media tools to being a major plus on my resume made me rethink Twitter.
With @CHANELspeaks, I tweet about celeb news which is basically what my life revolves around and to my surprise I was able to gain 104 followers.  My dedication in delivering news has helped me get a start for personally branding myself as a celebrity tweeter and I plan on doing nothing but grow from this experience. 


On Twitter, @DerCarlosMo, aka Carlos Morales, tweets about the latest news in celebrities, fashion, and more.  With currently 156 followers, he is gaining a Twitter presence with his personality shining through the tweets and by tweeting the latest breaking news.

He so kindly agreed to an interview via Twitter but you can read the interview right here on Carlos Morales' tips on how he is personal branding himself on Twitter. (Keep in mind since it was on Twitter, the questions and answers are brief and to the point!)

@CHANELspeaks: @DerCarlosMo, how did you gain a presence on Twitter?

@DerCarlosMo: well i think it's not difficult, is just a blog where you publish what you want and shows part of your personality ;)

@CHANELspeaks: What a perfect answer! @DerCarlosMo & how long did it take you to reach so many followers?

@DerCarlosMo: how long? I think two months.. I wasn't interested at first, but over time i've become addicted to it! ;)

@CHANELspeaks: I was the same way @DerCarlosMo! With that new perspective, why do you feel Twitter benefits people?

@DerCarlosMo: @CHANELspeaks help people to know what is happening in the world, in many aspects as politic, economy, gossip, etc..

@CHANELspeaks: Last question: @DerCarlosMo, what was your strategy to gain the followers you have?

@DerCarlosMo: @CHANELspeaks i didn't had a strategy, people who know me r followin me n i'm glad to have followers around the world, but a good pic helps

Glad we were able to end on a funny note for the interview! He gave some helpful quick tips to keep in mind! Aside from not having a specific strategy, we basically approached Twitter the same way.

Be sure to follow both him and I on Twitter to learn more about us or see what we have to say.

ENGAGE in the Human Network

As usual my posts on Brian Solis' Engage are to engage my readers on what engaged me (funny?).

What caught my attention this time was  "human network".  Solis states that the "human network" is what allows everyone to basically connect to one another by linking across social media networks.  Reading this couldn't let me help but think of the video about 6 Degrees of Separation. Somehow we can all connect to one another. Who cares? Well you should. As I have stated oh so many times, my Personal Learning Project for my Social Media for PR class centers on Personal Branding on Twitter.  In order to get myself out there, gain more followers, credibility, and etc., I need to up my engagement within the Twitter community. 
I always believe that is easier said than done because I am the type of person that likes when people come to me, not the other way around.  However, what I am slowly realizing is that it truly is crucial that my engagement within the community will actually bring nothing but more knowledge to me as well as possibly more credibility in the form of many followers for my celebrity news tweets. Once I have engaged in other peoples' interests, conversations, tweets, what have you, they will most likely engage with me. 

This means that connections will be formed and the human network is able to be established.

Pretty neat, a bit repetitive, but maybe this is for my own good so I can finally be knocked into some sense that I need to be as "vocal" as possible within the Twitter community.

Khloe and Lamar

TV's newest "Dreamteam" has had E-channel goers overall very satisfied.

If you haven't a clue who I'm talking about, it's definitely not a notion of a team of NBA/WNBA players but instead Khloe Kardashian and Lamar Odom.

Khloe Kardahian & Lamar Odom

The couple first came onto the scene in E's Keeping Up With the Kardashians and their story was what sparked an incredible amount of interest with the Kardashian fans.
Kardashian and Odom met, became boyfriend and girlfriend, engaged, and married all in 30 days [one episode]. Of course the struggle for the family to understand why the couple wanted to move so fast in their relationship was natural but I couldn't help but just be excited for Khloe to have seemingly found someone very special for her.  As soon as they were pronounced husband and wife, there was one thought that popped into my head; "without a doubt, they will get their own spinoff".

Born was a new married celebrity couple and a new reality TV show for me to become obsessed with, Khloe & Lamar. The show premiered Sunday April 10th ( a week ago from today), and according to the Nielsen TV ratings, it did extremely well---well duh. In my opinion, it seems like the Kardashians have the Midas touch, meaning anything they touch turns instantly into gold (or in this case high TV ratings and loads of money).  The Kardashian empire is doing nothing but building and to me, doesn't seem like it is going anywhere.

I can't help but think of all the companies that approach the Kardashians (and now Mr. Odom) to do promotional work for them.  They've got their TV shows by E,  Quick-Trim diet pills, Sketchers toning shoes, perfumes, a jewelry and accessories line for Bebe, a clothing line with Sears, Midori liqueur, clubs, and supposedly have a deal in the works with major nail polish company, OPI. Who knows, I might still even be missing some more things they endorse, but you get the point---they are taking over.

Now if I can get a Kardashian to tweet about me, I bet I could get a bunch of followers because the Kardashain-followers are nothing but loyal to the beautiful family.
Jeez, if I could one day have even half the amount of power they do, I'll be a happy person.

ENGAGE in BRANDING

For my Social Media for PR Class, we were in charge of coming up with our own Personal Learning Network. We were to take social media tools and further our knowledge in them by working with the tools and using them to our own learning benefits. I decided my PLN would be based on Personal Branding on Twitter. This would mean I would create a Twitter account, work to become known as a reliable source of celebrity news in hopes of gaining 100+ followers (by April 18th, I'm currently at 73), all to hopefully one day be able to put on my resume my efficiency in Twitter with my focus of entertainment news.

In Chapter 12 of Brian Solis' Engage, Branding is the focus of the chapter. With the goal of my PLN project being Personal Branding, I found I was able to gain some helpful information for my project on this particular chapter even though I'm not branding a company but instead myself.
The first section titled "Establishing an Online Presence and Defining the Brand Persona" helped me realize ways that would help organize my Twitter persona, @CHANELspeaks. It's easy for anybody to just create an account so if I want to stand out from all the other fishes in this big, vast, social media sea, then I need to consider the following factors; what am I trying to accomplish, how do I want to be viewed by my followers, what makes me a good spokesperson for my news, and how can I appeal to people.

As Mr. Solis has stated, online profiles speaks volumes about you and your brand. I want my personal branding on Twitter to have its own characteristics because everything from my username, background, news, engagement with other fellow Tweeters and more will be under scrutiny of the public.

 There are so many different factors into becoming successful now. You can't just want something, you have to have everything else to carefully back and project it. I used to hate Twitter but my PLN project, class, Engage, and my own explorations have led to my growing love for this social media tool. I love tweeting now and the fact that I'm trying to find out the perfect formula to personally branding on Twitter 

To end this post, I'd like to state that if my blog posts have interested you or if you love celebrity news or even if you just want to see what else I have to say then follow me @CHANELspeaks

ENGAGE

While reading chapters 6-12 of Engage, something caught my eye on Chapter 9. Chapter 9 had a section titled "Geo location/mobile networking" and has been a topic that has always interested me.

In one of my previous posts, I have talked about the beauty of social media tools such as Gowalla, FourSquare, and Whrrl and of how much social media can really benefit a person. (Of course, by benefit, I mean save me some money!)

The section started out with how Twitter came to be a dominant social media tool. Being a college student in Austin, I was interested to find out that Twitter debuted in March 2006 and got a kick start with Austin's famous South by Southwest (SXSW), which is a huge Austin event combining music, film, and interactive all in one!

When SXSW 2007 finally rolled around, Twitter became a primary tool SXSW attendees used to keep up with one another. Of course, I cannot also forget to mention that Twitter wasn't the first social media network that connected people with geo location...apparently a social media tool by the name of Dodgeball was a competitor.

Now, why haven't we heard of Dodgeball before? Twitter just outpaced Dodgeball and Google (of course Google) stepped in and shut the service down. From there, tools like Gowalla and FourSquare started to appear and attempt to show people how they could benefit from geo locating. All these would perform as apps on people's phones, allowing users to easily update their location, and of course get them awesome deals on some places there were in.


In order to not repeat myself from a pervious post, I recommend checking out my post from February 27 to get more information as well as more of my take on tools I've talked about above.

An Angel may lose her wings

Ah, Victoria's Secret...with the land of unmentionables promoted by some of the best looking "Angels" in the world.

Let's be honest; when we think of Victoria's Secret we think of the pretty models who were solely picked for their jobs because, well, they're pretty and have a great body. Their whole contracts are based on those things because of the image Victoria's Secret firmly believes in; healthy and sexy.

Victoria's Secret Angel, Candice Swaneopel

22 year old VS Angel, Candice Swaneopel, has recently caused a media buzz because she's not upholding the VS image. When it gets right down to it, it's also clearly a health issue! This is clearly dangerous for her and doesn't promote a good image for the company that is all for being comfortable in your skin and not promoting stick thin girls that won't even appeal to the majority of America!

With the media always seeming to promote that beauty only comes in the form of stick thin girls, its hard for girls to imagine being any other way, because if you are, then you're not "pretty".

I call BS on that one. I think beauty comes in all forms and that Victoria's Secret is one of the rather healthy ones. They don't want that sickly skinny girl promoting their stuff....they want healthy women embracing their curves to have that role.  If they are to leave Swaneopel as is, their image will become ruined, and will come under fire by the public for the unhealthiness VS would be "promoting". It makes much more sense to help the girl and save their image all at once.


In Swaneopel's defense, she claims that because of the busy life of a successful model, the traveling has really taken a toll on her and her body. Swaneopel says that with all of the traveling a model has to go through, it can really be stressful, but she still eats and loves boxing. Apparently her metabolism and stress are to blame for the Angel's new barely there figure....but the public doesn't seem to be buying it.
As we all know the public has the power to control a company, and in this case, VS is definitly taking it all into consideration.

This Angel could possibly lose her wings/contract with Victoria's Secret unless she makes some changes.  An insider reports that the company would like her to gain up to 15 pounds or even be at her once curvy figure again. No final word has been given on whether or not the talk will turn to action.

Now & Then

Candice Swaneopel has released a statement claiming she is "healthy and happy" and is appreciative of how much the public cares for her. Is this the clever PR person talking inside her? I don't see anything healthy about that, but that's just my opinion.