Friday afternoon I was having my weekly sushi treat (which has actually turned into bi-weekly, and sometimes tri-weekly+) and while scrolling through my Instagram feed, I saw someone I follow from a certain Bravo show posted a picture of her on Millionaire Matchmaker. I have been very clear about how much I dig this fellow Dallas girl, she has fab style and an awesome sense of humor, her friend Tori is the bomb too. They are really great friends to each other!
Anywho, so back to sushi and Instagramming. When I saw this picture on Insta, I tweeted...
Courtney Kerr was on millionaire matchmaker last night?! I'm pretty sure fashion blogging doesn't make you a millionaire..Did anyone see it?
— Sarah Webb (@iamsarahwebb) December 20, 2013It turns out Patti dubbed her as a millionaire in training, not that it matters though because even though I didn't tag her in my tweet, she must search for her name on twitter and she took to responding to my question directly.
@iamsarahwebb Would you like to see my tax return?
— Courtney Kerr (@thecourtneykerr) December 20, 2013Holy toledo. I didn't mean any harm. I figured when you reached Bravo status, you would know that people would be tweeting about you. I certainly didn't mean to offend her, I like the girl. So me being the "all in my head all the time" kind of girl I am, I decided to go back through and read her twitter feed as well as any mentions of her on twitter. And I'm so glad I did, because I really had a little life lesson lightbulb (say that 5 times fast) go off.
As I scrolled through her name mentioned on Twitter, I saw so many kind things people were tweeting about her, from how much they loved her hair, to her wardrobe, to her personality, to her style, to her humor... everything about her, people were professing how much they adore this girl.
But she hadn't responded to all the kind things that were said about her. As for the 12 or so negative tweets in the slew of positive mentions, well she had directly responded to each of those, and either retweeted or publicly acknowledged them on her timeline.
This brings me to my lightbulb moment. As bloggers, we have fans too. Fans generally turn into friends, when you thank them for their support.
Have you ever had a big blogger not respond to a positive, kind comment you left them, but then see them go out of their way to publicly acknowledge negative comments left on certain forums? What if they had instead put in the effort to thank you and recognize you, rather than recognizing the people that don't like them. They would have created a fan for life, instead of simply giving further ammunition to someone who already doesn't like them and will never like them.
She could have created a fan for life with me, had she just ignored my comment about MM, which was never intended to be hateful. Or, think about if she had responded to this tweet I sent her instead. What if she had said Happy Birthday back to me? I would have lost my damn mind with excitement and created a fan for life.
As I scrolled through her name mentioned on Twitter, I saw so many kind things people were tweeting about her, from how much they loved her hair, to her wardrobe, to her personality, to her style, to her humor... everything about her, people were professing how much they adore this girl.
But she hadn't responded to all the kind things that were said about her. As for the 12 or so negative tweets in the slew of positive mentions, well she had directly responded to each of those, and either retweeted or publicly acknowledged them on her timeline.
This brings me to my lightbulb moment. As bloggers, we have fans too. Fans generally turn into friends, when you thank them for their support.
Have you ever had a big blogger not respond to a positive, kind comment you left them, but then see them go out of their way to publicly acknowledge negative comments left on certain forums? What if they had instead put in the effort to thank you and recognize you, rather than recognizing the people that don't like them. They would have created a fan for life, instead of simply giving further ammunition to someone who already doesn't like them and will never like them.
She could have created a fan for life with me, had she just ignored my comment about MM, which was never intended to be hateful. Or, think about if she had responded to this tweet I sent her instead. What if she had said Happy Birthday back to me? I would have lost my damn mind with excitement and created a fan for life.
It appears I share a birthday with @thecourtneykerr
— Sarah Webb (@iamsarahwebb) December 17, 2013This is a really hard thing to do, to not focus on the negative. Once you reach a certain level, whether it is a reality television star on Bravo, or you have 1,000 followers on Bloglovin, or you are freaking Miley, someone is going to be talking crap about you, someone will not like what you're doing. But what about all those people who LOVE what you're doing? Don't forget them, they are your ticket to success!
