Has this ever happened to you?  You are getting ready to write one of your weekly blog posts and nothing happens. You have been staring at the screen for 10 minutes and you are drawing a complete blank.

Writer’s block, arrgghh!  Not a single usable blog post idea comes to mind. Nothing! Zilch! Nada!

If you are anything like me, you are starting to get pretty nervous right about now. You know that your readers are waiting for your blog post. You don’t want to disappoint them, yet for the life of you you can’t think of anything that would provide the value your readers are used to.

Pretty horrible feeling, isn’t it?

The wonderful thing about blogging is that if you regularly read the blogs from other people in your niche you can learn a great deal. The amount of valuable information that is shared for free online is unbelievable.

There are about a dozen internet marketing and MLM blogs in my Google Reader that I follow on a regular basis and then there are a few more that I check for updates every once in a while.

When I first started out in my blogging venture I often shared inspirational stories. I know, I haven’t told one in quite some time. But, there will be one coming today which was inspired by a comment that was left on my last post by one of my regular readers, Tim Singleton. (Thanks Tim for the inspiration for this blog post!)

Tim shared his disappointment about a prospect he spent money and a lot of time on, educating him about his product and then in the end, lost to his sponsor. The prospect’s reasoning, Tim’s sponsor was a “bigger deal.” Huh? Are you for real?

Every once in a while I get that Request for Recommendation from LinkedIn. I’m sure you get them too.

While I am genuinely flattered that somebody values my opinion about them enough to ask me for a recommendation and I love giving them, sometimes that request leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

Such was the case just this past week and this particular one was a double no-no.

Today I would like to share a sneaky little email trick with you that I learned from Carl White, one of my husband’s mortgage coaches. This little trick gets people to click through on the links in your emails, which is what we all want. Right?

So let’s say you are sending out an email to your list in which you would like to introduce your subscribers to the new product line your company just released. And let’s say you want to send them to one of your company’s videos.

The easiest way to do this would be to add a hyperlink in the body of your email and hope that people will click on it and go through to the video. Right?

The new Facebook Timeline roll out is almost completed. If you are still on the old interface and would like to know how to switch to the new timeline now, my friend Adrienne Smith wrote a great blog post about how to do that: “How To Install Facebooks Timeline”

So now that you have all that space available  just what in the world are you going to choose as your Facebook Timeline Cover?

As suggested, I installed the WordPress Jetpack plugin a couple of weeks ago because that was the only way to update the WordPress Stats plugin I had used up until then. Little did I know what this little plugin would reveal just a short time later.

Well, on New Year’s Eve I received my first annual report titled “Your 2011 Year in Blogging.” What I found out in this report was very interesting to say the least.

For example it showed me…

Welcome to 2012!  A very Happy New Year to you !I’m so glad you are here with me.

As you might know I took the entire month  of December off and I had an absolutely marvelous time. I even was able to scratch some things off of my bucket list. (Yep, at my age you need to start living a little, haha.) I also created some new holiday memories by going to see my favorite musical, West Side Story, performed live on stage. What an experience!

With all the holiday spirit around me I realize how blessed I have been this past year,  blessed because I have had the privilege of spending it with you all my dear readers.

As this year is slowly coming to an end I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your continued support, your valuable feedback, your great encouragement and your awesome friendships. I have no words to express my tremendous gratitude. Thank You!

May your holidays be filled with joy and delight for you and your family. And may the blessings of the season continue all year through.

Merry Christmas, happy holidays and a most wonderful and prosperous 2012!

Ilka Flood
The Enlightened Networker

Here we are at the 1st of December. Just a few short weeks from now we will be saying goodbye to 2011. I hope it has been a good year for you as it has been overall a good year for me except for a few minor health hickups.

Considering I haven’t even had as much as the “sniffles” for the past 8 years and I am really  a lousy patient when I do get sick, I sure hope for a very healthy 2012 for my family’s sake.

But back to the subject…

For the very last time this year I have the privilege and the immense honor to highlight the…

With more than 800 million users Facebook is the #1 Social Network and a very powerful marketing tool. As I have mentioned a couple of times before Facebook isn’t static, it changes all the time and it changes fast. At times it is hard to keep up. So anytime I come across new information about Facebook my antennas go up.

Last week I was invited to a webinar about FBinfluence an All in One Facebook Marketing course.

Right away I knew two things…

I knew I had to be on this webinar and I knew I was going to buy this product ….even BEFORE I attended the webinar.

This Thursday, people in the United States will be celebrating Thanksgiving Day. To me this is a special day, not only because of the delicious food I will be serving my family, but also because I will be surrounded by my loved ones, those who are dear to my heart.

That alone is enough reason for me to be “thankful.”  But another reason Thanksgiving is special to me is because it marks the beginning of the holiday season which has always been a very special time of year for me.