Wow! Another month has gone by and the calendar on the wall is starting to look pretty darn skinny. Only a few more weeks to Halloween, then Thanksgiving and we all know that between that feastful  (if that’s not a word it is now) holiday and Christmas the time only flies by even faster.

Well, for us adults anyway. For the children it may still seem endless before they will be allowed to unwrap those shiny presents underneath the Christmas tree.

But let’s not get to far ahead of ourselves … Back to September.

If you missed the first part of this post, you can read it here … Thanks, For Not Dying Mom! – Part 1

As I was lying there on that uncomfortable gurney looking at my husband’s concerned face a lot of thoughts went through my head…And a lot of “What Ifs?”

I had just scared the heck out of him. What if I had really died back at that stop light?…and never got the chance to do the things I still wanted to do?

This post is very personal, and I have been contemplating whether or not to share it with you all. But in the end I felt like I needed to.

“Thanks, for not dying Mom!”

That’s what my son said to me, after I had just spent 9 hours in the emergency room.

14 September 2011 is a day I won’t soon forget. I had an appointment for a routine medical procedure early in the morning and so my husband and I were on route to the hospital at 5:50 am.

September used to be my favorite month of the year. It is the last month of summer with its cool mornings, and warm, sometimes even still hot afternoons. The chill in the air at night is a sure sign that autumn is on its way.  Here in Colorado September is especially beautiful as the aspen turn into a beautiful yellow color also known as “Aspen Glow.”

We Will Never Forget!

This beautiful picture of a beautiful month has forever been scarred ten years ago on September 11, 2001. A day nobody who witnessed it, either live or on television, will ever forget.

They say, …“If you love what you do you never work a day in your life.” So I don’t consider what I do working, really.  However, I keep forgetting that it can still wear you down if you try and burn the candle from both ends like I have done for quite some time now.

My husband has been after me for weeks to take a break or at least slow down. But I wouldn’t listen. I wouldn’t listen to the signals my body was sending either. At first that is.

I haven’t always shown blog appreciation, but once I found out about it I was hooked. I thought it was a wonderful way to give back.

Ever since starting out on my blogging journey about two years ago now, I have made many blogging friends around the world. Some walked beside me for just a little while and then went on their merry way, while others stayed with me the whole way through and new ones are dropping into my life every day.

Some are actively participating by adding comments to the conversation, others prefer to be passive and just read my posts. I am very grateful for both.

Have you ever wondered how you could revive your old blog posts and drive additional traffic to them? After all you have written valuable content and you don’t want it to collect dust in some old archive. The best solution I have found is a WordPress plugin called “Tweet Old Post.”

There are many ways you could get your old content back out to new eyeballs. For example you could use a plugin that fetches related posts from your blog and attaches them to any new content you publish. You could tweet out your older posts manually or use automated systems like SocialOomph to schedule them. But that still takes time and we are all very busy.

The buzz has been going around about Google getting into the Social media arena with their own “like” button just like Facebook. I am not going into the details here about “what is Google Plus One” as you can read about it in more detail in my previous post “What is Google +1 and Can It Help You Gain An Unfair  Advantage Over Your Competition?”

Let me just say this…

Word of mouth is VERY powerful! How often have you acted on a recommendation from your friends? How many movies have you watched because a friend recommended it? How many new restaurants have you tried out because someone told you that the food there is really delicious?

Wanna hang out with the best bloggers in your niche? Then you’ve got to be on Blokube.

Believe it or not, but we humans are herd animals. (I hope you don’t take offense at the word  “animal.”)

It’s true, we hate to be lonely, but we thrive when we can be part of something, when we’re in a group and have a sense of belonging. That’s why there are so many clubs out there. Sports clubs, business clubs, networking clubs. You name it and there’s probably a club you can be part of.

So….if you are a blogger naturally you want to be part of
a great blogging community like Blokube.

Have you ever heard the expression …“There is strength in numbers?”

So what exactly is Blokube and how does it work?

First, if you have never heard of “Tribe Marketing” or “TribePro” let me explain.

Tribe marketing is when a group of people collectively share each other’s content on social media and bookmarking sites. There are many free tribes that you can join on Facebook for example. I have been and still am a member of such tribes and they work very well. However, I have recently joined TribePro to speed up the process of creating backlinks and increasing traffic to my blog.

I have talked before about how important backlinks are for your blog’s SEO. The more backlinks are pointing back to your blog the more popular it is and the higher its ranking on the search engines.  However, creating backlinks manually can be a tedious task. But thanks to Social Monkee this is no longer a problem.

If you can push a button you can build backlinks to your site.

What the heck is Social Monkee?

How you can use Blog Commenting as Great Backlink Strategy.

I heard someone recently say, “every time Google sneezes, we are catching a cold.” Did you? Catch a cold I mean? If you were affected by Google’s recent algorithm changes you may give thought to an often over-looked backlink strategy called “blog commenting.”