Can I accept the 7 links Blog Challenge ?

The first challenge on this American Thanksgiving day is not to overdo the Happy Thanksgiving emails and blog posts. One of the downsides to the ease-of -mass-communication that social media provides, is the flood of messages we get every holiday from people we don’t know and in many cases, don’t want to know.  Here in Canada, Thanksgiving was celebrated last month, so many of us get a double dose of celebratory stuff. I hope I have been sufficiently restrained with my one email to my subscribers and one short tweet and update in social media. For those I have not already contacted, I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving and safe journeys if you are travelling.

As a relatively new North American, Thanksgiving is all quite new to me, but I do think it is a wonderful idea and a good reminder that if we are still breathing and can get out of bed in the morning, we have a lot to be grateful for. If we have a roof over our heads, food on the table, clean water and a working inside toilet, we are more fortunate than millions of others on this planet. Coming from the Southern Hemisphere where this time of year is approaching mid summer and farmers are busy planting their new crops, not racing the snow to finish harvesting the old, it is taking me a while to get into the whole turkey and football thing.

One person I was quite happy to get an email from today was a successful young blogger from South Wales, David Walker, nominating me for the 7 link challenge. Two things I know the Welsh are good at are singing and rugby, I don’t know if David sings or plays rugby, (I have a horrible suspicion that he may be a soccer fan). What I do know is that he writes a lot of good, sensible and helpful stuff on his blog, he is also bold enough to point out the dark side(s) of internet marketing. I am a regular reader of his blog and his newsletter is one of the very few that has survived my regular monthly unsubscribe purges.

With someone like David nominating me, I have no option but to rise to the challenge, scratch my head and pore (paw?) through the last couple of years of blog posts. Here goes:

Most Beautiful Post

As an older blogger with a vastly different background, my definition of beautiful is probably strange. For this category, I chose the post that gave me the warmest feeling when I wrote it and for the response that it got from the subjects of the post. The fact that it involved horses probably helped my decision.

Following Your Passion

Most Popular Post

This is a surprising one, I regularly alternate my posts between motivation, marketing and political subjects. The post that has received the most visitors ever is the second one I published about the London Riots when I answered a comment that I was being too harsh in my judgement that, in my opinion, the authorities and the police did the law-abiding residents of the affected cities a huge disservice by not taking forceful action to stop the riots when they first started.

London Riots – Harsh Judgement 

Most Controversial Post

I lived in a police state in Zimbabwe, where the police were used as a tool of the government to brutally intimidate two sections of the community, commercial farmers (predominantly white) and opposition party supporters (mainly black). It was not pretty, I have written about it elsewhere. I am therefore acutely sensitive to the erosion of individual rights in countries that are supposedly democracies and the alacrity with which liberal governments pass legislation that gives the police the power to punish people and confiscate their property before they have been found guilty. I am not referring to organised crime or drug dealers for whom I have little sympathy, but minor offences like speeding. Heavy handed action by the police in fining a man twice as he was rushing his wife to hospital because she was in labour prompted this post which did stir things up a bit.

Is Canada Becoming a Police State?

Most Helpful Post

When I had a heart attack in September 2010, I was still generating a big part of my income offline. That disappeared while I was recovering and I had to look at finances quite carefully. Like many entrepreneurs, I had some sizeable credit card bills ( buying too many promises of instant success). I discovered that the benefits of the insurance that we pay automatically each month on our outstanding balances differ considerably between card companies and banks. This post explained the importance of checking the coverage BEFORE we need to claim.

Credit Card Insurance tips for Network Marketers.

Post whose success surprised me

Back in March 2011, I published a short post showing readers how to find statistics on Facebook by going to Facebook’s own fan page. This post received a higher than average number of visitors and is still getting a few each week.

How to find Facebook statistics.

Post that didn’t get the attention it deserved

In August I did a post about the dangers of relying solely on Facebook pages or free blogs, as some experts were recommending. I likened the dangers to those of “sharecroppers” who farmed a landowners land and paid for the privilege with a percentage of the crop. The share cropper could be thrown off the land on a whim, losing all his investment. I thought that this post would have attracted more attention than it did.

Digital Sharecropper or Social media Asset Owner?

Post that I am most proud of

This choice has to be for a series of posts that I started on 16 April 2011. It was too big a subject for one post and eventually ran to 5. It will soon be released as an eBook. In the series, I compare the simplicity (not necessarily ease) of achieving physical goals with the complexity of achieving business and life goals. I use my own experience of going from a confirmed non-runner to completing  85 km ultra marathons to highlight the differences.

This is the first post in the series:

Marathon Goals Easier for Runners than Network Marketers.

The next part of the challenge is for me to nominate 5 more bloggers, I cannot nominate anyone who has already been nominated so I can’t return the favour to David.

Here are my 5

Keisha Easley – We Blog Better

Carmen Marie – The New Happy Me.

Holly Jahangiri – It’s All a Matter of Perspective.

Peter Masters – MarketingM8

Adrienne Smith

 

That was a difficult exercise, both in deciding which of my posts to put forward and also which bloggers to nominate.

Thanks David for the nomination.

Wishing you success in all your endeavours.

 

 last few days to support the Movember Movement for research into prostate cancer.

Please donate here Movember Movement Woodstock Whiskers team

 

 

 

graphics from Artvex.com