Many of you know that I am part of many social networking sites on the net. Honestly, creating profiles on social sites has been a little addicting and before I knew it, I was part of several hundred social sites ranging from Home Based Business Communities to Personal Development Communities. Trying to stay somewhat active in all of them is quite frankly impossible.

One of the things I wanted to accomplish was to link all of these social sites with my blog so that when I published a blog post, it would show on my social profiles. Some social networks aren’t as advanced as others, so I wanted to pick several of the main ones I was active on. Some of the big ones are Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, and Twitter. How could I update these places without having to do them all individually or without having to find a WordPress plugin for each individual social site?

Ping.fm

I discovered a site called Ping.fm that did exactly what I was looking for. It is a site that can send an update to all of these major social sites as well as many others simply by typing it on their website. All I had to do is configure my social sites on Ping.fm, enter an update and click “Ping It!” It keeps track of your character count for the character sensitive micro blogging sites such as Twitter. You can also choose what you want the service to do on any specific social site such as micro blog or status update.

So, the next task was to figure out how to update all of these social sites every time I post a blog entry with a link back to my blog post. Since I use WordPress software to power this blog, I found a plugin that works perfectly called WPing.fm. You can configure this plugin to update Ping.fm with the title and a link to your blog post. Very cool!

This one plugin has increased my readership to my blog and saved me so much time. I have made thousands of dollars from the readership I get from this service as well.

They are continually adding new social sites to their list so check back to Ping.fm frequently.

For me, I give it 5 stars out of 5.

If there is a better service out there, I would like to hear about it. Because as of right now, Ping.fm is it!

I have always had a huge interest in the Roman Empire. I don’t know if that interest came after watching “Gladiator” or if it is something I have always had an interest for. What an insane time to live on earth! The more I look into it, there was very little individual moral value, very little trust and a lot of death! It seems that the only way for the Roman empire to survive was to constantly expand. The people thrived on it and from some of my reading, it kept order in the empire.

Now, I don’t know if this is an actual quote from a Roman Emperor or not, but I thought it was profound. I first heard this while watching a movie, believe it or not! I swear, sometimes I wonder about myself. At times, all I speak in is movie quotes. Maybe I should just invent a new language called Hollywood! The quote was spoken by the character who played Octavius in “Night at the Museum.” He said, “We Expand or Die!”

Now the translation for the time of the Romans was to explore new lands and conquer. Power, wealth and death are the key benefits of that sort of expanding. For the Romans, it was a way of life.

“We expand or die!” The same can be said of us today except we must expand in a different way. We must expand individually. What happens to someone who chooses not to expand themselves? And no I’m not talking about physically! Nobody wants to be a walking blimp! I’m talking about our learning, our knowledge, our experience and our minds. We must expand in order to truly live. Someone who fails to grow, fails. We are all given life so that we can truly live. Living is learning and we learn by doing. Starting from birth we are born to grow, physically and mentally. Our bones grow and our muscles grow. Something is seriously wrong if they don’t. Our minds too, are meant to grow and expand. What is a cell phone without cell phone service? A waste! So are we unless we choose to expand our minds. Someone going through life, not fulfilling their true potential, is struggling against their natural inheritance. Everything about our existence is about thriving and learning to the absolute best of our abilities!

We Expand or Die!

The way to expand is through Personal Development, experiences, knowledge and learning. It is a continual process. The other day my daughter told me she wanted to become an athlete when she was a teenager. That question led into a conversation of what it would take to become an athlete. I reminded her of our last hike we had and how it wasn’t so easy. She complained almost the entire hike. After our conversation, she realized that the hard things make her stronger and the moment she stops doing those things is the moment she will get further and further from her desire of being an athlete. It’s a continual process.

Consistency brings results. Sparsity brings struggle. Doing nothing brings nothing. The moment we stop expanding is the moment we truly do die!