Over the past few months I have been slowly falling in love with ActiveRain. The first time I have ever came across this real estate network, I did not know what to make of it. I did not join ActiveRain right away because I did not feel there was a place for me. I had no interest renewing my real estate license and was under impression the network is reserved to real estate professionals exclusively. I am not sure why I had this perception, but after joining ActiveRain I quickly realized that this community is very open minded and most importantly not limited to real estate agents exclusively.
However in this article I would like to point out that real estate professionals can probably benefit the most from ActiveRain. And here are just few points why.
- Blogging. Every member upon joining the community is given their own blog. If you were thinking to start blogging yet was not sure you were ready to invest resources and time into it, ActiveRain blogs is a place where you can try to “wet your feet” as far as blogging is concerned. While their blogs may not offer all the bells and whistles that you can normally get when hosting a blog on your own domain. It does offer the basics and can get you started.
- Instant Audience. One of the best part about blogging on ActiveRain is that you have an instant audience for your blog. Even a newbie to ActiveRain like myself can often get 10+ comments on their initial posts. To me the most rewarding part of blogging is an audience that is engaged.
- Networking. As I am writing this post there are 108,851 members on ActiveRain. My guess that majority of the members are real estate professionals or working in the field closely related to real estate. If you ask me that is an impressive number of members!
- ActiveRain’s Popularity. Before joining any online community or forum, I am always trying to look at the “popularity factor”. The more popular certain website is, the better chance to gain some extra visitors to my own websites. According to statistics from Alexa and Compete (see the charts below) ActiveRain is outranking Inman by quite a margin:
Click on the image below to see detailed statistics on Alexa:
Click on the image below to see detailed statistics on Compete:
- ActiveRain Referrals– a place to share and find referrals posted by other ActiveRain members. If you are on a “hunt” for leads, why not to browse referrals by other agents rater than spending money on lead generating schemes?
To conclude, I simply would like to repeat my earlier statement- I am slowly falling in love with ActiveRain. I am also confident you will appreciate ActiveRain as well. If you are already a member, visit my profile page and add me to your associates, I would love to connect with you on ActiveRain.
…and we are glad you are there. Just catching up on my feed reader.
I just signed up myself 2 weeks ago Vlad! I'd have to say what I'm most impressed about with ActiveRain is that, generally (and historically), real estate agents have been a bit behind the curve with regards to technology…at least the Web. There certainly are groups and individuals that break that mold (and, when they do so, it seems they really go all the way!). But for the most part it seems to me from experience that agents aren't very Web-savvy. ActiveRain, on the other hand, is actually extremely powerful and “sleek” and to see all the agents that are congregating there gives one hope for agents taking to Web technology more in the future. I'm coming from an Internet marketing/entrepreneur background, so perhaps my judgment of the average agent is a bit over the top – still, the majority of agents I've spoken to that are of the “old school” don't know what a blog is and, if they have a website, it's one of those templated versions produced by a “real estate web design company” that still uses HTML 4.01 and frames to produce websites (ughh…!).
Thanks Missy,
I hope it's not 7000+ posts…. Thanks for stopping by.
I think agents are becoming more and more savvy though. Definitely those that are effectively using internet marketing strategies are reaping the rewards!
Vlad Flatraterealtysavannah.com loves Active Rain!
I have had really good results with Active Rain. With only a few posts I have gotten enough points to be close to the top for my neighborhoods, and get top serach engine rankings for a few of my keywords. It is really powerful! Good authority for real estate.
Great post!
I am a fresh activerainer and loving it!! Learned so much, so many helpful, intelligent posts!
Let it rain!
Active Rain is nice and creates a nice backlink to your site for SEO.