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RainCamp is Coming To San Francisco

RainCamp is Coming To San Francisco

The ActiveRain RainCamp Tour is Official!  Our first ever RainCamp in Seattle was sold out in just two weeks.  Now there's a demand by many of our members and non members to bring RainCamp to cities all across the Country.  As you can imagine, this is a huge undertaking for our staff and team. There are so many details that go into setting up this event, but our members and guests are not only worth it, they deserve it.

The "Rainergy" and "Buzz" that comes from a RainCamp is like no other event I've ever experienced.  You have to witness it for yourself to understand and grasp the full value and impact it will have on you, your Business, your relationships in your community, and the industry.  Here's what a few of the folks from RainCamp Seattle had to say:

RainCamp is coming to San Francisco on December 2nd, 2009 for a full day packed with great content, presentations, and some of the most useful and applicable ideas and processes that you can implement immediately into your Social Media, Networking, and Blogging Business Strategy and Plan. The Location and Venue we've selected is once again a "Top Notch" off the hook spot.

How is RainCamp different from other Conferences?

• Assess how you stack up in the modern market.
• Listen to people that are practicing what they preach, and having outstanding success doing it.
• Learn the methodology of a newer agent who has leveraged the Internet to become a 'Mega Producer'.
• Walk away with executables you can put into action immediately.
• Hard core real estate technology education. This is not a fluff event!!

What Do You Get?

An Action Packed Day: At a State-of-the-art conference and meeting room is just the beginning of our package at Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF.  They have Gorgeous meeting rooms with City and Bay views. Great layout with plenty of seating, wireless Internet Access, and much more.  All the comforts and ammenities of a 5-Star Resort.  "This is one of San Francisco's only full-service conference facilities."

 
San Francisco

Date: December 2nd, 2009

Time: 9:00am - 4:00pm
(registration 8:00am)

Location: Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF
1675 Owens Street, Suite 251, San Francisco 94143
GOOGLE MAP |  Yahoo Map | Mapquest Map | Microsoft Map

Facility: Wireless Internet Access and Power Available

 RESERVE YOUR SPOT NOW!

There will be approximately 140 seats setup classroom style (with tables) reserved for attendees with laptops.  It is all open seating so those seats are first come first serve the day of event.  We are limited to only 500 seats max capacity, so register right away. There will be On-site paid parking available, street parking and/or complimentary shuttles from the BART and Caltrain stations.  If you're wanting overnight accommodations, here's the Unique Venues Site.

RainCamp tickets are available NOW at a retail price of $159. However, we have reserved 50 tickets for our "early adopters" at a price of $99. This is a great value, so make sure you register today before they're gone, it will sell out.

"When is RainCamp Coming To Your Town?"  We'd love to come to every Major City, and may do so eventually, but currently we are starting in San Francisco, then in no specific order, we'll be in Miami, Washington DC, Dallas, New York, Atlanta, Arizona and more.  I'll be announcing those date and locations soon.  We're still working out all the calendar and venue details.

This is our last West Coast event planned for a while, and we are really looking forward to coming to the "City By The Bay" and bringing the "Rain-Storm" with us.  Just like in Seattle, we'll be hosting another exclusive "VIP" event/gathering after RainCamp, we'll have more details about that coming up later.  It's going to be a day you'll never forget, I hope you can make it to join us.  We put a ton of heart, soul, preparation, and passion into RainCamp, and we don't want anyone to miss out.  So RSVP NOW! :-)

Check out the RainCamp.com Blog.  Also follow the twitter stream using #raincamp.

Photo Source: UCSF Mission Bay

 

                 

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The ActiveRain Point System

The ActiveRain Point System

ActiveRain awards members points based on participation and their individual involvement within the network and community.  While there is a much more complicated and technical explanation of how the point system works, this post is to provide you a general overview of how points are earned and distributed that to ALL ActiveRain members.

ActiveRain points are earned based on a members individual activities and efforts. Points are accumulated over the duration of the Calendar week which "Starts Monday morning at 12:00am Central Time, and Ends Sunday night at 11:59pm Central Time."

The following are some ways you can earn points and move up the "Featured Member" ladder in your Local Area.

• 200 Points for each Blog Post
  (Max 10 per Week) (50 Word Minimum Required)
  
  
• 25 Additional Points when Post is added to Channels with a Topic
  
  
• 400 Points for Featured Post on ActiveRain.com
  (Excludes Posts Featured in ActiveRain Groups)
  
  
• 25 Points For Each Comment
  (Max 10 Per Day) (Comments on Your Own Posts Excluded)
  
  
• 25 Points for Each Reblogged Post
  (Max 10 Per Week - These do not Include Your Own Posts)
  
  
• ActiveRain Profile Points
  (Building Your AR Profile will Build points)
  
  
• Received Comments on Blog Posts
  (No Blog Post to exceed 450 pts.)
  
  
• 100 Points - Logging In To ActiveRain Each Day
  (This applies 7 days a week)
  
  
• 250 Points When Someone Accepts Your AR Invitation
  (Must Sign Up under Members Invite Code)
  
  
• 10% of Total Points Earned By New Members Invited By You
  (IE: Invited Member Earns 1000 pts. - You Earn 100 Pts.)
  
  
• ActiveRain and Member Approved Contests - Points Will Vary
  (These show up as Bonus Points in your Point Summary)
  
  
• Staff Awarded Bonus Points - These are issued by the AR staff
  (Member Humanitarian, Paying It Forward, Helping Others etc.)
  

Weekly Point Scenario: The potential of points available per week, per member would be as follows: 1750 for max comments, 2000 for max Blog posts, 700 for logging in daily, 250 for adding to Channels/Topics, and 250 for max ReBlogged posts.  The Weekly potential of points would be 4950 (this does not include featured posts, comments received, invitation and percentage points, contests, and staff awarded bonus points.)

Point Disclaimer: The Points System created by the ActiveRain Network was developed and implemented to motivate, inspire, and reward members for their participation and involvement within the community. These points are subject to change at the discretion of the ActiveRain Mgmt. Team, with or without cause, warning, or notice.

                 

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Add $50,000 to your bottom line: Hit your target with your links!

Linking from your posts to your IDX home search site should be one of the primary strategies you employ as you create content for your blog. How you create these links and where you send the person clicking on them could make the difference in how your readers interact with you. The proper implementation of this strategy could be the difference between converting your blog readers into clients and ultimately business and simply being someone providing information out of the goodness of your heart.

Remember, you should be blogging for business!

It is no secret that consumers want the information they are after in the easiest, most direct fashion possible. One need only look at Google's insane traffic numbers to prove that point. Google does a great job of letting consumers search for exactly what they want and returning results that are relevant to the search they just did. Are you employing a similar technique when you create links on your blog posts? In most cases the answer is NO.

Sometimes the answer is no because you don't know where you should actually be linking (or maybe even that you should be linking at all) and sometimes the answer is no because even if you wanted to, your site doesn't allow you to link to the right place. In a lot of the cases I come across on ActiveRain it's probably a combination of both.

So first let's deal with where you want to be linking when you create links in your blog posts. You want to send the person to the exact information you just told them you were going to provide with the link you created. Does that make sense? Let's do an example:

The correct way:

(Click on the link below and see where it takes you. DO IT, I'll wait! Now once you are taken there, pay attention to the URL that we land on. It is specific to the exact link that we created, and more important takes to the results that we said we were going to deliver)

Affordable homes in Seattle under $300,000 with 3+ bedrooms

• sends us to: http://www.servingdowntownseattle.com/listings/area/seattle/propertytype/single/maxprice/300000/beds/3/   See that URL? It's exactly what we just said we were going to send them to.
  

Maybe our blog post for this specific search was referring to affordable homes for new families in the Seattle area. New families need at least 3 bedrooms, and they generally can't afford much more than $300,000. So does it not make sense to send them to a SPECIFIC search on your website that delivers the information that your reader thinks they are about to find?

The way many people are doing it:

(In this example you can only mirror the wording for the above link if you can create a unique URL to a search of that nature. Otherwise, you are simply sending them to a page where they expect one thing, homes for sale in Seattle under $300,000 with 3+ bedrooms, and they get something else.........the home page of your website or a search page where they can then do that search on their own)

Affordable homes for sale in Seattle

• sends us to: http://www.servingdowntownseattle.com/   See that URL? It's the home page of her site. Now she has to depend that the person will actually perform the search once they reach the site. Her site makes it really easy to find that search function. It's right there, at the top left of the page, the place a person's eye naturally falls so she has a better chance of them performing the search then most people do.......but why even take the chance if the post they were reading was about affordable homes for families buying their first home?

Biggest Folly I see when people include a link: Linking to your home page

What if, unlike our home page above, the home page of your website doesn't make it so obvious how someone actually searches for homes? Here are three completely random examples that I just pulled from ActiveRain members in Seattle:

• Affordable homes for sale in Seattle (http://www.murphybrown.com/)
  
• Affordable homes for sale in Seattle (http://www.seattlecondohotline.com/)
• Affordable homes for sale in Seattle (http://mssold.net/)
  

Please click on those sites and you tell me how long it takes you to actually get a list of homes for sale in Seattle? 5 seconds? 30 seconds? you couldn't figure it out? (I'm dead serious!! This is important!! Do it! Click on those links and figure out how long it takes the consumer to find homes for sale in Seattle) How about on your own website? It's going to be hard to judge your own website, hopefully you know how to quickly access your search feature. Have someone else try it then, your spouse maybe or a friend. Stand and watch them do it. How long did it take them?

"Remember, consumers have an average attention span of 3-5 seconds.  When they’re scanning your website for an answer to their question or problem, they want to find it quickly.  An effective website doesn’t force a customer to frantically search their website."          Is your website consumer focused?

The better place would be to link them directly to the home search function on your site:

Most of you have the ability to do this with your site. For the three examples above, here are the links to the home search portions of their site:

• Affordable homes for sale in Seattle (http://www.murphybrown.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Listing.SearchPropertyNeighborhood&st=wa)
• Affordable homes for sale in Seattle (http://www.seattlecondohotline.com/Seattle_WA_listings/index.shtml) This one was actually tough. I still couldn't really figure out how to access a complete home search and I've seen way more real estate websites than any consumer
• Affordable homes for sale in Seattle (http://lakere.com/search/property_search.php?county=no_king) This one redirects away from her site to what appears to be the brokers site. I wonder if it tracks that traffic as having been sent from her and if that consumer registers does she get the contact?
  

The best place to link them is directly to a specific search that best matches your blog post:

Of these three completely random sites, none of them have the ability for you to create custom URL's out of the search functionality. They all use database queries to pull up the results that you search for. Anytime you are searching on the murphybrown.com site, you remain on that same URL and the home search results load in a framed solution. There is nothing wrong with that per say, but if you are writing a blog post about Affordable homes in Seattle under $300,000 with 3+ bedrooms, the only options these sites provide for linking out of the post to the home search is to drop the consumer on the front of the home search page. And if that's the case, can you really make your link say 'Affordable homes for sale in Seattle under $300,000 with 3+ bedrooms' if the link actually takes them to a default home search page?

What kind of options does your current home search solution give you?

If a consumer is reading your blog post, chances are they are already a highly targeted visitor. Does it make sense to take a highly targeted visitor that knows they want to look at affordable homes in Seattle under $300,000 with 3+ bedrooms and send them to a page that forces them to figure out how to actually navigate a search to obtain the information they desire? Remember above? You have 3-5 seconds.

If you haven't heard, ActiveRain is offering an IDX solution, Vision, through a partnership with Market Leader. The site I was using above in the example is one of those sites, servingdowntownseattle.com.

You can find out more information about it here and you can get started with your own Vision site here.

(Disclaimer: I only used $50,000 in the title line to grab your attention. I don't know how much you will add to your bottom line. The more content you produce the better your chances and the more targeted your links the better your chances of adding real dollars to your bottom line.)

Do you care what I'm doing and thinking? (I can not for the life of me imagine why) If you do, you can find me on some of these places........but remember, if you are offended by anything you see or hear, I didn't force you to follow me!!:

 

              

 

Building, Managing, and Protecting Your Online Reputation

How Do You Manage And Protect Your Online Reputation?

A few weeks ago I was reading an article about "BIG Corporate Companies" that were missing the boat by not getting involved in Social Media. "They are missing out on the ability to track and manage their brands, their names, their business and reputations" or something to that effect.  It got me thinking about how important it is to connect on-line and know what's going on around you at all times, or at least as much as possible.

"The On-line world is also the Off-line World making them both one in the same.  What happens Off-line ends up online, and what happens On-line gets spread quickly Off-line and visa versa. It's known as "viral" in both worlds.

How do you manage and protect your reputation in the off-line world?  In order to build, protect, or manage your brand or reputation, you have to interact so you can hear the chatter, the rumors, the buzz, the testimonials, or even the whisper when someones talking about you or your company? No matter what, whether it's good or bad, people do talk.  In the social media world, even more-so.  Good news travels fast, and often times, bad news travels even faster.

How do you know when someone is talking about you, your company, or your business in the on-line world?  What are people saying or whispering on LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace or FaceBook?  What about your past or current clients, your sphere of influence, or even your competitors?  Would you even know?  I think many of the Larger Companies and Businesses DO know the power of Social Media Marketing and the importance of Networking.  I see it more and more, they are wanting to stay close and connected to what's being said about their products, their services, their company and business, or even them as individuals. 

Managing and Protecting your online reputation isn't just for the Big Corporate Companies....

...it should also be important to you.

Here's some ideas and suggestions that can help you in the new on-line social media and off-line networking world.  Let's start with the simplest and basic of all tools.  When was the last time you ran your name or Company using Google?  Google Search.  This is typically the first thing we learn and try to do regularly to see what shows up in the search engine results.  This is a great and basic way to find out how about your online Internet presence.  What shows up?  I still do this on a weekly basis.

Next, there are some free and simple tools available to help you get a better handle on what's being said across the WEB.  Start with Google Alerts, it's an easy way to setup specific keyword searches.  Once those specific words or terms are found and indexed, notifications are emailed directly to you.  Setup alerts for your name, your company, employees, your brand etc.  Some even setup Google Alerts for their competition or other specific business topics or "interesting" terms and phrases.  This is a good start to keeping yourself connected and informed.

Many of you will remember the "viral" video "United Breaks Guitars!?!"  I wonder how long before United knew they were famous on Youtube? I bet they have multiple alerts setup now... maybe not...  :-O

United Breaks Guitars

 www.youtube.com

Full Story: www.davecarrollmusic.com - In the spring ...

3 months ago 5,796,268 views sonsofmaxwell

 

Now you can stop reading right here of course, unless you'd like to go a little deeper....

Ok, you're still reading so you must want more.  You should consider what happens and what gets said on sites like Twitter and Facebook.  Let's be honest here, if someone wants everyone else in the world to know something, they post it on Twitter and Facebook.  It's the fastest way to gather and spread information, but at the same time, it's the fastest and easiest way to build or destroy a name or reputation.  Look what happened to Wal-Mart and Target last Christmas. A classic example of the "Thrill of Victory" and the "Agony of Defeat."

Search.Twitter.com is a tried and true method of finding out who is talking about you and what they are saying. Twittergrader, and Facebookgrader are a couple of other products you can check out from Hubspot.  If you're looking for more of that "visual" display of your online presence, then check out spezify. This one is not only informative, it's fun and entertaining at the same time. Addictomatic is another one you should visit, you'll love the compilation of content it will pull up using various resources to do all the work for you.  I always suggest starting with your name or company when visiting and trying these sites.  You will be surprised at some of the things you'll find.

Now let's dig really deep for gold!  Measuring your online presence and influence. Klout.com and OnlineIDcalculator.com each have devised their own internal way for determining your influential impact in the on-line world.  SocialMention which is a similar service will “grade”  your results based on your participation in a variety of places.  The last site I'll mention is StepRep, this is one I use daily.  You can receive daily email updates on the results Steprep finds, and the social networking aspect of it certainly can't hurt when building a positive reputation.

We've all seen what can happen to a company or individual via the Social Networks albeit from a single tweet, a note on a FB wall, a Video on Youtube, a photo on Flickr, or even a Blog post or article on a website.  There is great power in the hands of those millions of consumer messages that get transmitted over the cyber-lines each and everyday.  No one can protect your good name or business but you.  That was until now... there is online help.  Sleep better at night knowing you have done your best to manage and protect your business and reputation.

Don't forget your ReBlogged posts, it's good to keep up with what others are saying and adding to them.

These may not be the catch-all, fix-all, but it's a start to "managing and protecting your online reputation."

                 

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Is there a social network for you?

I spent a decent amount of time recently revising a presentation for Technopalooza, a tech event that's been organized by the Arizona Regional MLS (ARMLS). The title of the presentation I'm going to be giving is:  Using Social Networks to Build and Engage Your Community.

I definitely don't want to give the "whole" thing away, (at least not before I get a chance to present it to a live audience!), but I thought I'd give a taste for how I organized the presentation so that you can (hopefully) get a better idea of which social networking sites you should be using to build your business.

First off, based on the title, I broke the presentation into three parts:

• Part 1: "Using Social Networks"
• Part 2: "Building and Engaging YOUR Community"
• Part 3: "To"

The insight I thought I'd share is from Part 1 of the presentation and it's the idea that there's a social network for everyone, but every social network is not right for you.

The idea is that if you look at the three types of personalities that tend to do well online (and by "do well" I mean generate traffic to websites), they are:

• Community Builders
• Connectors
• Mavens

I like to think of the community builders as the social fabric that keeps everyone engaged.  I thought about calling these people "social networkers", but "social network" has a pretty different and fuzzy meaning so I decided not to go there.  The value of these people is that they are often the ones to organize events, bring people together in social settings, introduce new people to the "rules", etc. 

I use the term connector for the people who are more the business networking type.  These are the people who attend lots of conferences, have a huge rolodex of names and are always on the lookout for ways to connect people together so they can do business together.  I had lunch last week with a true connector.  The guy organize monthly dinners at a very nice local restaurant for 8 (different) people each month even when there's no obvious way he's going to make money (yet!).

The mavens are the first-movers and the people who are always looking for the next big thing. Traditionally, these guys have been some of the best bloggers around because they're always looking for the next big trend. (I could be wrong, but out of the three, I think this one best describes me).

Once you identify where you fit into this mix, I think you'll have a much easier time finding the social network that will not only drive the most business your way, but that you'll enjoy engaging in.

• For example, for the community builders out there... try out Twitter.   I think you'll find there's a huge community of people out there just waiting to engage with you.  And for the people who treat this right, there's a huge potential for generating referrals from the connections you'll make using the tool!
• For connectors, there's no more popular business networking tool than LinkedIn.   Engage over there.  Start making a ton of connections with other business-minded networking folks.  And when you hear about a great business opportunity for someone, look to spread the news to your linkedin connections.  This will give you an awesome opening to start up a connection and start a dialog in a way that people on that social network want to engage!
• And for the mavens, I'm completely smitten with Facebook Pages (not a Facebook Profile mind you, but a Facebook Business Page!).  Functionally, these are kind of like twitter, except general chatter is really not appropriate, so instead you can focus on topics and conversations that are related to your business or interest  (in my case, it's using social media to generate business!)
  

My hope is that for at least a few of the folks reading this post, it can help bring some clarity to how you might engage with people on the various popular social networks!

And just to close the loop, in Part 2 of the presentation I'll be giving at Technopalooza, I talk about how to build your own community, which is where I talk about the importance of blogging and creating dynamic local content (all great ActiveRain stuff!).  In Part 3, I talk about how "to" bring all the pieces together and actually use the social networks to build traffic and interest in YOUR community.  If there's any chance you can make it on Wednesday, then I look forward to seeing you in Mesa!

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