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Active Rain - From the Consumer Perspective

Kristal Kraft wrote a most informative Blog Bloging for fun or profit and made a very important statement about push vs pull marketing and how Blogging is very much there and ready for the consumer when they are ready to discover it. That by us BLOGGING we are putting information out there that the consumer wants when they want it.

So imagine my surprise yesterday when I had a customer call me and say I checked out Active Rain and although it is great for a Realtor what benefit does it have for me? (Some of my agent marketing is pointing to Active Rain including postcards, and my email signature...) I wanted to know what they meant so I asked a few more questions. This on the heels of one of my listings checking out my AR profile a couple of days ago and yelling at me for not putting their listing on the site... I spoke with Kristal yesterday and someone had discovered one of her BLOGs and he wanted to work with her as a result. What resulted was an aha.

There really needs to be two sides to this wonderful community. One for the Realtors and one for the end user community. There has been a lot of rumbling about points and how difficult it is to find stuff suddenly. The first users started joining on May 25th of this year --- today September 29th we are over 6,000 users of a free service. I think it is the same few guys who started this that are supporting it. And from their blog silence, I bet they are busier than a one armed paper hanger. I am not sure what direction they are planning but in my effort to make this a place that pulls the consumer -- here are a few suggestions:

Consumer login and ability to get summary reports of BLOGS from areas that they choose
Give them the ability to search for Real Estate professionals (Realtors, Stagers, Mortgage Brokers, etc).
Sell an advertising banners and skyscrapers on the Consumer side, but for companies like Lowes, Home Depot, Bed Bath & Beyond
- not Real Estate Related or Active Rain members
Rotate through members in a Featured Agent
- Those with photos and certain level of points and a certain level of Blogging
- Featured Agents are only featured for a week and then rotated out, and say they can't be the featured agent for x amount of months.
- Perhaps The Active Rain Staff Picks three and we as a community vote on them "Agent of the Month" (once a year) then Agent of the Year, Rookie of the week... So much fun could be had with this....
Just have the Listings there and create a method for Mortgage, Attorney etc to advertise to that area
Never sell their email addresses, and if they communicate with one of us they are filtered through the system
Great search function on the BLOGS
On that side of Active Rain, for each city (I smell a way to award points and you know this would be chock full of resources we Rainers are motivated by points) :
- Photos of the area posted by members
- Links section - broken into a couple of sections
  - Active Rain Member Websites
  - Community Webistes
    - Chamber of Commerce
    - City Site/County
    - Schools
    - Utility Companies
    - Local Restaurants, Entertainment
    - companies that AR members feel are a great resource to the community
    - Recreation
  - Community Calendar

And for our fellow Rainers, here are a few suggestions that we would like to see (I am sure your list is very long already....):

A summary of the 10 Best non-gold star blogs of the week - one a month per member
A way we could award points to someone that posts a great comment that leads to a great discussion on one of our BLOGS (with rules of course!!!!!!)
Ability to see a list of First Blogs (a way for us to check out new members)
A way to see when someone hits a milestone. We are all so proud when we do that it would be great to congratulate them as they achieve them.
Each day we are allowed to award points to a commenter on our BLOG -- just one commenter a day and you can only allow them to that person once in 45 days
Better search function
A resource section on how to at AR, there have been some great posts
A way to tag a Blog for reading later
A way to create polls...

I have to give credit, but I can't remember where I came up with some of these things... So some of these ideas came from conversations I have been having with "The Lovely Wife", Karen Hurst, Kristal Kraft, Pam Hofmann, and Karen Villa Schweinfurth. They all have been wonderful encouraging me to BLOG about this and so I have. I hope I have done them proud!

Colleen Kulikowski is your Western New York Real Estate Expert focusing on Buffalo and Niagara Falls neighborhoods of Western New York. If you are on Twitter, please follow me... If you enjoyed this post by your Buffalo & Niagara Falls Home Sales Expert, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

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Posted by Licensed Real Estate Salesperson Colleen Kulikowski on 09/29/2006 11:12 AM

Comments (41)

Originally posted at: Niagara Falls Real Estate & Homes : Active Rain - From the Consumer Perspective

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41 Comments on Active Rain - From the Consumer Perspective

SEP

2006

Hi Colleen, it was nice real time chatting with you yesterday. Nice blog, some good thoughts. I think the public is going to continue to find us and identify with our style.

I don't know how important it is to duplicate content that is easily found elsewhere. Blogging content is generally more timely, so just keep on bloggin' the rest will come!

Hi Guys! Thanks for the Gold Star!!!!!

WOW, great post and suggestions... Yes, we are "busier than a one armed paper hanger" and a lot of it related to helping connect consumers with the members of this network. Your thinking is very much in line with ours :) While there is a still A LOT of details being worked out the results should be very interesting.

Banners? Who`s idea was that?

Colleen I agree with Matt, great post. It is always refreshing to see ideas not complaints. I'm not sure what Matt and crew have up their sleeves but I do know it is going to be great. I think the main thing is for AR to be different.

I have also started to have consumer contact and the feedback from them has been great. Personally I hate banners but I guess it is a good way to generate $. I don't like the idea of having listings on here at all. The consumer can already find our listings all over the web. And most of us have links to our websites or listings already.

Lot's of food for thought Colleen, thanks.

Lots of great ideas here. Shifting our focus to consumers is right in line with the mission of AR stated on the home page - "to help members promote and grow their real estate business on the Internet."

Agent interaction is still important, but ultimately it's our results with consumers that allow us to continue doing what we love.

Great ideas. Hopefully they are gradually implemented.

As for the banners, I suggested it. I know they are not popular but they work. and Ok, I looked at this from the developer side a bit (a past life of mine) and they have to have some way to generate revenue to pay for the site. Software development, server space isn't cheap... Then add technical support and advertising....

Bryant I understand where you are coming from about listings, but consumers want a different place to search. Perhaps we create it so listings are 1 photo, address, price and a link to our website for more information. I just believe that consumers in their mind are looking for property and if we build a place for them to come, they will want that!

When I talk about targetting consumers it will definetly be in a different area or possibly site than this one. The idea will be to target consumers without impacting the experience for the members of this site.

Great! by the way Matt -- how was your trip? Been waiting for you to give us an update!!!!

If the site is optimized, which clearly it is, then it only was a matter of time before someone in the general public found us.

Not sure that's a terrible thing by any stretch - anything that brings business to us lowly agents is a good thing.

Feel like I'm screaming into the wind, but a lot can be solved with the use of the Members Only tag. If it's only for us in the community, use the tag. If it's something you have no issue with the general public seeing, let it fly loose in the blogosphere.

I like the idea of being able to award points to a blogger or someone who wrote a blog post. Of course there would have to be lots of restrictions to prevent abuse. Maybe it's kinda like a tip jar you can tip someone a certain number of points.

I've love to be able to write notes for a posting and then put it in an "edit" section, so that I could come back to later and either "clean" it up; add to it...or perhaps delete it.

Blogger.com permits this...and I really the idea as I can jot down some short notes for future blogs.

Is this possible?

Check out WRitely.com I actually wrote this BLOG last night, wasn't happy with it, came in this morning and then posted it after cleaning it up....

Colleen: Terrific blog and thoughts. Active Rain hasn't brought clients to me yet, but has resulted in a couple of news media interviews. I love the idea of rewarding responses. Some of them far exceed the original blog.

"The Lovely Colleen"

As I really have no further suggestions for this post...But what I do have is...EXCELLENT...The stars are falling...Bam...One just hit your Blog. COOL.

Congratulations on this post...Very Positive and Upbeat now we're talking...I am so happpy to see you on the front page! You did it...I knew it would be just a matter of time! Good for you.

by "The Lovely Wife"...Kum La Ka Lakka...ROAR!

"The Lovely Wife" Thank you so much for your encouragement and support! And I thought this might have been tooo long for anyone to want to read! Now I can't wait to see what the guys have in store for the site!

Great and positive post, Colleen. I'm anxious to see what Matt is creating. I mailed your book yesterday. Enjoy.

"The Lovely Colleen"

You are welcome. Sorry about the delay in saying that...Once again "life goes outside of the box". Not to long...it was just right! Now go get some more of those Gold Stars!

by "The Lovely Wife"...Kum La Ka Lakka...ROAR!

Great post Colleen. I think you just gave Matt, Ben & Caleb more work!

Thank you for the card. I got it yesterday and was meaning to drop you a note. Again thank you!

Very well thought out and composed, Colleen. You touched on a lot of subjects that all need to be addressed.

Maybe we need a way to vote here as I noticed a few different opinions on likes and dislikes.

I still think the Members Only can keep the community intact. We don't want to end up being like all the other sites. We want to be different. I did send Caleb an email last night about milestones, but haven't heard back...Guess this blog just about covers it. Good work

Super post Colleen! Great ideas.

If you post some content for visitor instead of only worrying about other agents reading your posts you will find that they will not be asking "what in it for me". I post market stats and have already had someone contact me due to this. My post blogging for traffic was to make the point that we need to worry a little more about the consumer and a little less about other agents opinions.

Plus to point out that our post that aren't market "members only" are showing up in the SERP's so they will drive traffic. The kind of traffic that can lead to customers.

BTW, I would hate to see this turn into one huge advertising space. I would rather pay a fee for my use of AR as an advertising space than expose potential customers to ads.

SEP

2006

What a fabulous post Colleen! Here's my opinion, for what it's worth; I like what Matt said, a separate area for consumers; not changing our current little piece of the world here on Active Rain. And I also agree that we can reach consumers by posting both Realtor related and Consumer related blogs; depending on what strikes us. I have a lot of points for someone new, but truthfully, the real points come in sharing info with all of you guys and brainstorming and sharing war stories. It's a fabulous community. I am still learning all the bells and whistles, and am going to go now to WRITley.com and see what else I can learn....assuming my brain is still working at 1:13am! Congrats on your gold star!

To everyone: Thanks! I am overwhelmed by the positive response to this! Well I have to go... Faye and Bernie are waiting for me....

I have mentioned the space to my clients and they have not found it as useful as I have. I have been thinking of more public post that I can do that be more informative.

Way to go Colleen!

I have my own blog for the public and use this strictly for professional development. I do like the idea of a "tip jar" to tip bloggers.. I'd throw some points your way!

Colleen - you have some good ideas and good points, but two of them I disagree with:

I like Featured Agents as they are, especially since it went to top in each state. Even the top spots nationally rotate as others earn more points. Check the history to look for people who've been there, as well as people who are now there.

I wouldn't like to see banners and ads - I'm waiting to see Matt's ideas for the "separate" consumer site. I bet it will be as creative as our current ActiveRain.

OCT

2006

If you could also focus in on cities instead of whole states on the map. Consumers and venders alike would benefit from being able to focus in on a smaller market that they are more interested in.

OCT

2006

these are some great points, way to make a good site even better!

OCT

2006

It does not matter. We will always be found. So, keep the names out of the blog adn response and no one should get hurt. It is for training to help others out. What to do and not to do to keep us out of the hot seat.

OCT

2006

Great insight Colleen...keep it up!

-James

http://www.ga-agent.com

MAY

2007

I know this is an old post - but I enjoyed reading it today. It's interesting to see how some of these ideas have come into shape and how others are still out there. And of course it is interesting to see how much larger the member base is now versus September.

OCT

2007

I wasn't here then, but it looks like some of your suggestions HAVE been implemented.

Missy -- Yea and it is pretty cool too!

OCT

2007

Colleen-Are you psychic? It's great to see how so many of these ideas have to come life. This was quite an enjoyable post...to think that is when I was so intimated by many you listed. Isn't funny how life work

OCT

2007

Colleen - One of the better posting I have seen in a while. You have some really excellent ideas. It would be great to keep improving AR from the consumer side. We all know that AR is great in the SERPS but keeping the consumer here and interested is what needs attention. These suggestions would go a long way in creating that type of site.

Midori -- a year later and it is really amazing. It was a couple weeks later that the guys in Washington announced Localism. It was a really cool feeling. And if I remember correctly this was my first Gold Star...

I'm a newbie on blogging but having fun and blogging away. Ran across your insightful blog from about a year ago! Great!

NOV

2007

So many of these have been implemented since you posted this, its amazing to be in a young but growing organization. Go Rainers!

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