After just six weeks on ActiveRain, I was surprised to see that I'd already written 55 blogs. Looking back, I noticed that four out of five were geared towards agents. Then I looked at my title "Southern Nevada Real Estate - Las Vegas, Henderson and North Las Vegas." Only 20% of my content was on that topic!

So... two solutions come to mind. Either change the title, or adjust the content focus. In the long run, I think locally-focused content will produce the best results. Initially we all go through a 'getting to know you' phase on AR. Favorite blogs are found, associations are created, mutual respect is developed, and we find our personal blogging style. The social aspect is important, but at some point we have to look at this from a business perspective.

The ActiveRain home page says "We are building this community in order to help members promote and grow their real estate business on the Internet." Undeniably, the benefits of AR are the exchange of ideas between agents, the sharing of successes and the occasional referral. It is a great venue to sharpen our writing skills and network with other agents, and the SEO is phenomenal.

But to generate traffic to our sites, and revenue to the bottom line (which will give me more free time for AR!) we need to think like consumers. I've written about Camp 4:4:3, farming, motivation and training - and enjoyed the dialogues - but those probably aren't the tags consumers will use to find my sites.

So the next step in my AR journey is to shift my focus to more consumer-oriented content. (I'm not abandoning agent-centric posts, just shifting.) And I'm excited to see how others will make the same transition - channeling their passion, their experience, their personal style into local content. I believe that quality content will continue to be rewarded, and I look forward to the many success stories of how ActiveRain helped "to grow our real estate business on the Internet."