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Active Rain Gold and How You can Lead a Horse to Water, but you can't Make Him Drink...

I just had an anniversary and didn’t even know it. I joined Active Rain in 2007 and my first blog appeared in September, so I’m assuming that I joined AR in September of that year.

I went back to the roster of members who joined in September of 2007 trying to find my name and establish the exact date I had joined Active Rain and I was struck by my findings:

86 new members joined AR that month. Of those 86, only 35 members had active blogs, the rest (51) never even bothered to set up a blog. Of the 35 members who started blogging, only two had over 10,000 points and only one garnered over 20,000.

While almost 60% of the members who joined Active Rain at the same time I did, have not used this amazing marketing tool, I have garnered close to sixty (YES, sixty!!!) new clients through my blogging on AR. During this time I have written over a thousand blogs, giving a lot of attention to posting them correctly in order to maximize my lead recruitment. I literally credit Active Rain with saving my business during these trying times.

What I don’t understand is why someone would not use this extraordinary marketing tool. Even at the new price, full AR membership privileges cost under $500 a year, less than I pay for a full page ad in the local Real Estate book for only one issue. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to blog. If you have absolutely no writing ability whatsoever, you can still post straight facts and figures about the neighborhoods you service and gain exposure as the expert for those areas. There really is no excuse not to blog on Active Rain, unless you are just plain lazy, disinterested and not willing to work in this business.

As the Broker in Charge, I teach my agents how to blog and insist they do it with regularity. They often share their success stories and thank me for pushing them to do it. If you care about your Realtor Friends, why not help them launch their AR Blogging? Please share with us how you have inspired your Realtor Friends to partake in this Active Rain Gold!

Mirela Monte, Your Myrtle Beach Real Estate Connection Join The Optimist Group!

PS: Active Rain, I LOVE YOU!

Posted by Myrtle Beach Real Estate by Mirela Monte on 09/22/2009 06:48 PM

Comments (73)

ActiveRain Community in the Online Marketing Channel

active rain gold and how you can lead a horse to water, but you cant make him drink, mirela monte, your myrtle beach real estate connecti

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73 Comments on Active Rain Gold and How You can Lead a Horse to Water, but you can't Make Him Drink...

SEP

Mirela - I don't understand the reluctance to try AR. I've invited several friends and acquaintances who find little interest even though I've shared many stories such as yours. If the market were great, I could accept their actions, but today's market should entice anyone to try something with such a proven track record.

Mirela..I have tried..They just don't seem interested ..So I am just drinking up the google juice and loving the Optimist group.thank you

HELPFULHANNAH

Mirela, ok I am probably one of those 35 who haven't even made it to 10,000 points. But I am back, committed to giving this a real try. I just subscribed to your blog so maybe I can pick up some pointers on how to do this right! I think a lot of people are like me. I get overwhelmed because I want to know how to do it all...right now!!! Groups, Tags, Where to post, Localism, listings, adding video and pics...like I said...overwhleming! Any advice on what you consider to be the most important steps to take first?

Mirela !!! Happy Anniversary !!!

... and HUGE congrats for 60 new clients from the invaluable playground we call ActiveRain !

Cheers !

Sheldon

Karen: No worries. Just check back here and find links to some very helpful tips, then stay tuned to my blog and you'll be an expert soon enough. I will teach you how to post, tag, and title correctly. I will teach you about longtails and other fancy blogging practices.

Hannah: Thank you for that! The Optimists love you too!

John: I wish I had a magic wand and sprinkle AR dust all over... Some of my Realtor Friends who did NOT listen are now out of the business. They didn't have time to blog they said...

Sheldon: I LOVE THAT:

the invaluable playground we call ActiveRain

...That, my friend, is a perfect description for it!

Mirela

Active rain is an excellent marketing and personal promotion tools.

Good luck and success.

Lou Ludwig

Mirela-Happy Anniversary-and I do enjoy reading your blogs!

Great photos; great point.

Lou: Thank you! It takes blogging to become a believer. Sitting on the sidelines and hoping the market will change will not bring you the opportunities.

You and I chase our dreams Lou, instead of lamenting about better days...

See you at the Top!

Ann: Thank you!

Joseph: Thank you so very much for always being so involved and supportive! I appreciate it more than I can say! You're one of the few who read and comment on my technical blogs, the ones giving the most educational bang. Thank you! As long as you keep reading and commenting, I'll keep writing.

Interesting ... the number speak for themselves!

Happy Anniversary as you are an inspiration! I am glad that I invited you!

SEP

Mirela... these are interesting numbers... Congratulations on your 2nd anniversary in the rain

Mirela - Congratulations on your anniversary. I am also hooked on AR, but for good reason. What a great resource.

Mirela, what an interesting post and I like the photo of the little girl with the umbrellas. I have trouble getting started with a blog, but once I get started, the blog sort of just spits out!

Mirela, I have wondered this about some agents in the past. We have talked to many agents about Active Rain, we even went to a company sponsered training where the trainer asked who blogged on Active Rain at all or often, we were one of about 5 or 6 that raised their hands. At the time we had just cracked the top 3 in the State, so we talked to several agents (our office has 35 agents) and two signed up, one blogs frequently, but the other has done nothing. There were 2 other affiliated companies at that training and I think that in all less than 6 people started using this valuable tool. I just don't understand!

Congrats on your anniversary, Mirela! Your findings are consistent with mine. Very few people follow up with their Rain account, but those who do tend to do well.

I, too, believe that AR has had much to do with my success in the last year.

Congratulations on what you've accomplished here.

Happy anniversary and congrats. I think it's like the people who get so caught up in making a living that they forget to LIVE. Many will SAY they want to blog, but when it comes time for action, few follow through. Good to hear your success story on actually getting business from AR. I've just begun blogging this year and hope to reach your levels in short order. Thanks for sharing.

Hi Mirela: Congratulations on your anniversary and on being featured. You have certainly been an inspiration to me.

Give us the few. Give us the proud. Give us the Mirelas.

Happy anniversary.

You do good work.

Congratulations to you Mirela. My two year anniversary was actually in April 2007-I forgot. I didn't get really serious about blogging till last year. While the past three months my activity has decreased,I am doing some new things to make good use of this great site and garner leads as well. And 60 clients from blogging-That is great. Much success to you. Great post.

Congrats on your anniversary. Mine is coming up shortly. You are right that you can't make the horse drink. I haven't been as consistent as I should have been (a pregnancy and birth of our daughter have been priority) but I am trying to get back. AR is one of the best ways to market in these times and you never know who will find you through your efforts.

Mirela,

My broker has asked me to teach blogging classes since last year. Each class I do is overflowing with agent ready to learn. The interest in blogging is fantastic. I love seeing them so jazzed and inspired to blog. One of the agents last month came up and asked me "What do you think of a Spanish Blog? Most of my clients speak spanish and I was wondering if that would work?" I said, you just found you niche. That's a fantastic idea.

We get calls and clients every week from our blogging efforts.

Congrats on your Active Rain success! I understand what you are saying. I teach classes on blogging for business and spend the majority of time on AR. At the end of the class I take email addresses and send invites to join AR and out of a class of 30 I had four sign up...curious!!! Thanks for the post!

Thank you for sharing your success. I've just started blogging and have NO idea what I'm doing. I figure it's better to do something rather than do nothing at all. I'll hold you as my inspiration.

Mirela,

Congratulations! Although this newbie is beginning to get solid results from blogging, your success story helps keep me motivated. Many thanks.

Hehehehe Mirela, I giggle when I read stuff like this. What I love even more is that my competitive nature along with yours is what helped to push you along to accomplish this! Even if just each transaction brought you a $2,000 commission, that means that over the past 2 years ActiveRain has been reason for over $120,000 of additional income for you! That is just a phenomenal statistic!

I am so excited to come to your office on October 1st to do some training for your agents that have not started in real estate blogging! This should be a great opportunity for them to learn all the benefits of AR as well as how to generate income! Just think, next year this time you will be able to say over 100 transactions yourself as well as an additional 60 from your agents!

Hi, Mirela. I am new to Active Rain and just started blogging a few months ago. In that short time, I have gotten two leads who became customers...because they reads my blogs and felt that I knew the area, and a referral from an agent in PA whose post I commented on. I was happy to accrue enough points to become the #1 "Featured Agent" in my area (and I'm not giving it back.) I have been able to utilize the "search" feature and find a WEALTH of information on so many subjects.

What a resource Active Rain is...I feel so lucky that I stumbled on it. I have invited others to join and am astonished that they couldn't be bothered....it's their loss!

Mirela, I have heard many success stories like yours. Thank you for putting this in perspective.

60 clients is something to take notice of, but 1000 blogs - where do you find the time?

Dan: I MAKE THE TIME!

The blogs that garner me the most traction are the ones I post about the various neighborhoods I service and the niches I have have established for myself. Doing the research for these blogs helps me stay on top of my market and makes me a much better agent.

This is the way I see it:

1. I could spin my wheels in vain and taxi people around day after day for a very small income

OR:

2. I could study my market, write about it on AR, be very selective about the clients I take and make a superior income.

We all have the same amount of time. HOW we use it makes all the difference in the World...

Mirela,

Congratulations on your success. As an activerain newbie, I can tell you one of the most challenging things for me is overcoming my fear that I have nothing worth writing about. After reading some of the amazing articles here, I feel intimidated by the talent that is here. I suspect many people who chose not to be here feel the same way. It's just a matter of overcoming that fear.

Mirela - do you organize your 1,000 posts at all? Surely there's some that you want to refer to again. Is there a site where you can post your blogs in some sort of category fashion?

Mirela, congratulations on your AR anniversary.

It is to bad that so many join AR and miss out on the benefits but unfortunately, your stats apply to almost all groups that join anything; the old saw that 10% produce 90%.

You are correct in encouraging your agents to blog and my advice to everyone in this industry. Blogging is not just about sharing information, which is a good thing, but sometimes just thinking about what I am going to write sharpens my prospective on the entire subject.

Anthony: I just checked out your blogs and I was impressed. You obviously have put a lot of thoght and effort into them.

You are not giving your blogs traction because you are not submitting them to any groups, so they are most likely not seen by many people.

Here are some great tips for you:

1. JOIN SEVERAL GROUPS AND POST EACH BLOG TO 5 OF THEM!

2. Unless you have a very touchy subject that you absolutely don't want non members to see, don't make your posts "Members Only". You can not get your posts re-blogged and you are limiting your Google juice and your AR presence.

3. Put pictures and videos in your blogs. Google spiders crawl the blogs containig videos a lot faster. Pictures make your blogs more attractive. If you name your pictures when you insert them you will also garner more Google juice (stay tuned to my blog and I'll teach you how to do it).

Mirela,

Thanks for inspiring words. I have started blogging but unclear on how much it would really help me. I will say I am a little frustrated. I tried copying a blog into an editor but after I change to html it changes my print and position of my pic. I finally gave up trying to make it match. Now I am copying into the html and then editing the html code itself to move the pic and change fonts sizes and colors. It took a while to figure it out because some html code does not seem to work as described but I finally have the code that does. It toke hours to figure out how to get my blog to look the way I intented. Still unclear on where to post other than local and probably not doing tags right. Still need to read more to figure those things out. It takes longer than I would like to post a blog but I am committed. I was close to saying forget it and just posting somewhere else that my code doesn't change when I move it over or allows me to edit it the way I want. I am not sure why this editor is so limited but it is probably me because everyone else seems to post just fine.

Just joined Active Rain and am working it. Thanks for your blog. It is incouraging

Joetta: I don't have to; AR does it for us. Just look to the right of your blog roll way under your picture and you will see all your blogs indexed by the month. Here is how yours looks like:

Archives

Here is mine:

Archives

See how easy this is?

Happy anniversary and keep up the great work blogging!

Mirela,

Congratulations on you two year anniversary.

So many individuals are reluctant to change or try something new.

Keep up the good work.

Congrats!

I am still new to blogging.....not really comfortable with the idea that anyone else wants to read what I have to say. I love reading other's blogs, but when I write something it just doesn't sound that interesting to me when I reread it so it usually gets deleted.

I need to get over that inhibition!

Dear Mirela you have always been an inspiration to me, I agree with you about the fact that still many people in our business don't realize the tremendous exposure we get by simply being active in AR. I have "google alerts" in place that often times tell me where my name has appeared, to my surprise, I haven been led back to this little box! Even making comments on other people's blogs gets your name out there! It so easy... a caveman or rather a caveman salesman can do it!

Antonio

Dianne: Lord have mercy, you're working too hard at this!

Leave the html alone. Just post in normal format. I never switch to the html format unless I'm posting video or moving pictures. You can embed pictures in the normal settings. Just click on the Help/FAQ tab on the bar at the bottom of this page and enter the subject of "putting pictures in my blog". You should be able to become an expert at it in no time.

It should not take longer than 5-10 minutes to post a blog on AR. You write it in word, then copy and paste it into AR, upload the pictures, submit to channels, Localism and Groups, Title & tag correctly and watch your Business soar.

I will go through my blogs this week and send you links to some educational blogs. You can also call me in the evenings and I will tutor you over the phone.

Antonio: That's funny! :)

I love your comments!

I have not seen a video of you guys dancing. When will you post that?

Susan: You need to give yourself more credit! Girl, YOU CAN WRITE!

I submit my evidence:

What in the heck does CC have to do with real estate?

The only thing you're doing wrong is that you're not submitting your blogs anywhere, so very few people are exposed to them.

You need to submit each one of your blogs to:

1. Five Groups

2. Localism for your area - in the state, county, city and part of the city you are servicing.

3. AR Channels

See you on the front page!

Chris: Thank you! You introduced me to AR and it's made all the difference in the World. As you well remember, I had no idea how to blog, seo or anything else Internet related. AR lead me to other web sources of business. I now have close to 3,500 followers on Twitter under MirelaMonte, about 1,400 under MyrtleBeachDigs and about 2,000 followers under other names. I have a fairly strong presence on Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/mirela.monte

, where I am currently working on launching the MyrtleBeachRealEstate Fan Page. I have over 100+ associations on LinkedIn. I have an Internet presence on multiple other sites and I've learnt so very much. AR gave me wings. I credit you with helping me start it all.

THANK YOU CHRIS!

Mirela, I like the Laurel and Hardy version of the horse example, "you can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead". I have been a member for awhile but I was late to the party in that I didn't start actively participating until October last year. I had enough points, I think 3000 or so to qualify for the granfather clause. What a bargin. I have tried to find other people from Oklahoma City to comment on to encourage their blogging, and I have taught it in classes. People say yeah that's a great idea and a great value, but they don't get around to it. I will keep trying.

Thanks for the inspiration. I have done a few blogs, but need to really spend the time to get serious about doing this.

Morning Mirela, Thanks for an extremely well thought out and presented post ! Those stats are distressing aren't they ? Well done !

Hi Mirela,

Thanks for the very inspiring post. Congratulations on 2 years spent so well.

I'm a slow starter; been a member for over a year, and am just now making the commitment to becoming an active participant on a regular basis--don't know why I operate that way but do (it's the same when I joined a hiking group, a running group, business coaching, etc!)

I'm off to join the Optimist group and to subscribe to your blog.

Mirela--Congrats on your second anniversary, your feature and your 60 leads! You are a force of nature! Keep up the good work!

And a big thank you for continuing to share your knowledge with the rest of us!

I am glad I am a part of Active Rain. I did set in active for a long time, before I figured it out. One thing about real estate is I have 1000 people telling me they have the next big thing or the big secret, etc. I have to figure the right ones for me, and sometimes it takes time.

Sometimes it is so difficult to be a guy. As a guy we speak so few words; now I have to write about stuff. The things I do to stay in this business.

Al: What a hoot! Thanks for the laughter!

I've got good news for you my man:

You don't have to write. Just get into your MLS, find the statistics for your favorite neighborhood and copy and paste the activity in it for the past 3 months. Post a few pictures of the neighborhood in the blog and you're set.

Then write your name at the bottom, along with that neighborhood name and put a link to your blog.

Ex:

Al Dobbs, Your Sunny Acres Connection

Do this with 12 neighborhoods every three months. Submit each blog to 5 pertinent groups (Localism, local expert & investors are some of the groups I would post this type of blog to). Also submit each blog to a pertinent channel (the Consumer channels & rotate between Sellers & Buyers). Last, but not least, submit each blog to Localism for your state, county and location within your area.

Come back here in 6 months and tell me how many leads you've garnered from your efforts. You don't have to say much; "Thank you much!" will suffice...

Mirela congrats on your Active Rain Anniversary! I think I beat you by joining in July of 2007:)

Every day I look forward to logging on to AR and writing my blog posts, reading other interesting posts, always learning new things, meeting interesting people, networking, sharing. It's really one of the highlights of my day. I especially love reading comments I receive by email about my posts. I've tried encouraging several associates to join up, but it seems apparent that there are those real estate agents who feel their best day is doing as little as possible, having time to quit work early, go to the gym, play golf, etc. Why waste time chatting with a bunch of other Realtors. They just don't get it do they?

Mirela,

You've proven the point that just showing up puts you ahead of at least 50% of your competition. Good for you.

And you know why others don't use this tool. They don't understand marketing.

Mirela -

Thanks for sharing and having passion for improving your agents involvement with social media!

I have garnered close to sixty (YES, sixty!!!) new clients through my blogging on AR.

Good evening Mirela,

That's simply a stunning success story!!!

SEP

Great job Mirela! Congratulations on your success. Keep up the great work.

Wow, what enthusiasm! I started to blog about a year ago, I do enjoy it, but I and not setting aside enough time for it. That will have to change. Thanks for the post!

Mirela,

Congrats on your success. I am new to Active Rain but can already tell by the comments I have read that it is a valuable tool. I am still not too comfortable blogging, but I am overcoming my fear everyday as I see great blogs and post comments. The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary. Most people realize this, but still fail to do the work necessary to be successful. In this business, you must always play your "A" game. Success takes work, and the truth is most people want it easy and now! Enjoy the rewards of your hard work- 60 Clients is an awesome accomplishment! Best of luck to you for continued success :-)

SEP

Mirela, I thought this was going to be pretty tedious when I began a couple of months ago. Luckily, I found a tutor assistant who is amazing and knows the right steps. We are working on localism right now and already we are seeing us pop up on Google. But most important, I LOVE AR!!! I am competitive by nature, but the posts are so rich in information ....I sure would not want to miss anything. So why am I up before six to make my comments? LOL

Congrats on your anniversary! My first post was in October 2007 so we started around the same time. I think I signed up before that but did nothing with it for a couple of months trying to figure out what to do. Now 500 posts later I wonder what I was thinking about. JUST START! For me, it's been an invaluable tool.

SEP

Thanks for the positive reinforcement. As a newbie to AR who started blogging right away, I can only aspire to your fabulous results!!!

You Rock!

OCT

Mirela, Congrats on your anniversary. 1000 posts? you are my hero.... I appreciate your wisdom and inspiration (that usually shows up with a little humor sprinkled on top.)

Lucky to know you

OCT

first off, happy anniversary. I have run into the same problem as well only much worse most of my invitees don't even bother to sign up at all!

OCT

What an engaging testament to getting involved on this great network. The stats are interesting. Steve and I have been on AR for just a few days, but don't have our outside blog going yet. Maybe tomorrow. Thanks for the inspiration!

NOV

I'm only here three months and if I could, I would spend twelve hours a day on here for a month and see how much business I could garner...quite a bit I suspect.

NOV

Sixty clients from blogging! That's great! I love to hear success stories.

Tigard: Come on over to my latest blog and learn of some more ways I get the leads through AR:

I Tweet My Blogs; Do You?

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