Life Before ActiveRain and Now -
I joined ActiveRain in 2007, wrote one post and left for 8 months. Where did I go? Back to my Web 1.0 world of a web site that was doing a handful of deals a year, paying a company an exhorbitant rate to do less SEO for my site than I had done for my own, and basically stabbing in the dark as to what would be the best strategy to gain presence on the internet.
My world was rocked when I lost a $500,000 buyer because I didn't respond in a timely fashion to an Active Rain inquiry.
That was July 2008. For the first month or two, I read and commented mostly. The thought of actually writing was overwhelming. In fact, EVERYTHING was overwhelming!
Before AR, when I wanted to research something, I was all over the internet - now it's AR first, Google second.
Before AR, I didn't know how to upload pictures (sad but true), didn't understand much at all about optimizing my posts by finding and use keywords for google juice. We had talked about videos but hadn't done anything about it.
We had talked about doing a lot of things to take our business to the next level, but until joining AR, it was mostly talk. I wanted to add fresh content to our web site and write custom pages, but never got around to it.
Before AR, I used to get to bed earlier, and never viewed everything I saw or every person I spoke to as a possible blog post. I was never obssessed with taking photos of everything around me. Now my family laughs and says, "Oh, it's for a blog!"
Before AR, I didn't have an incredible network of some of the most giving, talented people in our industry. Now I will never again worry about who to refer business to anywhere in the USA and Canada!
Before AR, I didn't have a clue! Now I'm among the 12% who do.
Thanks, AR, for helping me into the wonderful world of Web 2.0 - it's been a life-changing event for me.
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