A few years ago I subscribed to Realty Times and for only $25 a month (I paid them), they let me write market updates for 5 cities in my market area. Gee, what a great deal for me. I think I had one consumer contact me in almost 2 years and I spent quite a bit of time actually writing those reports. After a while I got this nagging feeling that I could be doing something better with my time, money and content. So I started my own blog and published the same data there. Amongst the nice things about that:
- I was the only Realtor on my site writing about my area, so all the leads came to ME.
- I did not have to game the system and waste time logging in to push an update button just to stay near the top.
- I could write about whatever I wanted to.
Those are just a few of the benefits, actually.
Then ActiveRain came along, and I was one of the early joiners in August of 2006. This place was great. Back then there was no Localism and it was mostly industry people talking to each other. I was learning some wonderful stuff and having fun at the same time.
Localism rolled out and ActiveRain offered me the opportunity to publish my own local content. I did so, but with reservation. Once again I was surrounded by other agents who I compete with. And my local content would actually benefit them as much or more than it benefited me. Afterall, if I wrote most of the posts about the area and they ended up with the lead for one reason or another, it was a pretty sweet deal for them. I actually saw this happen with my company's Relocation Director, who has never written a post on AR but has gotten a few prospects. Mentally I reaffirmed my decision to leave my content on miOaklandCounty.com.
Over the following months, a number of sites came out that were eager for me to write about my community, all competing with me in Google. Zillow's wiki, Inman's wiki to a much lesser extent, Trulia Voices (though they allow back links), and others I don't even care to remember.
So when a story showed up in my mailbox about RIS Media's new forums and social interaction site, I was, quite frankly, bored. Maybe Realtors will keep feeding all of these monsters with content. Is bigger always better? I went to small schools and I guess I prefer being the big fish in a little pond. It is not an ego thing. I have been a top blogger on ActiveRain. It was fun, but it did not make great business sense, at least for me. For me it's best to attract consumers who are interested in buying or selling homes to my blog, where they are most likely to contact me to help them with their next move.
I did register on the RIS Media site this morning. I was going to post something like this. But I guess I did not think that was very nice since they only have about 10 posts up right now.
End of rant. Maybe I am just social networked out. Or tired at the thought of remembering another password.
;)
;)
Every time you post on sites like RIS Media, they are getting paid by the advertisers. If they can get you to post for free, without paying you, so much the better for them.