The topics being discussed on ActiveRain seem to go on waves. Every day or two there seems to be one topic that everyone is blogging about. The last two days the talk has been about what is appropriate for people to be posting on ActiveRain blogs. I've commented on several of these posts, but I thought that I would write a little bit about the subject myself (being the creator of this network and all) Actually I consider the members here to be the true creators of ActiveRain, but I just wanted to sound all powerful for a moment :)
First off I wanted to say that even though we like people to post about lots of real estate topics since this is a real estate network we don't tell people what they can or can not post about. It's your blog. The two exceptions are things that would get this site in trouble such as posts that blatently violate a copyright or link spam. We will ocassionally remove posts from showing in certain categories if they don't belong there, but the post is still accessable on your blog and on many other views of posts in the system.
I see nothing wrong with people posting about non real estate related topics on there blog. In fact most of the great business bloggers ocassionally mix in personal posts along with all the ones about their business. Even more than many other industries, real estate is about personal connections. If I was choosing to refer a client to someone or to work with someone, I want to see their personality, not just that they understand their business or their market. It's about creating trust and a connection, maybe that connection is a shared interest. That's what makes blogging so great as a marketing tool, it's not in your face advertisement, it's about creating the trust and connection. Personality is also interesting, it will keep your blog from becoming boring, and keep people coming back for more.
Most of the blogging here is discussions between real estate professionals and not necissarily targetted at the consumer (buyers & sellers). When we first started ActiveRain a little under 5 months ago we had thought the focus would be much more consumer targetted, but ActiveRain took on a life of it's own, evolving down a different path. Instead of trying to direct ActiveRain one way or another we've gone with the flow, it was obvious there was a great void to be filled. We do plan to make do extensive work to more appropriately break off and target content at consumers in the near future. I think if we provide better venues for consumer content to be displayed, the bloggers here will quickly fill the void with great information.
The one thing bloggers need to remember is that whatever you post on your blog, whether it's on ActiveRain, MySpace or your personal offsite blog will reflect on you and your business. In a way anything you write, whether you intend it to be or not is marketing. On the Internet privacy rarely exists and words tend to last a very long time, even personal emails have wrecked many a person career. So please use discretion in what you post publically, making a post "members only" does not assure that in some way it won't make it outside of this community, but it does make it less likely.
Here are some of the other posts on the subject (some may be members only):
What Are You Writing About? By Caleb Mardini
The Tone of ActiveRain By Karen Hurst
ActiveRain Bloggers By Gena Riede
Hey, We Are Being Watched... Maureen Francis & Dmitry Koublitsky
"Singing In The Rain" By Rich Jacobson
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Exactly what I was trying to say, only you said it much better. And since you're the boss, you can give yourself a gold star!
It's good to hear, coming from you. Thanks!