As you can see, I am writing a post to my active rain blog as I should do more often and I have a question:

When posting to AR Blogs where should I set the visibility? This is really regarding public VS members only

I have the options of:

Public
Associates Only
Draft
Members only

Now I understand Draft, that means it won't be seen by others and it is a work in progress. 

Associates Only - I am guessing this means the only people that can view my post are those flagged as my associates and are logged into their AR account, this makes sense to

But here is my main question:

Public VS Members only where does it go?

Take this post for instance. I am asking a question that is specific to Active Rain technology - my first thought is to post it in members only, because really I am asking the opinion of AR members and staff. But then I think - what about those thinking about signing up for Active Rain? Would they not benefit from this post as well? I mean shoot - this post might get featured, and will likely have tons of comments either way - isn't it a benefit to Active Rain to showcase how helpful the community is, and the great feedback members and staff give to one another? - Think about it - if someone sees the great support that I get for this post (And I already know I will get great support because I always do) wouldn't we want the public and those considering AR to see it? I think it would mean more members signing up - what do you think?

Now because I am still relatively new to the whole system, I don't even really know whether the public or those not logged in can even see this post, so I might be underestimating the system - so perhaps someone can fill me on that as well. When posting what is the difference between choosing members only VS public? 

I appreciate all your responses and lets show how helpful the Active Rain community truly is.

Incidentally, I am going to post this in public because I am still not sure where to post it - I am also choosing For real estate professionals, because that is who I think this post applies to - I am choosing the sub categories "Active Rain Community" as a sub type because that is who I want to address this to. Did I do this correctly?

thanks in advance for all your help and comments.

[Addition from comment below]

Thanks for the comments so far, some great feedback!

I think I am coming at it from a different angle though. (And this is not meant to sound cocky at all) but I don't really use or need Active Rain for Google juice, and our existing efforts provide more customers than we could ever want - my involvement in Active Rain, is more about continued learning and understanding of my customers and prospects (Namely real estate professionals) and also participating in a great social networking website - (I am a huge geek, and I actually do this for fun as well as work) 

Now getting to the point - the reason I asked is actually more of a "how should we label visibility so that our internal development and promotion of Active Rain is maximized while not clogging up the public side of Active Rain with things best kept members only" - I guess there are a lot more things to consider than just the few I have posted, and I really could have written a lot longer post about it. But here are my thoughts on the Google and AR promotion issues to start with:

Choice of public VS private posting should NEVER been decided based on the potential of link juice or Google rankings, if you are posting with SEO instead of your audience, you are posting improperly.

Choice of where to post should take into account the public perception of Active Rain as a community, if we all think about what we say and how we say it (And in this case where we say it) we can effect the reputation and usefulness of this great resource (What's good for Active Rain is good for everyone) - so showing off how helpful we are as a community, such as the great feedback so far I think is a good thing to show the public, whereas airing dirty laundry, complaining about some part of the system etc might be construed as negative to a new visitor who hasn't seen any of the great stuff yet, so might best remain private (This should really be moved into my actual post now that I think about it) 

Anyways - keep the comments coming, it looks like the answers have helped one other member who was newer (And have helped me greatly already) just out of the discussion, so I think it's worth exploring some more.