Announcing Round Three of the ActiveRain Carnival of Content - Staging Professionals

With nearly 43,000 members and growing daily, ActiveRain has become an amazingly successful and valuable network for real estate professionals. One of the best ways we can ensure the continued growth and benefits of this platform is to strive towards contributing quality content. Never before has the need and demand for good quality, original content, consumer-oriented, real estate-relevant articles been more pronounced than now.

Hence, the ActiveRain "Carnival of Content" - an on-going contest to challenge, encourage and foster better and improved quality writing from among our membership.

This contest accomplishes several goals:

• provides greater quality articles of enhanced value for Localism/Consumers
• challenges and fosters individual improvement in blog writing 
• provides excellent examples of what constitutes good blog writing for our members

This Contest Is A 'Call To Action'

A few weeks ago, we had Round One specifically for Real Estate Agents/Brokers. In Round Two, our Mortgage Lenders/Officer members faced some heated competition. This Third Round is for Staging Professionals. It is our intention to offer contests that will encourage/challenge improved writing from all the various categories of ActiveRain membership.

This Third Round contest is for Staging Professionals. The topic/subject is "Why and When to Stage." Remember, this is a consumer-oriented article, so write your post to communicate specifically to that audience. As always, you can make-up your own creative and catchy title. 

Read the contest rules and criteria carefully and then enter your article! What do you have to lose? If nothing else, you'll at least get your usual 200 points for posting an article.

The Rules (yes, Virgina, we need some rules!)

• Must be written between August 13th and August 17th, 2007.
• If it's not fresh, it will get cut. Let's get some new articles to read. If you want to rewrite an old article, knock yourself out. But don't submit anything you have previously posted here on ActiveRain or on your outside blog.
• No Cut and Paste. (Do we need to explain this?)
• Copyscape (If it doesn't pass the Copyscape test, it's out. We will not tolerate plagiarism)
• No Ghost Writing (we only want 'original' content articles. You have to write it yourself!) 
• Late entries will not be accepted. No exceptions. The cutoff is midnight, Friday August 17th, 2007.  
• We have just added a new Group called "Carnival of Content - Staging Professionals." All contestants need to become members and your article needs to be submitted to the Group. Subsequent groups will be created for each specific category contest. 
• Categorize your article "For Consumers." You can place it in your respective State, region, or city.
• For the duration of the contest, the submitted article, in its entirety, will be published here on ActiveRain.
• Only one article per contestant

Criteria

• Topic/Subject: "Why and When to Stage" 
• Minimum of 300 words
• Grammar (if you have trouble with this, get someone to proof read your article)
• Spelling (your blog has a spell checker, use it)
• Consumer-Oriented (write your article as though you were counseling/talking to your clients)
• Aesthetics (attractive layout and relevant graphics will get a more favorable rating, it takes more effort to make it pretty)
• Your Unique Voice (we want to read your own personality, perspective, and passions in your article) 

The Prizes

A contest is no fun without prizes. So, here's what will happen to the winning articles. There will be a first, second and third place winner.

• All three winners will be announced on Wednesday August 22nd, 2007. 
• All winning articles will get 'Featured' on the Blog Dashboard.
• Points - We all like to get them or complain about not having them. ActiveRain runs on points so let's give some away. 1000 points will be awarded for 1st Place; 750 points for 2nd Place; and 500 points for 3rd Place.
• The winning articles will also get published on SoundBiteBlog.com. This is not as big a deal as being featured on AR, but SoundBiteBlog does have a respectable readership and it can't hurt, can it? It will also help with your Internet exposure. A backlink from SoundBiteBlog to your profile or ActiveRain blog is a good thing.

The Judges

There will a minimum of 5 judges per contest. They will be chosen from among the more accomplished  and veteran members of our network. The names of these judges will not be announced until after the winners have been chosen.  

Summary

Many of you have complained about the lack of quality real estate-related articles here on ActiveRain. Now is your chance to show us how it's done! Take your time and write the best article you can for consumers! Let's all strive to 'Raise the Bar' on more improved writing in the Rain!