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ActiveRain Community Pages - Frequently Asked Questions

Question: What constitutes a community? I live in a really small town, is that a community?

Answer: As it relates to ActiveRain community pages, a community can be considered anything around which people commune (OK funny guy, what does that mean?) that is more specific than a city or town.

Some 'communities' will be actual geographical areas within a town or city. In Seattle for example, there are known areas and ways locals break down the city. Communities such as 'Queen Anne', 'Wallingford' and 'Ballard' are well known and obvious communities. However, people may choose to get more granular with how they break down communities in their market as well. You may choose to create communities based on specific sub-divisions or condo complexes. Communities may also be created around golf courses, interest groups, or geographical terms people associate with living near.

You could create:

Sand Point Country Club
Seattle Senior Living
Views of the Puget Sound

These are examples of communities that could be created that don't meet the traditional definition of a community in terms of a geographical place within a city or town.

Question: Someone got a little out of control and created communities within my City/Town that are not actually communities or are the name of a neighboring city. In addition, there are communities in my City/Town that are misspelled. How do I get these cleaned up?

Answer: We are working on a system to allow you to report these to us and help us get them cleaned up. Stay tuned for this. In the meantime, do not sponsor anything that does not make sense and do not post content to these areas.

Question: How do I create a new community in my town/city?

Answer: Here is a tutorial that explains how to create new communities.

Question: My town is really small and we don't really have communities. Our population is 10,000 and the only way to further break the city down is based on sub-divisions. These sub-divisions are small (50-150 homes) and it doesn't make sense for me to sponsor all ten sub-divisions at $19/month. What do I do?

Answer: It may make sense for you to wait. Currently, sponsorships are only available at a community level. If you are trying to sponsor a town or city, those are currently not available for sponsorship. It is possible we will have city level sponsorships available in the future but we are taking our time to make sure that if/when we roll those out it's in a manner that respects the people who have organically risen to the top of their city based on ActiveRain points.

One option for you, however, may be to sponsor one highly desirable sub-division in your town/city. If the other 'communities' are too small to warrant sponsorship, your sponsorship of the one desirable area, will make it so that you appear as the sponsor of any unclaimed 'communities' in your town/city. So if there are ten sub-divisions and you sponsor one, you rotate through as the sponsor in the other unclaimed sub-divisions.

Question: How do I find the communities I want to sponsor?

Answer: In order to find the communities in your town/city, you need to navigate to the city page first. In order to get to the city page, click on the states menu at the top of most ActiveRain pages. This will present a drop down menu of the different states. Click on your state. From the state page, look on the left hand column for a list of popular cities. Below the list of popular cities is a list of counties. If you do not find your city/town in the list of popular cities/towns, scroll down and select your County. Once on the County page, select your city from the list of cities on the left.

Once you are on the city page, the list of 'communities' will be on the left hand side of the city page. If you click on a community, it will load the community page. On the right hand side of the community page will be the ability to sponsor that community.

If someone is already sponsoring that community, you will see their picture. If the community is available to be sponsored, you will see your picture on the right hand side, grayed out, with a box you can click that says 'sponsor community'.

Question: After I sponsor my community, how do I complete the sponsorship?

Answer: Once you have sponsored a community, you can complete your sponsorship by navigating to the community page and looking for the red 'update sponsorship information' link. Clicking on that link will allow you to:

Fill out a 'blurb' about the community (to be permenatly displayed near the top of the community page). The blurb can be a maximum of 600 characters
Create a link on the community page back to your website. You will fill out the 'Link Name' field with how you want us to display the link on the community page. For instance: 'Search for Homes in Wallingford'. You will also fill out the 'Link URL' field. This will be the URL of the page to which you would like the link to point
Upload a 'Marquee Photo' for the community. Marquee photo's must be exactly 960 pixels wide by 440 pixels high in order to upload.

A list of all the areas you are sponsoring can be found on the 'billing information' page on the left hand side of your 'my home' page.

Question: What if I had community sponsorships on Localism. How do I go about updating the information for those sponsorships on ActiveRain? Also, how do I find which communities transfered over?

Answer: If you were sponsoring a community on Localism, that community was assigned to you on ActiveRain as well. In order to access those communities, you can go to the 'Billing Information' link on the left hand side of your 'my home' page. Near the bottom of your billing information page, it will show you the communities that you are currently sponsoring. There will also be a link to each community. If you click on that link, it will take you to the community page and allow you to update your community sponsorship by clicking on the red 'update community sponsorship' link.

Question: What if I was sponsoring a city on ActiveRain? What happens to that city sponsorship?

Answer: Previously on Localism, there were two ways to sponsor a city. In cities under 40K population, you could directly sponsor a city. In cities over 40K population, you became the sponsor if you were the person sponsoring the most communities in that city.

First let's deal with those directly sponsoring a city on Localism under 40K population. You are no longer paying to sponsor that city. However, city level sponsorships are not yet available on ActiveRain. If/when they become available, you will have the first right of refusal to sponsor that same city on ActiveRain. For the time being however, you will simply maintain the Localism city level sponsorship free of charge.

For those of you that were holding a comped city level sponsorship of a city over 40K population as a result of sponsoring the most communities in that city, we are evaluating how that will work if/when we introduce city level sponsorships on ActiveRain. Currently however, you maintain the city level sponsorship in Localism.

Posted by ActiveRain Real Estate Network on 08/10/2010 12:42 PM

Comments (42)

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42 Comments on ActiveRain Community Pages - Frequently Asked Questions

AUG

2010

Okay ... GREAT post. But my head is still confused. I thought I was sponsoring a localism community ... but it doesn't show up on my Billing Info page. What do I do next?

Thank you for this - it seems fair and well-thought out.

The ActiveRain University class that Bob held last week helped me a lot. Perhaps a link to that here would help some others.

Hey, I'm on a roll. There is so much material for these "communities", I didn't know where to begin. Now I don't know where to stop.

Really nice explanation. The set up was very easy. Need to do another but need to get out to get that marquee photo. I don't have a good one to use.

Howdy and afternoon there

I've been helping some of the other members with seting up their new AR community pages, and I've been mighty excited for them.

I do wish y'all had also made it at the sametime, so those us in very small country towns and citys. Could be just as excited for our selves for the new pages. Its a bit of a let down feeling to those of us that may end up waiting for ever.

Have a good one
Dale in New Hampshire

And what happens if another agent takes EVERY community within 20 miles? And I do mean EVERY community. There should be a limit on the number of areas one agent can claim. There is no way they can do justice to that many different locations. It defeats the intent of creating a community if you do nothing more with it than put your face and phone number on it.

Great information - This should help many to understand the communities....

This is a Great post. I will have to attend the webinar because I still have questions that I need answered. Thanks for sharing.

Not sure how i feel about working so hard for a person to come in a buy thepage from me, and to find out that a person can purchase my town or city, that does not make me feel better, Hummmmmmm

Bea,

Here is what I would imagine will happen. The person that grabbed EVERYTHING will quickly realize that without adding content to the pages, the sponsorships are not very valuable as the pages will not generate traffic or business. I'm willing to bet if you wait a little bit they will begin to drop some of their sponsorships.

Ken,

I'm a firm believer that consumers are not stupid. If you are the one creating the great content, you will be the one they reach out to, regardless of if you are the sponsor or not. The sponsorship just adds a little bit of visibility for the sponsor. However, if they don't contribute anything to the community page, it's going to be worthless for them.

You are in Vancouver WA, a larger city. We haven't completely decided how sponsorships for larger cities will work yet, but we will take utmost care in making sure that the people contributing the content are adequately taken care of and still able to generate business as a result of their fantastic content.

Gabrielle,

I'm glad we got that all figured out for you (and super excited you are getting your emails from AR now!!)

Thanks for the information here today. It's appreciated.

Patricia/Seacoast NH

Great additional info. Will be uploading my marquee photo tomorrow. Bookmarked for future reference.

My experience is that, often, the smaller the community the more fun it is to hang out there.

Will you be alphabetizing the list of cities within each county on the left side of the screen?

When you remove Addison from within the Dallas information (Addison IS a city in its own right, not part of the city of Dallas), what is going to happen with all postings that have been miscategorized within the Dallas? There are tons of posts about auto loans which have nothing to do with Addison, nothing to do with real estate.

I'm not getting a warm fuzzy about these community pages. It strikes me as just another way for AR to generate more revenue while dissing those of us who have been loyal Localism bloggers, especially those of us in cities with less than 40,000 residents, and those of us who have been paying $9/mo for a city. Will we get cycled through the communities within the city without sponsors?

Right now I can't even see the communities in my town through the community page because Addison is not listed. Any estimate on when the cleanup of known problems will begin?

This is great information about the new changes. I am excited about this new feature though it's difficult to choose which communities to choose :)

I've bookmarked this for reference ... now I still have a few questions but I know that answers are forthcoming!

Wow! Feeling warmer and fuzzier after a phone call from Bob! Thanks for the clarification.

Now there are cities and communities--I'm confused. I've noticed that the former Escondido Localism Sponsor is not the Escondido Community Page sponsor, yet there are a bunch of communities, too. It seems that the pages might somehow duplicate stuff.

How about garage homes in Gwinnett County... wouldn't be a city, but as a 'community, it would span multiple cites...

I'd like to say that your respect for the ones who have accomplished their cities as far as points are concerned is a class-act move. I'm at the top of my city and have worked very hard at it, and it would break my heart to see that go out the window with a new system.

Thank you!

Thanks for posting these FAQ's Bob. I wasn't able to attend either of the webinars you held and this really answers most all of my questions.

These communities are going to be a very fun way to post our local knowledge of the area.

I have a question.... Right now on localism I sponsor a small NH town of approx. 11,000.... under the community it breaks it down into so-called smaller communities. If someone sponsors one of those so-called smaller communites what will happen to my city that I now sponsor on localism... and what would you suggest I do?

I still think this thing has a long way to go before it becomes really useful, intuitive and logical, let alone the whole who gets displayed where in relation to sponsorship. I just looked at Brecksville, OH, a town I do a ton of blogging about and the two top people listed, one last posted in 2007 and the other top spot is filled by someone who has never written a post. Until this kind of crazyiness gets sorted out, consumers will instantly get turned off and won't see the value under the hood of what is really there. I do think before a feature is rolled out, it needs to be alpha, beta and end-user tested (major AR expert members) in a variety of contexts and have many of these very visible flaws resolved before launch.

I also think the dollar amount of sponsorship is also way too high.

I know a mention was made to respecting organic/points, etc. I will watch this one very closely as this one has the potential to open up a a huge pandoras box for the members who are largely responsible for growing this platform. If I found 2 years worth of a TON of work diminished by a $19 per month new member and it was that easy, that would seriously change my view of this platform.

Chris,

We are considering how to make the people that display in a certain city more relevant. One thing we considered is not displaying anyone that hasn't logged in in the last 30, 60 or 90 days. Another option could be to not display anyone on a city page that hasn't placed a blog post in that city in the last 30,60 or 90 days.(these are just ideas we are kicking around)

I agree, there is some refinement that needs to happen in order to make them everything they can (and will) be.

We've always given consideration to the members that have built this platform and we will continue to do that. We realize that the value of ActiveRain rests entirely with our members and that distinction is something we take very seriously.

ActiveRain has always had a quid pro quo relationship with our members. We give you something and in return you give the platform/company something. If at any point that relationship gets out of balance, we try our best to return it to balance. I believe we've always done a very good job of striking an amicable balance. But if our members are no longer getting benefit from the platform, or the benefit is unequally distributed in favor of the company, then we fully expect that they will move on. It's why we strive to keep that balance equitable.

I'm sorry you think the dollar amount is too high. There are many others who have decided it fits their budget. The people who were previously sponsoring areas on Localism got a price break at $9.

AUG

2010

This communal problem of community sponsorship seems to have been sufficiently aired. Thanks for the points of clarity. Always helps to have reference points!

Thanks for these answers, I appreciate it, as I had many of these questions.

Thanks for the Q & A. I just can't decide which subdivisions to sponsor at this time.

I was so confused at first, when the community sponsorships came out. I thought it sounded just like the old Localism sponsorships. Thanks for the post. There are tons of errors in my area, with communities that are not really communities on the list! When the error button comes out to report errors, I'll submit my changes to you.

I seem to "get" what the goal is here. How long do you think it will take for the search engines to start picking up these larger subs that have a description and great quality content attached to it?

What about Canada? ( and.. even as I type it I hear the South Park song..."Blame Canada") I don't seem to find any option for the community pages here. Does that mean that the Localism option is still there? or are we waiting for the new community option?

Great post. Answered some of my questions after a post yesterday about obtaing 2000 points for posting a photo on your hosted community page.

I think the community sponsorships are going to be a great oportunity for those of us who don't rank #1 in a city or state to still show up at the top in the areas where we do the most business. I'm waiting for the announcement to find out how I can clean up the errors in my community listings.

Guess what? Still confused. I know, I know.... I am not understanding how a consumer gets to the Community Pages. It has been explained that consumers will not navigate to the Community Pages via the Active Rain Home page but rather by searching and finding a blog post. Okay, using that, if a consumer searches for a subdivision in my town, they find the post and click on it. They still aren't "at" the Community Pages but simply my blog post. How does a consumer know to go to the community pages? I am really sorry that I am not able to wrap my head around this navigation concept. Don't get me wrong, Active Rain does insane wonders for out blog posts and, while I have sponsored a community, I am still not sure I understand the benefit. Unless a comsumer can actually navigate to the Community Pages and see that I am a sponsor they will more than likely just end up on a blog post regarding that community whether it be mine or anothers in the area.

Hit me with a brick if you like for that may be what it takes to get me to understand this concept. At least with Localism you had a specific "place" for consumers to go www.localism.com - community pages? Just don't get it.

Wake Forest NC House Chick

I have the same question as Leesa comment #35.

I'm all for the concept and sponsored several communities in Gilbert AZ. One of my posts was made a Neighborhood Feature in the Val Vista Lakes community (I appreciate that)

When I google for Val Vista Lakes Crystal Shores it takes me to the post, but not to the community page.

Leesa,

What do you think happens if you write about a certain community, and three others in your market write about the same community. Google will show one result from a site (sometimes two, with the second result being an inset results underneath the first result).

If three of you write about the same community, Google has to choose. They may not choose you. They may choose the other person. The community pages will allow the content one place to be housed, and Google will have one page with all the content to return as a result. Because there is more than just one post on the page, these pages have the ability to rank higher. This is particularly important in communities that have competition for search terms (such as in larger cities or highly desirable areas). Google will then return the inset result as well, and that will be the one they choose from. But if you weren't the one they chose prior to the community pages, you may not have been displayed at all.

Does that help?

If not, I'll call you tomorrow. I'm flying today.

No, Bob, it doesn't help. My sole question is how do comsumers get to the Community Pages? They can search for a community, find the post (or many), go to the post (I don't care which one) and it is JUST the post that they land on. NOT the community pages. So, from that post how does a consumer get to the community pages? Does the consumer then need to know to go to the top right and click on States, the State and then navigate the list of cities on the left?

When will a consumer ever just "land" on a community page?

Wake Forest NC House Chick

If I understand what Bob is saying, Google will not return the "community page" in a search.

Because there are several posts on the one community page, the posts themselves will rank higher.

However, when Google chooses a post from that community page, it may or may not be the sponsors post.

If that is correct, then I don't see the benefit of one person sponsoring the community because the sponsor is paying for everyone who posts on the community to have a higher ranking.

I'm sure I'm not seeing the full picture, so perhaps I'll see the light soon.

Bill

Bill (and Leesa),

No, that is not what I'm saying. Let me think a little bit about how to explain this better in writing, but I will most likely call both you and Leesa tomorrow and explain over the phone.

(I'm about to jump on an airplane and am sitting at the airport right now)

It may be that I should write a post specifically detailing this point with screenshots of google searches to explain what I mean. But, (and to answer Renee's question) we need to wait just a bit for Google to really start indexing the pages, and Renee, I'm not 100% sure when that will happen. If I was, I'd be making a lot more money and working for Yahoo or Bing. :-)

Thanks to the Active Rain staff for sharing these answers that I'm sure many of us may have on a daily basis....good job.

I thought I would be cool with this but there is something about ALL my content with someone else becoming a sponsor of EVERY SINGLE community in the city of Columbus that upsets me.... Columbus is the 15th or 16th largest city in the US. I understood that if a member sponsored a community they would get other communities.

Dublin is a city. It is not a neighborhood. Sponsoring Dublin as a community has allowed one member to be the sponsor of EVERY community in the City of Columbus.

Dublin is a city in Franklin, Delaware, and Union counties in the U.S. state of Ohio. The population was 31,392 at the 2000 census. In 2008, the population was estimated to be 38,536^[3], and Dublin continues to be one of the fastest-growing suburbs of Columbus. Approximately 57,000 people live within the Dublin school district.

Dublin is not the only city that is listed as a community.

AUG

2010

I'm glad you posted the link to the tutorial for setting up communities. There were a few changes that needed to be made to my area.

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