First let me say, I have a new found appreciation for the "professional blog readers" in Washington, Caleb and Matt. I read a lot of blogs every day, because there is a lot to be learned on ActiveRain. Saying one blog is better than another is really very subjective. My opinion of what is good/better/best is tempered by my personal interests and opinions, no matter how objective I may try to be.
I was really pleased by the participation in this first Carnival of ActiveRain. Thank you so much to everyone who entered. You gave me a lot of great stuff to read, and a lot to think about. I printed out a big stack of entries yesterday morning and passed them around the table at a breakfast meeting I attended so that I could share some of the great stuff I get to read every day. My coworkers were impressed. I was delighted to be introduced to bloggers who had been flying below my radar, and a couple who have just begun here. That was exactly what I had hoped for when I started this. I was also really happy to see some of my daily reads take the plunge and throw their names in the hat.
Thank you to my co-hosts, who agreed to participate in my first attempt at anything like this. And thanks to everyone who took a moment to encourage another blogger to send in a post. Thanks to Caleb for offering some points to the winners and doing what he could to help make sure people knew this was going on.
I have two announcements to make in this post. Mary McKnight is traveling right now, and she emailed her winner for Tips and Tricks yesterday.
(drum roll please...)
Damion Flynn takes home the honors for More Free Advertising. Damion's got a great post about submitting articles to various sites to help improve search engine placement. For bloggers, what could be easier? We are already writing, so the issue seems to be getting some of our work spread out to bring back traffic. Seems like a good idea to me. Thank you Damion and congratulations!
Which means I have to get back to my assignment. I've been having trouble with this one all night. In part, I think we as a community are having trouble deciding which categories our posts belong in. I had a couple of people ask me about this as they submitted articles. So I went back to the definition of what is supposed to be in this category.
ActiveRain Community: Posts dealing specifically with some facet of the ActiveRain Real Estate Network. Such as posts about features, improvements to the system, discussions among members, etc.
Doing this cut down the number of posts I had to chose from. Some very good posts just did not seem to fit this definition.
There were two posts that I really liked because they both addressed one event in the community this week, an anonymous post on Craig Schiller's blog. They complimented each other very nicely. Thank you Craig and Marti Garaughty. I've noticed more anonymous posting lately and Craig handled it with aplomb.
A second set of excellent posts was about building community (cow-munity) and the power of ActiveRain. Maureen McCabe is the AR blogger who most often has a great chart to illustrate her point. Maureen's arguments for blogging on ActiveRain are compelling and well supported. Angus Woodbury, of course, is most likely to use a cow to illustrate his point. I look forward to those cows and those charts!
In all, I love how these posts are examples of what blogging can be: interrelated conversations on the web, social networking, and the fantastic opportunities that the ActiveRain community has to offer.
Which takes me to my selection for ActiveRain Community.
(another drum roll please...)
The post I've selected is by someone who talks about growing her network, and her business, and how she has made ActiveRain a part of all of that. I admire Margaret Rome's synergistic approach; it reminds me of things I need to do in building my own business. And I certainly would consider it a treat to sit in on one of Margaret's seminars.
Congratulations Margaret.
I will be updating this post with the other host's selections as they come in. Here is the recap and the link to the host's post:
Carol Williams for Real Estate Opinion
Jeff Belonger for Finance
Toby Boyce for Industry News
Damion Flynn for Tips, Tricks & Advice
Margaret Rome for ActiveRain Community
Linda Davis for Off Topic/Humor
Thanks again to everyone who participated. They really were all very fine articles.
Check out the wrap up for the Carnival of ActiveRain on miOaklandCounty.com
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