You earned a GOLD STAR today, ActiveRain!
I just hopped onto ActiveRain and saw Kerrie Greenhalgh's WONDERFUL blog post on the newest feature on ActiveRain, which allows members to upload their listings onto ActiveRain. There were a few clarifications, such as only being allowed to have 20 listings at any given time, each listing will only stay active for 30 days, and that there is a maximum of 20 photos allowed on each listing, with a minimum photo size of 960X440.
I have spent the past half hour reading and digesting all 121 comments that had been made on this blog post. Some were positive, a lot of them had questions attached to them, and a few scattered comments were somewhat negative. I am writing this post to respond to a lot of the concerns that were raised with this new feature, so enjoy!
- "Why only 20 listings at a time"? "What if I have 172 listings to upload"? 99% of agents in my area have under 20 ACTIVE listings at any one given time. The only ones that seem to have more than 20 are the REO Brokerages, and to be honest, we all know how they work, and I would be shocked to find them anywhere near a social networking site, as they are up to their ears in tasks and barely have enough time to answer the phone. And if you do find yourself with more than 20, I am pretty sure you are working on a team, meaning invite your team members, create another ActiveRain profile, it takes you 10 minutes to do so. Also, put a link on your signature line of your blog post alerting consumers viewing your blog that all of your listings can be seen HERE, with a link to RealBird, your website, etc. I am sure eventually that limit will get lifted, but in the meantime, lets work with what we've got!
- "Why is the image size 960X440 when other sites are 512X400"? I for one, LOVE that the image size is a minimum of 960X440. How many times do you see agents who just simply save their photos directly off the MLS page, which not only distorts them, but also leaves you with a 3 inch photo that you can barely see. Agents SHOULD ABSOLUTELY be taking photos using a digital camera, and honestly, 960X440 really isn't all that hard to accomplish! My listing photos are 3 megabites each, taken off an expensive camera. But even a simple Olympia, or Samsung digital camera will do!
- "As a high volume listing broker, I don't want to do double entry" This is WHY we have staff. Honestly, I just uploaded 2 listings and it took me a grand total of 10 minutes. This would mean that one could feasibly upload 20 listings in under 2 hours, and then, that's it! Is it not worth 2 hours initially, and maybe an hour a week in updating prices, photos, & adding & removing listings, to have you listings on a platform that 2,000,000 people use monthly? It's absolutely worth it for me to do this, and your answer should be the same!
- "There Should be a clear rule that you cannot post listings that are not your own" I 100% agree with this! If the listing isn't yours, you have no right to market it as such, unless the listing broker has given you permission to do so! Zillow had a huge problem with this, as did Trulia.
- "I cannot activate listings without entering square footage" When I first read this comment, I couldn't help but laugh, as I thought this was a joke. Are there really states where you don't enter the square footage onto the MLS listing? What a complete joke! This could be a full blog post in itself, and may be in the near future.
Bottom line, I think its amazing that ActiveRain finally allows us to upload our listings! This is a step in the right direction, from tailoring mainly to agents, to slowly tailoring more so to the public, which ultimately helps us agents, as more traffic, equals more success in the rain! I do hope that ActiveRain can eventually implement listing feed's that some of the major companies out there have, but I will say that I for one prefer the option of uploading my listings manually. Often times I will see one of my listings come up on Zillow or Trulia with inaccurate info, and its frustrating! So in closing, WAY TO GO ActiveRain, you earned a GOLD STAR today!
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