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RealTownBlogs.com vs. ActiveRain.com

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Above are ActiveRain members who also blog on RealTownBlogs, these are their RealTownBlogs.com blogs. Other ActiveRain members including Jeff Dowler, Carole Cohen, Monika McGillicuddy, Ann Cumming have or have had blogs on RealTownblogs too. Lenn Harley tried RealTownblogs.com loooooong ago.

I have a RealTownBlog.com blog Disover Columbus. I don't get much traffic on it.

Is Frances Flynn Thorson, the managing editor of RealTown biased? In an interview with Todd Carpenter of REMBEX Blog Fiesta in reply to the question "How does RealTown differ from Active Rain?" Frances said:

"RealTown is an altogether different venue than ActiveRain. ActiveRain is a relatively young blogging community populated by real estate pros. Most of the discussion there is discussion among agent and other realty pros. RealTown offers a sense of community is a similar sense, as well as a platform that will likely to reach more buyers and sellers. ActiveRain has a "points" system that rewards bloggers with points for things like posting comments on other agents' blogs. Some of the comments run on and on .... Buyers and sellers are treated to a "water cooler" environment online, I believe, and this will discourage them from visiting ActiveRain blogs as often as they might visit blogs on other platforms. While the "points" add a measure of fun to the task, I believe that at the end of the day it will turn off more consumers than it will attract.

RealTown is home to the oldest online real estate community in the real estate industry. The older listserv communities have a new platform online, there is a growing blogging communit, and a platform for real estate articles."

Compete.com is the new Alexa for me in comparing traffic, because "Alexa sucks" Jeff Turner finally convinced me. Above is a comparison of ActiveRain.com to RealTown.com so if I am not mistaken that would be the RealTown Blogs as well as RealTalk, ePROTalk, BlogTalk, the articles on the RealTown.com combined, the whole ball of wax

Frances is a member of ActiveRain too AND my Fairy Blogmother and I have the utmost respect for her but I think she is biased about RealTown and totally discounting Localism.com. I would expect Matt Heaton, Caleb, or Jonathan to be pro ActiveRain in an interview, but I don't believe anyone would even ask them about RealTown.

Those who have experienced both ActiveRain and RealTown Blogs do you concur that your RealTown blog reaches more consumers than your ActiveRain / Localism blog presence?

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Posted by Maureen McCabe Central OH Homes on 09/07/2007 03:52 AM

Comments (65)

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activerain, localism, realtown blogs

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65 Comments on RealTownBlogs.com vs. ActiveRain.com

SEP

2007

Maureen, I have one there too, that I tried. And realtor dot com. I tried that too. I also tried blogger etc. It got too overwhelming.......so now I stick with activerain and wordpress.

I think it's like being born into a family, AR is a family, I know the people, I have relationships and it "feels" good. OK, I like the Google juice too and AR has lots of Google Juice.

I don't think I ever got one comment on my realtown blog.

Very interesting Maureen. I had never even heard of RealTown and don't have time to check it out...

Hi Maureen, when I first did the -PRO course 2.5 years ago I signed up for RealTalk and e-PRO Talk. I was brand new to the entire concept and read just about everything that came along. After a while I found the same discussions going on and on and on. Not necessarily a bad thing, just somewhat redundant, and as I got busier with less time to devote, eventually tapered off to reading very little. I still subscribe to both, but am selective as to what I read. There is definitely a "more fun" attitude going on here and I like that I can zone in on people closer to my geography. I'm very intrigued with Localism and slowly working my way around in there. Have a great day and fabulous weekend.

Monika started on Real Town and once we found AR our google rankings soared. She hardly ever received comments on Real Town. When she did her post on "Hate" here on AR she had more comments from the public than she ever dreamed of getting. Germany and Australia were just a couple of countries she received comments from.

I know there are a few people that are very successful on Realtown and maybe we were just new to blogging and our posts were not that well written or noticed by other Realtown bloggers.

We also know that the public may not respond but they do read.

Active Rain may be new but it is growing in leaps and bounds. With 46,722 members as I type I wonder how many are on Realtown.

It seems like the numbers say it all. Sherry

So I guess my question was is it worth using real town? I guess not from your figures on the graph.

Good morning Godblogger!!

This is a very interesting question that you have posed. I struggle routinely to decide where I should post my articles. Should I post them on Activerain? Should I post them to Realtownblogs? Should I post them in both? Which one will provide me with the right exposure? My readership is definitely higher at Activerain. However, I feel that my blog at realtownblogs provides me exposure that I wouldn't normally get otherwise. What's really neat is that I can search on a term in my area and I'll come up 3X out of the top 10. I'll have clients call me and tell me that I'm really out there and that's why they chose me!!

Based on my current overall experience this is where I have landed:

1. I post local articles to Localism

2. I post networking and professional ideas(Associates Only) at Activerain

3. Anything that falls inbetween I post to both

Oh, yeah, and I think Alexa sucks too!! Jeff is right.

Oh Maureen, I can't believe you srounged around and found that old blog- it doesn't even exist.

Goes without saying that I never used my RT blog. Why? I was new to blogging is one reason, but I just didn't like it is another. At the time I set it up, RT was not as user friendly as the Blogger.com I had then (since abandonded as well). Perhaps that has changed?

And for a beginning blogger, the beauty of AR is that you can get immediate response, feedback. That is a great thing for someone who is not sure if blogging is for them. And you can make a post members only, so the public doesn't have to see your early efforts if you don't want them to.

However, I've said it before, there is nothing like a WordPress blog for traffic. It's far superior to anything AR or RT has to offer. If you are going to blog for the your market, make the effort to use WP. If you are looking for community, I don't think you can beat AR.

ActiveRain is very successful at generating numerous comments ... but how much of that traffic is consumer based vs. agent based? My guess is that most of the traffic is agent based ... just look at the comments!!! If you are happy with a constant dialogue with other agents, that is fine. However, if you want to build a loyal CONSUMER audience I think that RealTown makes more sense. I answered the article honesly.

Am I biased about RealTown? Certainly!! I made a conscious decision that RealTown makes more sense as a consumer venue. I think the numbers bear me out.

The whole "points" thing at ActiveRain escapes me ... I have neither the time nor the inclination to play with AR points.

As RealTown grows and consumer traffic advances it becomes increasingly more appealing as a blog venue.

I think AR does a great job as a great big water cooler in the Blogosphere!!! I have nothing against water coolers, BTW. It's just not a place where I would bring my clients!

Maureen, this is an interesting and helpful discussion. With so many offers for "free blog sites" out there, it is a little confusing to try to figure out where to put time. I had been wondering how I was going to sort it out and this post helps immensely. Thanks.

As a newbie, I appreciate hearing "old timers" expressing the concern of when and where to blog. I feel better already although I guess the dilemma will be with us all until the next internet vehicle comes around the bend

well, as fun and educational as it is, I am not blogging to be recognized much by other agents. LOL. I want customers to find me and say "hey, I like that agent! Let's call her."

I have had more than one contact me through my blog. so I guess it's working. I'd like it to work more though! LOL

Maureen:

I, too, have a blog at RT (it was my first) and at AR. I get far more consumer comments on RT than on AR, and I have a regular readership based on the stats. The focus on RT is on relocation for buyers and sellers so it tends to have more specificity than AR. I am tending to focus more and more on Local content on AR for business reasons, rather than writing purely for agents - my personal preference. I have had calls and emails from prospects through both blogs, as well as from my Wordpress on for first time buyers.

Jeff

Thanks all for the comments but remember Frances premise is the comments are the problem. The comments from others in the in the industry are what scare consumers away, or give them information about you that they just should not have. Transparency is NOT good?

What counts is business. A year ago everyone said all the people reading RT blogs were other RT bloggers. Was that true? No.

Is all the traffic on AR members? Others in the industry who are non members drawn to the RE water cooler that AR is?

From the upper right hand corner a few minutes ago:

There are 179 members currently logged in.
There are 1,423 not logged in on site.

179 members logged in

+358 (AR members NOT signed in...including Teri of TheBrickRanch.com this number is totally made up)

---------

537

+537 (another made up #, industry people who are not members but just drawn to the RE H2O cooler)

------

1074

That leaves 399 civilians. Are they consumers? Some probably are. Are they consumers who scatter because of the chatter of the excessive non useful comments of AR. Some could be.

How are consumers going to find the nice quiet RT bloggers blogs out in the blogosphere that are about their local market? It's not going to be Google for many if other RT Blogs stats look like my Google Analytics stats. It could be Yahoo.com most of the organic traffic I get on my RT Blog gets there via a Yahoo search. I believe the next largest chunk of my readers in August came direct. That's a "by invitation" kind of status in my mind.

Maureen,

Interesting article which prompted a lot of response worth looking into for a new or not so new blogger.

I have used the RealTalk Forums for years (maybe 5 or 6), I have had a blog there since the 3 amigos started the blog arena....I have been on AR actively since May 22, 2007....I have received more business from AR than I ever did from RT. I had one comment from a listing client (verbally, not in comments) about how he read it a lot...but not much else from blogging on RT.

Sooooooooo, draw your own conclusions!

Interesting stuff. I know nothing about Real Town other than what I have just read on this post. It does sound like the successful AR bloggers have a preference. And the statistics look convincing. Thanks for the informative post.

Jeff I am going to have to look at your RT blog that gets more consumer comments than you get on AR. I have a regular readership on Discover Columbus and get a certain number of comments from them. I think of them as civilians rather than consumers however. Past clients, sphere of influence they are there by invitation, I can invite them to any platform.

My real dissatisfaction with RealTown Blogs comes from contact from reporters and one economist who found market reports I did last November, Decemeber and January on ActiveRain and wanted updates. There are updated on Discover Columbus. People researching can't find it! I can look at my stats (Google Analytics) and see Market Reports are popular with those who have found them... but people researching can't find them?

thank all 4 the comments ...

RealTown has benefit from an SEO standpoint - I haven't touched the blog there since January 4 except to kill off spam comments - and it's still where it always was on Page 8. When I posted regularly to AR, however, I was on page 2 for Phoenix Arizona Real Estate. There's better juice here.

When I left RT there were no trackbacks, pingbacks, etc. None of the type of things that helps build traffic for an individual blog (for that matter, those don't exist here either.) It was a very rudimentary platform that no longer served my needs. So I moved over to Wordpress on my own server and watched my main website's SEO improve immediately thanks to the new content.

Active Rain and RT are apples and oranges products. AR does have the water cooler feel, assuming your water cooler is constantly invaded by people who will say about anything, coherent or not, as long as they get their 200 points. Localism has generated a handful of leads in very limited use.

RT's true competition is the wider blogging world out there, IMO. Consumer traffic advancing isn't going to find the RT platform if the individual blogs provide better Google juice (or even the AR platform for that matter.) And many of them do right now. Look at Jay Thompson's blog here in Phoenix. He's already on page 1 for Phoenix Real Estate. You can't beat that and RT certainly won't if AR hasn't.

A major ... MAJOR ... push will be needed to move RT forward. As I said, I've written 450-odd posts since January 4 - NONE on RealTown, all on my regular blog (and copied here in some cases.) And I still rank 11th for total posts on RealTown.

That tells me something about the reach. Nothing against RealTown Blogs but the opportunity to be a major player came and went 20 months ago when the push first started.

I pretty much have let my RT blog die down. I mainly post on AR and my word press blog. I know the consumer reads both AR and my WP blog. On RT I never knew if anyone read it. It certainly felt very lonely there.

First, there's a difference between RealTalk,e-Pro Talk, BlogTalk and blogging. The "Talks" are supposed to be private and not open to non-members so there shouldn't be SEO or public viewing of those forums. When the "Talks" converted to a bulletin board style (with individual e-mail ability still there) it seemed to coincide with a lot of RTers transferring their focus to Active Rain where they could get the same social networking in a blog type forum. On AR privacy can be elected or not based on the content of one's post.

Blogging for business on the other hand is intended to be public. When I left RealTown Blogs in January it was difficult. There was a community there that taught each other how to expand the blogs' capacity. It was technical support from the trenches. However, RT blogs did not have the ability to do the domain mapping which I have succeeded in doing with Typepad, did not automatically ping, did not have a built-in Widget library, etc. Even though I was the top ranked blogger for all the RT blogs at that time, I was not showing up on Google searches. My blogging was building RealTown, not my business, much like blogging on AR builds AR but not my business.

Localism . . . there again, I'm putting that on my business blog. At some point AR will be big enough and powerful enough that advertising will be required (the time has come) and we'll be paying in one way or another to continue in a forum that has been built by our blogging here.

I did not leave RealTown to come to Active Rain. I was on Active Rain before I switched blogging platforms. Active Rain is not my blogging platform. It does get good SEO, but I prefer to put the energy into my business blog.

Essentially I outgrew RT faster than RT was growing up. I needed and wanted more than they could offer at that time.

I still think RT blogs are a great place to start. I found them user friendly for the novice. The tech savvy would find them cumbersome, but for someone who barely knew what a blog was, RT was the perfect place to start. I learned how to make tables to insert pictures, how to do tags in html, how to make hyperlinks while at RT. Those things were all community driven learning experiences. Had I started with Typepad I don't think I would be blogging today because I didn't even know the language. It's pretty hard to get help from the help menu when you don't know what to call something!

As far as comparing AR to RT. For me, the biggest difference is who the members are. When I started with AR that same group of RT people who collaborated together at RT was here. The group was small and we could find each other. RT was the same way. It was small and then got cumbersome. New people came on board in both forums bringing the repetitive questions, opinions, attitudes, and suggestions. In like manner, adding thousands more people watered down the quality in both forums. It's harder to find the really good entries for wading through all the chaff.

Bonnie (or anyone) : If you were going to suggest a newbie start blogging, would you tell them to try

A. RealTownBlogs

B. ActiveRain.com

C. Start out on a blog of their own, WP.org, Typepad, or a built for RE blog for $

D. None of the above, there are already too many RE bloggers....

thanks for the comments. Thanks to the fella who removed his comment spam which said "I never heard of RealTown " and included a graphic with his contact info I do get frustrated with the "efficient commenting" of those who are too busy to read and just write "thanks for the info", or "I did not know" or whatever 12 (?) words they can string together to get 25 points on ActiveRain. I thought it was a joke to portray Frances point.

That's a hard question to answer. Let me do it backwards.

First choice to eliminate is D. It matters not how many RE bloggers are out there. IF you are a blogger, you will blog!

Second choice to eliminate is C, but let me hedge that somewhat. IF the novice is not tech savvy, the blog platforms you mentioned would be overwhelming to learn with no community support. I would never have figured out how to do the banner on my Typepad blog had I not started with RT. IF the novice blogger is tech savvy and just a novice to blogging they could start with one of these platforms. I would not pay $$ to build a RE blog until I had blogged a bit and tested the waters. There are plenty of reasonable or free platforms to start out with and then invest the $$ to get SEO and pretty pages.

Third choice to eliminate is B, Active Rain. Whereas Active Rain has a blog like platform one does not set up their own template and get their own feel to the blog. Active Rain is Active Rain's. The blogger just hangs out there.

So the choice I would pick is RealTown. I've suggested it to several of my friends although only one has taken me up on the idea.

There are many other options as well, i.e., Point2Agent now incorporates a blog into their websites. I've not tried it, but that would give the website some good SEO with new content being added daily.

That's my opinion. I'm far from being an expert in the field, so my opinion doesn't matter a lot. For me the habit of blogging is what is primary and the reason I would not start with $$. Some people cannot write daily or even weekly as evidenced by the many abandoned blogs. Try it somewhere first and then invest once you've discovered that you truly can blog.

Bonnie wrote: "So the choice I would pick is RealTown."

oooooooooooooooooooh I think it is too much work to ask a newbie to set up an RT blog for no return. I think AR is a much better place for newbies to learn to blog. It gets SEO and there is information. BlogTalk doesn't have the depth of info shared. BlogTalk never did as far as I can remember. It's private from consumers prying eyes....

Real Living (pretty forward when it comes to technology) had a presentation about using web 2.0 and social networking, along with traditional marketing recently where they recommended agents blog, ActiveRain was one of the three recommended blogs, no mention of RealTown.com whatsoever.

I think someone can do C. pretty easily with the suppport that is available on ActiveRain too, set up a blog on Typepad or Wordpress.org if they are techy enough. Cheryl Johnson shares a lot on AR about using Typepad. Mark Flanders and others have been very good about blogging about WordPress.org on ActiveRain. I could not see that same sort of support coming if you were reading BlogTalk on RealTown.com, it is strictly about blogging on the RT platform or was when I was participating on BlogTalk. I read BlogTalk occasionally when anyone posts there. Or if someone new to blogging has $ get a Tomato Blog. I guess from discussing on AR in the "My other blog is ..." group on a blog by an agent who was very new to blogging and chose to go with an RSS Pieces blog... RSS pieces blogs, RSS Pieces owns the blog, the blogger does not. That surprised me.

Isn't Point2 blogs for Professional and Premium? What is that a month? $40? $50? I think it is a great place to try a blog if you are a member and feel that Point2 is worth that monthly fee. Do you own a Point 2 blog anymore than you own an ActiveRain blog or does Point 2 own it? There's lots of places to blog for free. Lenn , Ines and some others have tried REW, lots of people are doing the Realtor.com blogs. Again I don't think you own those blogs anymore than you would an RT or an AR blog. And where would you go for info about blogging on a Tomato Blog or a TypePad Blog or a WordPress.org blog that you would completely own?

To me the distractions of setting up a blog and making it "pretty" on RT Blogs most people are burned out before they blog their first entry, so I like AR being plug and play for new bloggers or those new to Social Network.

Maureen you bring up a very good point- who owns the content. This is huge, along with SEO. Why put all that work into blogging, and it is work, you can love it but it takes times and effort and thoughtfulness and time and effort and thoughtfulness, and no that was not a typo. Why do all this if you are not going to create something that is uniquely yours? It's craziness to do it any other way. It makes no sense. None. Zero. "RSS owns the blog", yes. Why? More craziness.

About D. I don't know if there are too many RE blogs now, but I'm not sure how many bad RE blogs a market can bear. And to blog because it's the next thing. hmm. Blog because, as Bonnie said, you are a blogger, not because someone says you should. What do people think of blogs? A T-shirt says "Nobody reads your stupid blog" something to keep in mind? (I once whined to a blogger that I didn't want to post stupid stuff. His answer "then don't write stupid stuff". )

I love "plug and play". Exactly. One of two traveling bloggers said "kindergarten". That too.

Hi Maureen - I have a RT blog, but have pretty much let it go inactive for quite some time now. I really found that platform cumbersome to try to learn, and as Monika said, it was a little lonely there, too. I've been part of RealTalk, now RealTown Communities, since 1995 or so, a LONG time for sure! I would get some comments from some of the members there who knew me, but really very few compared to what you get here on AR.

It's funny to read this post as just recently I'd been giving a lot of thought about getting that one started back up. Maybe I just will scrap that idea.....

I like the interaction here on AR, and I have had consumers contact me from my posts here, and I also get consumer contacts from my localism posts. I don't think that ever happened at all from my RT blog. Maybe today that would be different, as I know they're encouraging a bit more of a community feeling - visit other blogs and comment, etc.

Ann

SEP

2007

In a comment on Pat Kitano's blog just after Project Blogger ended in mid July Mary Pope-Handy wrote:

"Hi Pat,

Thanks for doing the judging.(I'm guessing this was for Week 13?)

This was really very helpful and I like your formatting too (collective tips). As for my ranking, that is my one key area of remaining difficulty and the Tech Gurus at Real Town have been working away to try to help me with this massive hurdle (that totally baffles me as I've written soooo much). My friend, fellow blogger and Realtor, Steve Leung (1SiliconValley.com), looked at my blog a few days ago and suggested that a problem with my blog invisibility might be the tags (and the way they link back to my profile on RT instead of my home page). This is nothing I can fix myself so I asked Fran Thorsen (my wonderful mentor for PB and the managing editor of RT) and the Real Town IT guys to please change that as well as a few other things.

Project Blogger is over and the immediate pressure is off, but blogs are no good if they are a secret to Google so now this is my # 1 priority. Your input on this front will be helpful to the IT guys too, I am sure!

Thanks again, Pat. Looking forward to seeing you at Bloggers Connect in a couple of weeks!

Best wishes,
Mary"

Pat did the judging where he looked at Technorati recognition of the blogs. Blog invisibiliy is a problem, Mary was concerned with it in July.

I believe Mary won Project Blogger in spite of her RT blog not because of it. Mary won because she is a good writer and she worked hard.

Teri I really don't worry personally about owning a blog or a website, Mostly that is something used to sell websites, and now blogs. You can get the same or better results on something like an RSS Pieces bog owned by RSS Pieces (if that is really the case) or an ActiveRain blog (owned by ActiveRain.) People reading don't care who owns it. People reading an RT Blog see it as a stand alone blog, the problem is there are less people reading them because of something in the structure of the blogs.

I am glad I am doing a WP.org blog because of the search engine traffic. I wish I was more of a geek.

Ann I have stopped reading RT, too repetitious and I don't like the new format, I think it is cumbersome. There's lots more variety on ActiveRain. I do still read BlogTalk, I think there's a lot more useful info about blogging here on ActiveRain than there was ever on BlogTalk.

18 months ago it was confusing people would blog on their RT real estate blog about blogging? Huh? Rather than talking on BlogTalk. AR is a network, it does not bother me if a writer switches back and forth to talk to peers and then to consumers.

I've used the RT blog so long I don't think of it as cumbersome (except working with photos) but it is not plug and play like AR. It used to be a lot more cumbersome and I guess jazzing them up you have to work in the template and that can be scary. AR is like AOL. Anyone can do it.

The problem with RT blogs is they are invisible to search engines.

I hate to see blogs abandoned. There are lots of abandoned blogs everywhere. When Jonathan left (Not going to say abandoned) his RT blog he wrote:

"At various times this blog has driven up to 13% of the traffic to RealTown Blogs. I'd like to see what we do on our own two feet.

The morale of this story? You really can teach a dog new tricks. Or what to do with a widget, even.

We'll see you on the other side, my friends."

Jay McGillicuddy asked: "Active Rain may be new but it is growing in leaps and bounds. With 46,722 members as I type I wonder how many are on Realtown."

62,101 active members

38,802 community messages

3,728 member blogs

14,256 blog entries

555 member articles

That's from the front page of RealTown.com Blogging is a very small part of it. Someplace else I read the subscriptions to BlogTalk was over 5000, which is high with only 3728 blogs, only 41,256 blog entries.

More members, less traffic over all remember the Compete.com graph is for all of RealTown, not just the blogs, the AcitveRain.com is for all of ActiveRain which is mostly blogs. Isn't it?

This is a really interesting read. I have never used Real Town, but what good is a blog that doesn't get traffic? Mary's comment to Pat Kitano is pretty telling. I think AR is a great place for a newbie to get their feet wet. It takes a while to get comfortable and find your spot blogging. Once they get comfortable, I think a stand alone blog built specifically for consumers is the key.

I guess the idea is to have a blog for your clients to read, put it in your email signature, get your friends to recommend it to their clients, market your blog to your sphere of influence the way you had to market your old website in many cases because they weren't built to get traffic from the search engines for one reason or another. It is not a total lack of traffic, my number one source each month is Yahoo search. I think the Google traffic was 1/3 the traffic of the Yahoo traffic though. Thanks for the comment Ginger.

Hi Maureen,

I started reading this yesterday and I'm back because I was very interested in the discussion thread. I discovered Real Town before Active Rain. I didn't know what blogging was all about and really sort of "cut my teeth" on Real Town. Although, I didn't get a lot of comments, I found the format understandable.

For me, the benefit of Active Rain was the marked increase in feedback/comments. For a new blogger, this really is valuable. It also seemed as though there was a "penalty" assessed to bloggers who were blogging on other platforms in addition to Real Town. Perhaps it was just my experience....but Featured Articles on RT simply stopped! (I know that I'm not a worse writer than when I started. :) The genius of Active Rain is it allows new bloggers to have some type of validation and assessment of their progress. Because I was so new to the process...I didn't even understand how to use the "talk forums" and therefore did not join.

My Real Town blog is where I do a lot of composition and also where I direct my clients. This differentiation can be useful. However, increasingly, I am finding that Active Rain is bringing in significantly more leads and referrals. For a new blogger, I would recommend Active Rain because of the feedback. My Real Town blog does rank behind my AR blog, but I think that both have been very helpful for SEO for my website.

Lola wrote: "Featured Articles on RT simply stopped! (I know that I'm not a worse writer than when I started. :) " by that do you mean getting blog entries listed as featured on RealTown?

You are a great writer! IMHO featured entries has often been used more to encourage new bloggers than to feature good entries. Much like ActiveRain featured entries are subjective. I don't know if it still says it but at first it said they were the best entries on RealTown Blogs. That as well as the fact that they messed up the RSS feed at first somehow got the attention of the real estate blogosphere. I don't remember exactly what happened .... I think the RSS feeds for all RT blogs were feeding those "best entries" for a little while, probably just for a few hours. They did not feature entries of the people who were bringing in traffic to RT, but their RT Blogs feeds were showing "the best entries" that ActiveRain had to offer. Or maybe it was something different. I know there were snickers.

While my entries are seldom featured I was featured for a post saying Happy Birthday to my blog for two years on RealTalk recently. That was the full extent of the entry. What a waste of a featured entry.

You can always join the Talk forums. I read RealTalk for a few years and got a lot out of it. It is easier to get around ActiveRain to me and it is less repetitious in my opinion, but there are lots of people who learn a lot there or on ePROTalk. I never liked ePROTalk. Thanks for the comment Lola.

I started blogging at AR and I sort of never went back to my RT blog. Not sure why. Maybe it was the points initially that made it fun to click around and comment and post and strive for that coveted featured post.. I don't know. But I do like the knowledge base here at AR. I can easily and quickly find an article about almost any topic and I like that we write for each other here, not just consumer or community based blogs, but a realtor to realtor (B 2 B) type community. I get leads from AR. Just got a listing today from someone who found my blog on AR and read a post that I did recently comparing my market here to the market in Texas. I will probably skin a WP blog to be within my website, but for an outside solution, I really do like AR. In fact, this whole topic here got me thinking of a new blog subject, lol

Quick thing Maureen that may be a typo? In your blog you note compare.com is "the new alexa" but I think you may have meant compete.com ? Cool site and I like that it tells me that my traffic has gone up 791% this year! If accurate, that's certainly good news!

Maureen, thanks for clarifying. I find it a liitle humorous that I'm on Active Rain getting an answer to a question that had me a little perplexed on Real Town Blogs! :) Such is the paradox of life...I'm really glad you did this post and I'll be checking back.

SEP

2007

Thanks for letting me know about the mistake Catherine. Do you read RT anymore? Or any of the forums on RealTown? ePROTalk? I know I have stopped getting it via email now. I don't like their new format at all so I seldom go to see what is going on either.

Does it bother you that the Realtor to Realtor stuff for the most part (unless we do members only) is visible to consumers?

It is funny that there is not discussion about RT blogs traffic on BlogTalk / or one of the RealTown platforms isn't it?

Hi Maureen, I may be in a little over my head here, but would you mind explaining how the RSS feeds play into the blog platform. Does AR have a feed that can be added to my website and what would it do, ie: display the entire blogging AR world, or featured blogs??? Hope you get the idea of what I'm looking for with this question. Thanks

Gail You can read a particular members RSS feed in a feed reader by entering the RSS Feed which is right below the Archives in the sidebar of each blog.

If I want to read your blog via a feedreader I click on the RSS feed button on your blog.

Clicking on the button opens up a screen that has a lot of gibberish on it, that is the RSS feed. I copy what is in the Address bar. Yours is: http://activerain.com/blogs/homesweethomeflorida/rss I put that in my feedreader and whenever you write anything new it is on my feedreader along with the latest of all the other blogs I am reading. I don't have to go look and see if you have written something new. I don't actually have to go to your blog to read what you have written, but I can go to your blog easily to comment.

On some websites you could display the feed of what you have written (public entries only) on ActiveRain on your website. I have an RSS feed of Inman News on my Discover Columbus Blog.

I wonder if the RSS feed for all ActiveRain blogs is http://activerain.com/blogs/rss I remember someone early on putting a feed of all of ActiveRain on his other blog. I think now there is too much that I would not want on my blog and there is just too much. I would not want all of ActiveRain in my feedreader, there is just too much. I have a couple of technology blogs that are huge and pump out info on my feedreader and there is just too much volume.

Bonnie Erickson did an entry that there is an RSS feed for groups. <- (Use Search to find it. I broke the link) It is "Members Only." If you go to a group page the RSS chicklet is on the top right side, same RSS button. Bonnie has a lot more details about it. I did not know until reading her entry that there was a feed by group. Here's the RSS feed for a group on AR (but I can't remember which group!)

http://activerain.com/blogs/rss?date_key=-1&sort_key=date_asc&blog_group_id=blogger_group:659

It would probably be a better way to read groups for me in some cases than going to see if anyone has posted anything, in a smaller group. I wouldn't personally use it to read the entries in a big group or one that is not moderated, too much content IMHO.

SEP

2007

Interesting discussion, with some excellent points by Jonathan, Jeff, Bonnie, and a couple of others, and there are some issues that I will address more fully this week. I will NOT do that in this blog comments venue, however ... I will find a more suitable and wide reaching forum for that.

I followed this thread over the weekend. I chose NOT to engage in a comment-by-comment retort ... my bloggy time was MUCH more productive with a new video app that I found ... it has great utility as a real estate vehicle.

You can use it for FREE 30-second slide shows with music ... or subscribe for longer videos. It would be GREAT to use if you have some good listing photos. I uploaded a show about the Web Women Giving Circle trip to Peru. Remember, use only music that is "legal"! There are royalties attached to use of music online ... use the canned material onsite or obtain permission from the owner of the music that you select.

There is a FULL SCREEN version:

http://animoto.com/play/fullscreen/5fe5b1fe163039415607a751843b57d2

and

There is the blog version:

http://caremoregivingcircle.realtownblogs.com/wwgc-trip-to-peru/amimotovideo

You can find the app at http://animoto.com

I'll address some of this other stuff later and clarify some of the silliness.

Wow thanks for the info. I will check it out in all of my spare time!

Frances, I signed up for animoto and made a video but they still have not e-mailed it to me as promised. I got a message saying they had been buried with new responses, but no video. Bummer! So, Frances, are you going to add a link to your "elsewhere" place where you are going to address the "other stuff . . . and clarify some of the silliness"?

Naturally I will post the link right here 8-)

Bonnie, check your account at Animoto to see if they posted the video .... I did not get an e-mail until hours later and who the heck knows what the hungy SPAM gremlins are up to!! Have a wonderful day!!!

Bonnie don't you think Frances will post about "other sfuff" and "silliness" on BlogTalk or RealTalk?" I would prefer she not use this entry to promote where ever she is going to discuss "other stuff" or "silliness."

You should certainly be able to find the discussion with out a link here. Thanks

Frances and all: This is not some big controversy... certainly nothing to get exercised about.

I don't believe RT blogs have much traffic. I believe ActiveRain has traffic.

I believe AR is plug and play. I don't believe from my experience that an RT blogs is as easy.

Frances lost me with her links to Animoto in the comment. I read about Animoto.com on Sellsius Real Estate Blog this weekend. I joined the Animoto.com group that Rudy started on Facebook.com, the first Facebook group I have EVER joined but that's another story.

I don't understand the link to an RT blog using Animoto but someone suggested this is to show that RT blogs can be hip and cool, or that RT blogs can suppport social media. I don't see where anyone suggested RT blogs can't support social media. Or even that those on RT blogs are not integrating social media into their blogs. They may be.

At first I thought the Care Blog was Frances's own blog and I was going to be a real shrew about her comment being link spam / comment spam. Luckily someone suggested it is just more of Francis promoting Joanne.... that it is Joanne's blog. Or that maybe Frances is going to run around the internet comment spamming for all the RT Blogs to increase traffic on the platform.

Or is it comment spam? I got an email of the same info from BlogTalk today including the line:

"I just posted a two-minute video that I made about the Web Women Giving Circle Trip to Peru on our RealTown WWGC Blog."

"our RealTown WWGC Blog."

"our"

Anyone if you want to comment spam no matter how great the cause, or how important promoting your business / interests is /are. Remember AR has Guidelines. AR is a network. I do not want comment spam on this entry or on any of my ActiveRain entries.

I got off topic explaining to Gail what RSS is and sharing Bonnie's link about groups, I felt it carried on the conversation. My apologies to anyone who does not get the difference between using a link in a comment to carry on a conversation and linking to promote your interests, there's a number of conversations about it on ActiveRain. Use the ActiveRain search to locate those discussions.

Everyone if you want to promote a blog, an entry on your blog, your business, a cause, yourself use your own blog. No comment spam here, thanks.

the tracking side o a few websites I post on here, are rich with hits from AR

SEP

2007

Jeff thanks for the comment. ActiveRain has brought traffic to all of my sites. I get some traffic from AR to my RT blog about 50% of the traffic that Google brings to my RealTown Blog from my ActiveRain Blog. The traffice from Google on that blog is low ... I am not doing link direction posts to my RealTown blog, Discover Columbus the way I do to my WP.org blog.

Do you blog outside of ActiveRain?

SEP

2007

Hi Maureen - I still haven't started up my own blog outside of AR, but it is in the plans. Thanks for bringing up the differences of the different platforms.

As for Frances, she is simply defending her employer. I'm sure all blog platforms have their pros and cons, including AR and RT.

Don I just got an email that they are going to try to change their structure so RT blogs will not be invisible to search engines. My blog is part of the beta. The url is changing again (this will be the 3rd in two years). I am excited. I knew there had to be a reason I had not killed it.

Your very own blog (ie a WordPress.org blog or a TypePad blog, a Tomato Blog) is going to be something that many people are going to want to have for the reasons that Teri and I got into above... but that may not be important to some people.

I agree that having your own blog is very important. But, AR was a great first step for me - I guess it's what RT was for you. My own blog will happen...in time...

My "own" blog was not that important to me. I thought of my RT blog as mine, made it look like mine. It will look less like me (ugly) soon and look more like RT.com because that may be the cure to invisibility. I started the WordPress.org Blog because of traffic or lack of it on my RT blog not because of a need to own a blog really.

Don, I'm not wanting to gang up on you, ;) But I will urge you and anyone (not in my area, lol) to move on your own blog asap. Here's why: as more RE agents blog, it's going to be more difficult to be found, I think. So having a head start, having a big jump on your competition, having a blog that Google already loves, and having marked your territory, is going to separate you from the herd.

I'm no geek, and I had little to no choice in blogging platforms for my home blog, and I lost plenty of hair from pulling it out in frustration learning WordPress, much of that I documented here on my AR blog. But I'm thrilled with the SEO results, and I'm not trying for SEO results, they just happen. Git whilst the gittin's good, or regret it later.

Theresa - You're not ganging up on me! I've been meaning to get to the new blog for a while now. It always keeps getting put onto the back burner. I'll get to it! I'll get to it!

Okay, ganging up is not the right word. Perhaps nagging is better. And yes I do mean to nag. :)

Blogging is for insomiacs. You can sleep when you are dead. Get on it, Man!

Teri... I was wondering why you are often not logged in... does it really take that long?

good nagging

I timed it: 1 minute 15 seconds, and that was from an email notification. AR is completely gummed up regardless of which computer I'm using. I have three different computers. I take it you are not having that problem? I'm seeing repeated comments and I figure that's because of the length of time it takes for a comment to post, people keep hitting the publish button. Perhaps I should just stay logged in forever.

Nagging is fine...I know I have to do it!

Yes, AR has been slow all day. I think you're right - that's why there have been so many duplicate comments. I just leave myself logged in here.

SEP

2007

Just found this post (not sure how I missed it!). So many comments have already been made, so I will try to keep mine from being a novella.

I am the person doing both. I have had major problems with RT's lack of love from google.

AR has GREAT visibility and traffic on Google. When I write, it's picked up right away. I have closed business from my AR blog due to an agent referral. Localism is a great place to promote listings. Google loves AR.

Real Town is a friendly platform, user friendly and people friendly, not hard to figure out for the new blogger (like AR). I like being able to have my unique header. But Google has not loved RT for some reason and my #1 frustration with blogging has been the fact that although Yahoo "reads" RT, Google has not.

I think that may be changing - I certainly hope so because I do not want to move my Live in Los Gatos blog.

I have signed up for Google alerts and get one for my town's name and one for my own name. Just this week, I saw that Google alerts are now picking up on my RT posts!!! (They did not just recently.) I HOPE HOPE HOPE this means my lousy page ranking of 1 will be changing.

As it was noted above, my lack of google visibility hurt me in Project Blogger. I cannot tell you how frustrating this was for me to be writing my heart out and have it just be invisible because of the platform. I had several very much more knowledgeable people tell me in no uncertain terms that it was not me or my writing, but the Real Town platform that was/is the problem.

Fran has been working hard with the IT guys and changes are underway at Real Town. I feel deep loyalty to her, to the guys at Internet Crusade and to that community so do not want to move my blog. However, writing and not being found is just a waste of time. I will give it a few more months. If it remains invisible to google, I'll have to move it. Anything else would just be spinning my wheels.

That said, I don't think I'll have to move it. The google alert told me that help really is on the way. The IT guys are working on it. It's crucial to me - and to Real Town's long term viability - that they get it right.

Mary: I get Google Alerts for my RT blog Discover Columbus and for my name for my RT Blog, I believe I have all along. I have had Google Alerts set up for it when it was Columbus Best Blog and put in alerts for the new name in January when I renamed it.... I have had a Google Alert for my name since last fall.

I don't believe getting a Google alert means that the search is going to bring your blog traffic. I hope the things they are going to do with the back end on RT Blogs is going to make a difference.

Teri and Don thanks for the comments.

I have a post ABOUT Mary Pope-Handy and RT Blogs that I will hopefully post later today.

SEP

2007

I think I have finally hit critical mass on blog information.

Wow, I just got through all of the comments. I am not on RT but do have my own blog with RSS Pieces and I plan on putting most of my focus on localism posts until my SEO Google ranking gets a bit higher. From what Mary says, I should be able to achieve a top 5 google (I'm 24 right now) in 6 months or so. It sounds like there is no need for me to try RT!

I'm sure you are all set with your RSS Pieces blog, Diane.

APR

2008

Very interesting posts on this blog.....I haven't done RT but will try. I've been on AR now for a few months & found that it has been very beneficial.

Thanks for all the input.

Maureen, I'm glad this one resurfaced. I was on realtalk recently because I took the e-pro on-line class. it doesn't look good for RT. a friend introduced me to AR about the same time. I'm no longer using RT.

Peter I still read BlogTalk and I was trying to find someone on RealTalk a few weeks back. BlogTalk is mostly Frances Flynn Thorsen talking to herself, occasionally she will get JoeAnn F. to comment

RT (RealTalk seemed boring in comparison to AR and as someone who has not spent any time there it was hard to get around and find what I was looking for.

How RT (RealTown) blogs are doing... I have no clue. I know the changes that they made in the URL's last fall.... I think it was on 9/23/2007 made a difference in the traffic, this was written before the change. My RT blog gets a lot more traffic from Google. I get more traffic there than I do on AR and my AR traffic is mostly others in the business since that is who I talk to, on ActiveRain.

It wasn't you, it's hard to get around. I got frustrated with it pretty quick. the more I learned to get around, the less I liked it (which was opposite with AR).

The change RealTown made in September 2007 shows, I am not sure if there were other changes to RealTown at that time, or if it was just the change in the blog urls.

If I put ActiveRain in, it flattens out the RealTown graph.

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