SHOULD Only REAL Professionals Participate with Active Rain?

I'm amazed that we're now over 211,000 members...or "so called members." Think about it....210,000, represents a city bigger than Spokane, Washington and almost the size of Scottsdale, Arizona. That ain't no small feat! It's something to be proud of. But I don't want to be like New York, L.A. or Chicago where there are millions of people, but no comraderie. Nope, I'd rather remain like a Green Bay, where the entire town comes out to see and cheer on the Green Bay Packers.

You see, now there are so many people here on A.R. that we do have that danger of losing that sense of community.

Here are the things that concern me most;

1) Too many people join, then....THAT'S IT....THEY JOIN....THEN DISAPPEAR!!!

They do nothing other than just put there name and contact information in AR. That is a useless contributor to our community. We need to have people who seek to add value to others while they seek to grow and expand their business. The failure to do such means that we just have a nice new name to the community, but not a true member of the community.

2) People join, but never contribute to the community.

They just show themselves as a new business card in the pages of AR internet cyberspace. The relatioships that I've devleoped have taken time to create. Trust must be created as well. Relationships aren't born overnight. Neither will success on AR. Perisistence and valuable content are what counts. There are people in my state that only post listings. They'll post 10 listings a week and not change 1 piece of the text other than the property address. Is that adding value to the community? No way! They forget to score major points they need to have posts that people comment on. Otherwise, it's just an exercise in pointing and not an exercise that allows them to grow their business and exposure. A lot of referrals exist from the public, but also from the AR community itself if things are leveraged correctly. By adding value to your fellow AR member you increase your exposure as a competent member of the real estate community.

Posting about your business is huge and an important part of your business plan. But by itself, its nothing more than just placing a sign outside of your house saying that it's for sale.

I also wish that AR could alleviate members who haven't been active for a certain period of time. In other words, if someone joins, but doesn't do anything for a month or two they should receive an e-mail that their "account" is about to lapse. Then if there's no activity, their profile should be deleted. This would give us a better flavor on the real size of AR.  Picture provided by www.dreamstime.com.

Having said that, real estate is one of the most the most honorable professions out there. We hare helping people with the largest transaction of their lives. We need to act like professionals and add value to those who want to be true professionals within our industry.

If you choose, you can find me here:

                               

 

              

                                          NMLS ID#158606               An Illinois Residential Mortgage Licensee