One of the best ways for real estate professionals to develop a strong internet presence is by signing up for a FREE account at ActiveRain.com. ActiveRain is a social networking site specifically for real estate and related industries. You will find thousands of useful tips on ActiveRain covering everything from traditional real estate marketing to the latest technology.
Here's how you can join ActiveRain.com.
- Go to ActiveRain.com.
- Click Join Us.
- Select your profile type (Example: Real Estate Agent)
- Enter your first and last names.
- Enter your company name.
- Enter your email address.
- Enter a username. Your username will be part of your blog address, so choose something short and personal like joesellshomes rather than interojoe.
- Enter the password you would like to use.
- Select the state, county, and city where you are located.
- Enter the security code as indicated. (Used to prevent bots from signing up)
- Read the terms of service and check the box.
- Click Join ActiveRain.
ActiveRain will notify you that a confirmation email has been sent. Open your email, find the message, and click the link to confirm your email address. This is necessary to prevent others from signing up for accounts using your email address without your knowledge. If you don't see the message in your inbox, check your bulk mail or spam folder.
After you click the confirmation link, ActiveRain will open your profile editing page.
- Click the Activate Profile button at the top of your profile.
- Click Upload Picture.
- Click the Browse... button and locate your picture on your computer.
- Click Upload Photo to upload the selected picture to ActiveRain.
- Enter your website URL and your contact information.
- Enter a brief description of yourself. This description is limited to 200 words.
- Click Save Profile to save the information you have entered so far.
- Scroll down to the bottom of your profile editing page.
- Complete the About Us, Areas of Expertise, and Testimonials sections. Use the spell check to try to catch any spelling errors.
- Click Rename Section next to the section name to rename that section, if desired.
- Click Save Profile after you complete all three sections.
- Click My Profile on the upper left corner of the page to view your completed profile. If you need to make changes, click Edit next to My Profile to return to your profile editing page.
Your ActiveRain account is ready for the world. Take a few minutes to look around. Start by clicking on your city or county (top of your profile) to see who else from your area is on ActiveRain. Click Blogs in the upper right to see what other ActiveRain members are talking about.
ActiveRain is great for peer-to-peer communication, but you won't find many prospects on ActiveRain. Why bother? ActiveRain is designed for SEO, search engine optimization. When you start posting and commenting at ActiveRain, your posts and your AR home page will start climbing toward the top of Google searches. By posting links from ActiveRain to useful material on your website and your public blog, you can leverage the power of ActiveRain to boost the ranking of the sites that you are aiming at your clients and prospects.
For now, join ActiveRain and start looking around. You'll find plenty of value.
Click here to see the home page for ActiveRain's Online Marketing group.
Obviously the average ActiveRain reader is already a member, but I'm posting this here for comments, corrections, and suggestions.
Thanks and remember, keep working toward success in 2008!
Frank Jewett
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