I weekly check to see if anyone new in my area has joined AR, and in the last two months, we have had a few new members join. Am I worried? No. Should I be? I don't think so.
Success on Active Rain = effort. This isn't a market where (as my instructors at Kaplan would say) you can fog up a mirror and make a six figure income in a year. Everything you do takes effort now, and determination, or you just aren't going to make it.
So what do you need to do to actually make it on Active Rain? Let's start here:
- Upload a picture! Basic, but I can't count how many profiles I see out there without some sort of a picture. So you don't want people to see YOU? Upload the balloon, your company logo.... give us SOMETHING so that we recognize you on the blog roll.
- Fill out your profile - and proof it, too! You can't have your cake and eat it, too, so what makes you think that you can post a bunch of information about yourself without proofing it for spelling and grammatical errors, to say the least. Stink at proofing? Ask someone else in your office, family, church - ANYWHERE! - to help you out. You want your clients to think you are intelligent - intelligent enough to help them with the biggest transaction they have probably made so far in their life. So fill it out to the best of your ability, and then get it proofed, so that you know you look like a pro.
- Include your contact information. So you're John Houseseller, and you're the best at selling houses. Okay, so that is all you have on your profile, but I'm a buyer and want to contact you, because maybe, just maybe, you really are the best. Guess what? Without contact information, that just ain't happening!
- Prepare to answer e-mails. If you aren't equipped to answer e-mails most of the day, you may not be ready for a blog. I'm not saying you have to have a Blackberry or PDA, but I had a hotmail account which routed all e-mails directly to my cell phone, until I went mobile with laptop and wireless tethering. If you are serious about blogging, leads, and retaining those leads, be prepared.
- Write a blog already! Hey, I love to see comments, especially when they are from someone who seems intelligent about the subject. But when I go to your blog and have nothing to read, it is a real bummer. Now imagine a buyer, who searches "real estate blogs" and ends up on your AR profile page. When they see you haven't written a darn thing, what are they going to think?
- Pick a target, and stick to it! Who are you blogging for? Those potential clients out there in blog land, real estate professionals, or both? When picking a platform for your blog, take that into consideration. If you want nothing to do with fellow NAR members, perhaps AR isn't the place for you. However, Active Rain does need you to blog for Google and readers out there on the world wide web, too. Decide what kind of blog you want, and then develop a plan around that.
- Please, seriously, get more than 1,000 points in your first day or two. Or at least in a month. I wrote my Active Rain profile up in a half an hour, and got 1,300 points just for that. No picture, no blog, nothing but the about me, testimonials, etc. If you want to be successful, at least aspire to get 1,000 points right away, one way or another. Not that I think Active Rain is simply about points, and that is all that matters, but it is a good guideline to know that you have actually got some substantial stuff on your profile for readers.
So now that you got it, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to put forth the effort to make your blog work, or are you going to sit back and do nothing, and watch it fall away into nothingness?
Instead of doing it because so-and-so is and it is working for them, and then complaining because you haven't got any leads from it (with no picture, no information, no blog....) sit down for an hour and pump out a profile, blog, and picture. Then spend an hour a week blogging, and I guarantee you'll get somewhere eventually!
If you are not a member of Active Rain and would like to be, join here. Everyone who enrolls through me (whether I know you or not) basically has 24/7 e-mail tech support to help you get started and be successful on Active Rain!
Comments(19)