By now, there is no doubt for most of us that ActiveRain is one of the best thing that happened to the real estate social media in recent years. Just like with other successful platforms, the combination of different benefits create an overwhelming overall value for its users.
ActiveRain is a blogging system in the sense that it enables you to write articles, it lists them in chronological order, syndicates it via RSS and feeds the search engine monster for maximum exposure and clearly identifies you as the author and authority.
ActiveRain is a training ground: Many of us come to ActiveRain for advice, discussions and to learn from each other. Training each other on business, marketing etc. is what creates the loyalty and incremental benefit, and this sets ActiveRain apart from other services.
ActiveRain is an ecosystem and a team marketing platform: one participant's success depends on the success of the overall ecosystem and AR members directly and indirectly enhance each others marketing efforts. For example, there is such a deep interconnection between the 1 million+ AR pages Google knows about, that search engines pay extra attention to content published via ActiveRain and value the content as highly relevant.
ActiveRain is a unique social network: Valuable social networks are those, where the connections between the participants create a value-add, which would not exist without these connections. That is, there are 1) new and 2) valuable information born from these relationships. In other words, the relationships between ActiveRainers are as important as the content generated by individuals.
There are explicit and implicit relationships between ActiveRain users. Implicit connections are those which are created as a byproduct of user interactions: when you comment on a post, your content is interconnected. The action does not necessarily express alliance, but but it does create a connection between members nevertheless. Explicit connections on the other hand are those with which you express some sort of relationship, explicitly.
The ActiveRain Associates feature is one of the most important explicit connection building tool. You can mark any other AR users as an associate (the explicit connection) and also endorse them with your comments. As opposed to other networks like Facebook, where a connection has to be two-way, ActiveRain is more flexible, it enables you to create a one way connection in anticipation that the favor will be returned by the other party, later. The Associates feature serves 2 purposes: it enables you to recommend other users but it also establishes an alliance and relationship between you and your associates, therefore creating a more specific and more focused sub-network within ActiveRain.
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We - at RealBird- thought that creating an interactive widget - one which can be used to show this alliance between you and your AR associates, one which enables you to take your AR associate network to your other sites and blogs to market each other's listings and blog posts - would be a great benefit to all AR members. The real estate network widget has the following features:
- It’s your widget, your contact info is shown in the header
- Associates tab: Shows all of your ActiveRain associates (in random order) with their photos, names and links to their own ActiveRain blogs
- Homes: Merges all of your listings with your associates' listings published on RealBird, in chronological order
- The Buzz: Shows all the recent posts of all your associates including yours
- Viral marketing: Built in tool for your visitors to grab and share your widget
Benefits:
- Team marketing using your existing ActiveRain network and RealBird listings
- You promote your associates, and in return, they will embrace and market you
- Take your network with you: You can place this widget practically anywhere on the web
- The widget has viral marketing and sharing built-in for incremental exposure, your visitors can grab it and share it on their network
- Get more ActiveRain points: The "Join ActiveRain" link at the bottom uses your referral username. You get referral points every time somebody joins through your widget
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How to get your own widget:- Add ActiveRain members as associates: people you know on ActiveRain, co-workers, ActiveRainers you admire etc. (Note: it may take a hour for new associates to show up on your widget)
- Login (register for free) on RealBird and on the Widgets page, enter your ActiveRain username (do NOT enter your password, it is not required)
- Grab the widget and add it to your blog, website, other networks and even on your ActiveRain sidebar, it as easy as copying the code provided
- Use RealBird to post your featured listings for free whenever you have a new one
- Continue using ActiveRain and RealBird as usual, the widget will auto-populate with new content
- Let your network know: Once you have your widget set up, make sure you let your Associates know so that they can get their own widget and return the favor by advertising you.
Disclaimer: Please note, this widget was created and made available for free by RealBird and is not endorsed by ActiveRain in any form. We do not have or claim any partnership or other business relationship with ActiveRain.
Enjoy !
-- Zoltan
RealBird.com
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