ASK AN AMBASSADOR: The Answer Is Here In The Rain
One of the perks of ActiveRain is the vast sharing of information. Literally thousands of posts a day. Add in the fairly recent Q&A section and you've got another opportunity to get answers for the burning question of the day. Or people that you know are subject matter experts on a topic are often just a contact form/email/phone call away (I've tapped that resource many times).
But chances are, the answer to a question is already out there, but the challenge can often be FINDING that information, even when what you want to find is something YOU wrote yourself! Somewhere in that collection of hundreds (or thousands) of posts is the ONE you want!
Now maybe you used the BOOKMARK function to tag some posts along the way, so that made it easy.
For your own posts, ActiveRain added a feature some time back that allows you to search the titles of your own posts.
Go to My Home, then on the left click TRAFFIC (Stats) , it's just a bit under your profile picture.
That brings up this at the top of your list of posts:
Type your search term in the left, click the search icon on the right and see what comes up! Now this only searches your titles, not the body of the posts.
Now if you want a bit more search power, including your own posts, then go to the Main Search bar in the top right of ActiveRain's nav menu.
You can type is the search term and get pages and pages of returns back, or if you know the author you can narrow it down much faster by using this trick:
Type the NAME of the author, then : and then the search term, as in the picture below:
From that search, I get all the posts I authored with the word "Partridge" (and maybe some other people's posts that I commented on that had the word partridge in the post, search results aren't perfect!). It's really handy when I'm looking for a particular post, or like yesterday, when I want to go back to all the posts we wrote about our listing at 6483 Partridge Way and update them to show SOLD!! so we don't get calls in 6 months about an already sold property.
And again, you can use that search trick for ANY blogger in the Rain. If you can remember that Craig Daniels wrote something about signature block customization, give it a whirl with Daniels: signature block and you'll find 3 posts on the first page of the results that touch on the topic.
Questions about other topics? They're out there! With so many member on AR across all the different professions, the odds are good that a post has already been written that can answer your question. And if not? Head to the Q&A section and post a question, there's a good chance someone will have the answer or be able to point out the place to find the answer.
ONE NOTABLE EXCEPTION: AR IS NOT THE BEST ANSWER FOR THE PURELY LOCAL REAL ESTATE QUESTIONS. For those questions, it's best to ask your broker! Seriously, do you want an agent from 5 states away on Facebook or in the Rain answering your LOCAL contract questions??
Until next Tuesday, just Ask An Ambassador if you need help!
Liz and Bill aka BLiz
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