"...but a talking frog, now THAT is cool!"
It's no secret, I'm a dual career engineer/real estate agent.
The folks at Gallup came up with their take on personality traits and it's called Strengths Finder 2.0. I take the test that comes along with the book and the assessment determines out of 34 personality traits, my top 5 traits are:
- Harmony
- Analytical
- Consistency
- Responsiblity
- Achiever
And I couldn't argue with the results, although Harmony at number one threw me for a bit until I read the description: "you look for areas of agreement. You can't quite believe how much time is wasted by people trying to impose their views on others". How appropriate for the day after the Presidential debates :)
Anyhow, those five personality traits might explain my view on points and why my view changed over time.
Like most when we joined, points mattered, and they mattered a lot. You tell me the max number of posts for points, that many would get posted. Max comments? Not leaving those points on the table either. I'll hunt spam and report it too. Contests? I'll buy a video camera if it gets me a few thousand more points! #TrueStory
Whatever it takes to get to 500,000 points and a free account! See, that target gave me a goal. It satisfied the Analytical part of me, blogging daily satisfied the Consistency and Achiever traits, and it was my Responsibility to get those things done as I needed to every day to make sure our point total kept climbing. Got to move up the Leaderboard!!
And eventually we got that free account. But over time, my priority for chasing points changed. I was staring smack at the face of The Law of Diminishing Returns. Chasing points wasn't actually a productive use of my limited time.
Points don't pay my bills.
However, the activities that give us points, THAT I could use to pay the bills. Shifting Topic emphasis from comment (and point) generating posts to posts that make our phone ring:
- Niche posts about patio homes
- Posts about subdivisions
- Posts about new construction
It's that "Analytical" trait at work again. Reviewing what worked and 
what didn't work and making the appropriate adjustments.
How could we generate calls and clients? We've got to beat Zillow and R.com and the other websites for consumer eyes, so what works? Real estate themed posts that go to a level of detail the big sites couldn't do. Posts that answer buyer and seller questions. Interconnect those posts with IDX custom search pages. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
And a predictable thing happened as we shifted focus. Calls increased. People (mostly buyers) that read our niche posts called and wanted us to help them.
Hmmm. Further reinforcement to stop chasing points and keep focus on the lead generating part of our business. Doing the "cool" things that produce business, and now over half of our new clients are directly attributable to our ActiveRain/Wordpress/IDX work.
Don't get me wrong, we didn't totally abandon the social aspect of ActiveRain. We've made a lot of friends here. Met a lot of Rainers in person and loved every minute of it and look forward to our next meetings. But the end result is we don't leave as many comments as we used to, and I'm not writing a post just to get points.
The points are no longer what drive us. But I AM an engineer and numbers interest me, so I watched our steady march to the 2,000,000 point mark, but didn't do anything "extra" to make sure that threshhold was crossed faster. We'd get there when we got there, stick to the formula that is working for us.
Fact is those that know us know points REALLY don't matter to us, or we'd have crossed that milestone much sooner. So before you're tempted to say "points don't matter to you because you've got so many of them", know this:
- We had 5,000 deducted from our total to move one of our friends into #1 spot in Ohio as a birthday present
- We declined the 3,000 points for winning a Pay It Forward contest and instead asked they be distributed to the other entrants in the contest.
I'm not kidding when I say points themselves no longer mean a thing to me. My spot on the Leaderboard doesn't mean anything either. The Leaderboard isn't what makes our phone ring, but the content we've generated along the way that caused that point milestone to be reached.
And the bonus? All the friends and knowledge we've gained from this community! Now THAT is cool! Even cooler than a talking frog :)
Until next Tuesday, just Ask An Ambassador if you need help!
Bill of Liz and Bill aka BLiz
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