February 2, 2021, ActiveRain Zoom Meeting with Ben Kinney!
We had another interactive Zoom Meeting today. Debe Maxwell, CRS hosted the meeting ... and we had 42 people on the call.
Josiah Ubben, AR Developer, joined us on the call today and showed us what some of the improvements/changes will look like.
Ben prepared a short slide show to discuss his VISION for ActiveRain 2.0.
Ben made it clear he wanted our consent on the ideas.
The first part of the meeting was an open discussion;
- Craig Daniels reported a bug
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On behalf of Brian England, Debe Maxwell asked about the scheduler which appears to be working for some people and not others.
- Ben noted it is more useful for him if he had the account and the blog post where it happened. The more information we can provide the faster they will be able to resolve the issues. For example, provide the user name, the blog post, and when it was scheduled.
- Lynn Friedman asked for an email to report bugs. Before the call ended Josiah had created a new email to be used to report bugs.
- The email is: Feedback@ActiveRain.com
Ben Kinney | Vision for ActiveRain 2.0
Features & Benefits
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ActiveRain to be the LinkedIn of Real Estate
- Add Agent Search.
- Redo Profiles.
- Pull MLS sold properties and active listings to showcase a member's activity.
- Create a directory for all services real estate related. A single directory for "everything home" does not exist today. He wants to create a directory to include other people who are important to a transaction. For example, title, mortgage, inspection, staging, etc.
ActiveRain News - Ben's plan is to hire a writer to produce the news. it will be like Inman News but written for real estate and mortgage professionals.
- Eventually, invite AR members to contribute
ActiveRain Reviews - This will be the Consumer Reports of Real Estate Products and Services.
- The current Reviews section will be built. It will be a place where we can honestly review products and services. For example, Top Producer, Brevity, etc.
ActiveRain University - Content will be organized by topic.
ActiveRain Content - Think "Curbed" for every City in the Nation!
ActiveRain Localism - This will be a place where all local content goes. The company owns localism.com
ActiveRain Membership - This will be like an AAA Membership of Real Estate Professionals.
Wrapping Up with Ben Kinney and Josiah Ubben
Josiah showed us some of the newly redesigned pages.
There will be NEWS on the home page ... this is the news written by ActiveRain. The home page is the style guide for all of ActiveRain.
The site is being "modernized". The font size is increased making it easier to read.
The Recent Posts and Most Popular Posts will be redesigned to expose more content from those authors.
Signature Blocks will be kept the same. They know what most of us spent a lot of time getting them to look the way we want them.
The Comment Section will be redesigned as well making it look and feel like the redesign of the home page.
FEATURED POSTS - WHAT'S COMING!
- All Featured posts must have a feature photo uploaded.
- Photos will need to be quality photos.
- Content will need to be quality content.
- Titles will play a role in featuring posts as well.
Ben Shared the DownSide to What's Coming in 2.0
- The font size will be locked.
- We will lose the customized options we are used to using. For example, no more color fonts.
- We will be able to use bold, italicized, and "quotes".
No one attending the Zoom meeting had issues with the direction of standardizing the content. We were all on board and all agreed to support Ben on this.
Redesigning of the Pages
Pages will be redesigned one at a time.
Next Month - Ben will have a preview of what the new ActiveRain profile will look like.
Questions???
Q. Are there any plans to limit the number of posts per day to eliminate Robo posters?
A. Ben will think about the best way to deal with that. If anyone Robo posting finds a way to benefit their business by doing that, he does not want to interfere with it. He needs time to think about it.
"We Will Continue to Win." Ben Kinney
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