The goal is simple: We will be selecting 10-15 blogging coaches to each train a real estate blogging apprentice of their choice. Over the course of about 4 months, the blogging coaches will aim to develop the most successful real estate blogger they can.
The coaches and apprentices will be chronicling their Project Blogger experiences on their own blogs and the Project Blogger group on ActiveRain.
Here are the details:
Pre-Season: March 12th - April 8th
Getting the 'kinks' worked out.
Developing the blogsite
Hand calisthenics
Competition Begins: April 9th
No more excuses, the race is on.
Competition Ends: July 15th (14 weeks later) - winners will be announced at Inman's Blogger's Connect
Judging:
Each week a new guest judge is rotated in.
Guest judge evaluation weighs 85% of weekly point scores
ActiveRain community weighs 15% of weekly point scores
Examples of confirmed guest judges we plan to invite:
We will be inviting some really exciting guest judges from the non-real estate blogging world as well!
Scoring:
Points will be distributed to the top teams on a weekly basis.
The team with the most points at the end of the competition will win the competition.
Each week our judges will select their top 5 teams in order of performance for the week.
Each judges will allocate:
100 points for 1st place
80 points for 2nd place
65 points for 3rd place
50 points for 4th place
35 points for 5th place.
ActiveRain members will also be able to vote for their favorite team of the week.
ActiveRain member point allocation will conform with the above distribution.
Judging Criteria:
Judges and ActiveRain members will be instructed to judge the Project Blogger groups using the following criteria:
a. Degree of innovation in approach
b. Consistency
c. Quality of postings
d. The Apprentice's community involvement
e. Traffic or reach of apprentice's blog(s)
f. Documentation of experience and participation in ActiveRain's Project Blogger's group
g. Cost effectiveness of campaign
h. Improvement/progress of the apprentice
h. Business viability of approach
Prizes:
ActiveRain will be donating $5,000 to the winning team's charities of choice.
The blogging coach and apprentice will each be allowed to direct $2,500 of the $5,000.
Superstardom.
Selecting An Apprentice:
Each coach will be allowed to pick their own apprentice.
The only criteria regarding experience of apprentice is that they have not generated any business or leads from blogging before the start of the competition.
Budget:
Each apprentice will bear the costs of their own blogging efforts.
No budget restrictions
Budgets must be published in the Project Blogger blog on ActiveRain.
The Competitors:
This is not the final list of coaches. Some may not be able to formally commit to the competition and we may add a few more.
1. Dustin Luther, RainCityGuide
2. Jeff Turner, RealEstateShows
3. Greg Swan, BloodhoundBlog
4. Jim Cronin, RealEstateTomato
5. Teresa Boardman, StPaulRealEstateBlog
6. Joe Ferrara & Rudy Bachraty, SellsiusBlog
7. Ardell DellaLoggia, SearchingSeattleBlog
8. Pat Kitano, TransparentRealEstate
9. Joel Burslem, FutureOfRealEstateMarketing
10. Jonathan Washburn, ActiveRain
11. Frances Flynn Thorsen, theRealtyGram
12. Drew Meyers, Zillow
P.S. THANK YOU Jim Cronin for designing the Project Blogger logo and helping to draft this post!!
n, a great wife who is a chef, a crazy but sweet Lhasa Apso, a hilarious Bulldog... and a rapidly growing mortgage practice... I know that my missing link is THIS... passing my words onto the world and answering my muse.
What a great idea! Mentoring up the RE industry in a very positive and wonderful way - I predict that this will go a long way to helping RE blogging as a venue to customers and clients. I will be keeping an eye on the effort and encouraging others to examine, particpate and promote it.
This sounds GREAT!!
I would love to see the improvement! Plus I am sure it will help those of us who are looking to turn this into a referral generation tool to vastly increase our scope of influence online