I'm about to have my one month anniversary here on Active Rain and I'm pretty excited. In the past month it's like I'm learning a whole new language. Blidgets, and widgets and postlets and snagits to name a
few. So I thought I'd give a word of encourage to those of you that are brand spanking new.
My mom always used the old adage: How do you eat an Elephant?
Answer: One bite at a time...
That's how you have to approach Active Rain. It's like trying to jump on a moving train...a train that's picking up speed by the way. You wonder if it's too late, to jump on...I know I did. Well after careful deliberation (and recognizing I am a real expert now...not) I don't think it's too late. Sure I wish I heard about AR a year or more ago. But I didn't so here I am...
Yeah we may never catch up with all of those folks that have been here from the beginning...but that's okay. The great thing is that most of them are willing to hold out their hand and help us on the train.
So my word of advise:
Do what I did (and am still doing) Set your clocks a couple of hours earlier than usual...do not give in to the temptation to press the snooze button. Then get on Active Rain for the purpose of reading the helpful hint blogs, tips, tech tools, watch the instructional videas and start blogging using what you learned. It will start coming together...I promise.
Three of my favorite contributors (in case you haven't found them yet)...and some really helpful posts...it's like folowing the yellow brick road...they are actually creating it for us...(I have never met or spoken to any of them...but I can tell you that they are creating some great Karma! my friend Karma!):
Brad Andersohn: The ActiveRain Starter Kit (read it every day for the first few weeks, there's so much in it that until you are working with AR a bit some of it is lost, then you go back and read it again and the next level makes sense...he's got a bunch of helpful blogs for us newbies)
Jeff Turner:Real estate blog entries tagged with activerain community support by Jeff Turner (Real Estate Shows) (his how to videos are really helpful)
Katrina Gasset: Real Estate Blog - LongTail Keywords For Blogging, Fishing With The Right Bait On Your Active Rain Blog. (love her simple way of explaining things)
Laurie Manny: Real Estate Blog - Do You SEO? (just down right good info...basic stuff that probably is too basic for many but for me it really helped me start getting my head around SEO)
So thank you, thank you, thank you to these four and all of the other helpful people out there on AR. I do really appreciate it.
Also four of my favorite tools I found through the blogs so far:
Start with Brad Andersohn's diigo blog then go set up your diigo account www.diigo.com so you can bookmark what you are finding and how to find them again. In the mornings sometimes I'll just surf around AR and bookmark things I know I want to read in more depth later. Tomorrow should be quiet as it's a holiday (for most people that is) so my plan is to start going through a lot of what I bookmarked.
My picture...it's a Snagits www.snagit.com free 30 day trial...you'll fall in love
The scrolling tab on my sidebar... that's a blidget from www.widgetbox.com IT'S FREE
The listing video on my sidebar ...that's a postlet www.postlets.com IT'S FREE
Oh...and one final REALLY important hint....when you are writing a long blog...make sure save it as a draft periodically. I forgot and lost everything and had to start again. It's kind of frustrating and totally unnecessary.
;)
;)
Informative post for all AR bloggers... reminds us of what we need to do, including saving long posts. I have lost a few recently and now write them on Word and transfer them when I am ready to post. Thank you for the helpful links!