200,000 Active Rain Points... Well I'll Be Leaving Now.

Thanks Kelly.  We all need to be over at Jim Crawford's blog to study the pork, apathy of many and the huge hurry to push thru a closeto 600 page piece of legislation no one is reading completely thru nor have they had enough time to study.  Wonder where the Monarch or Cliff's Notes are on this one.

Robert....I was a broadcaster thru high school at a local station Howdy Doody owned, a broadcaster thru college and worked at a Bangor Maine station owned by horror writer Stephen King and thru college jounalism/advertising/speech broadcasting  courses and covering the news in addition to annoucing, something to say is not hard to conjure up. To me a blogger's role...cover the local turf.  And not just a realtor talking incessantly about property, how great they are and parading report after market report on and on in dry fashion just to get SEO benefit or for easy copy and paste posts.

In Boston MA say, there is a slug of information on line from the Red Sox to the the history of the place.  There are more bloggers, more video and podcast posters, more to blog about to interest tons of people. But in small towns dotted across the country in rural America, if you google them not a ton of information comes up and what does is a shell that is missing the beef..set up by large internet companies that create the free space hoping locals will post, image and set up the beef and then they can set ads for all the impressions from landing on that site. Kind of like AR started out doing but now turning within to get us to pay for the privledge of sending traffic/leads to our local real estate inventory..traffic created from the hopefully interesting, helpful posts we create to get them to come closer to the bait and fish hook. If we want to net that fish that we thru home grown efforts blogged and attracted, to get him into the boat you may need some bait from your wallet to finish the process. Especially if AR came up with a directive of brandless blogs where they required sanitation of each with removal of present and past blog real estate links to our own sites. Ouch.

So a blogger pushes the local turf, creates the chamber of commerce splash to educate like a tour guide what the area is all about. And it just so happens with all this local news, coverage of videos of local events, sports teams, small town beauty and a simpler way of life that folks that like what they see. Hopefull they will need property either full time to live round the clock or part time for recreation or for investment in a rental property. So just blog like the dickens on your area, sprinkle in a property now and then to pay the bills and meet your overhead and then follow the national scene. Apply it to the local level.  Then from your personal experiences and observations blog from the heart. And from reading other comments and posting to others blogs that interest you, an idea for another topical  blog will germinate. Then rotate thru the same exercise like working out on different stations at the local health club really. Develop a regular blogging routine. Use the blogs as a bookmark. You get emails over and over asking this or that. Hey..why not do an hour long well written blog on each of those subjects...like where do I go for local financing...blog on all the local banks, numbers, links, emails, everything. Another on where do I stay when I am in Houlton Maine, etc and bang..another blog that you just link to in your email with a few opening lines to answer questions and then the rest answered in the 1st class blue ribbon blog complete with video. Here is a case in point  bank video....  I walked to the local 2 screen movie theatre last night for bargain night and it was packed. Thought hey..this would be a good blog and a video on what to do on a Thursday night in Houlton Maine and do a two to three minute edited walk thru pretty Victorian Houlton Maine at night, approach the theatre marquis, shoot a few frames, show the lobby and buying a ticket, getting pop corn, settling in in the balcony, crowd of locals coming in, glimpse of movie, leaving theatre showing the inside briefly and fade to black with a consistent intro and outro in your local video/blog series on your town. Have another session with the local hospital showing the place, and give all the answers to the FAQ on folks on the outside looking in wondering what kind of health care do you have in your town. See where I am going here? Cover the schools, the lakes, the golf course, local skiing, snowsledding and vacation fun and on and on! Hope this helps!

Ooops.. Ben..not going anywhere except back to work. Remember I grew up on a farm, and don't stand around too long in one place. Chores to do, blogs to write, property to list and sell.

The points and  a dollar  will get you a small coffee. The blogs are a library...you post a super run down on schools, or jobs, or crime or recreation all four seasons and then when folks ask for more on those subject, just load the blog entry. Your real estate blogs impress sellers.

Robert...video production. Depends on how many edits, how exciting the video. Like a hockey game which I did today in an hour, it had a slew of edits to capture the flavor of the game, showing the band, the fans, the players and in turn what it is like to live in Houlton Maine. Watch it by copy and paste to see what I mean http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJy2ABqPDzI It helps I was in broadcasting prior to real estate 30 years ago. As a broadcasting / film major at the University of Maine at Orono...this video explosion was right up my alley. If you think about a story board of the video before hand, and then film or capture knowing how you are going to edit, it is a breeze. In broadcasting you have a deadline to hit..the news airs in less than an hour so you have to continually produce the next edition of the news so you get well versed on how to create quickly. These are not 40 million dollar productions like Hollywood. They are local, helpful and the more reality, the better. The videos where they try to be Hollywood and fall short are painful to watch.

Thanks Sonya! Nice profile image...not the 100 watt smile like everyone else and pose gets you remembered as the only one like the thinker..pondering real estate and who to help next, who to show or list next!

Thanks Ann. It is fun to share the beauty of Northern Maine with words, images and video.Think I'll stick to that.

Newest member of the group, say hi to Barb!