My Soci@l Skills were Lacking...How 'bout Yours?
Before I joined Activerain, the idea of writing a blog terrified the bejeebies out of me. I am by no means a writer, I had never thought of myself as an "Expert" on anything. I mean, I love real estate and working with buyers and sellers, I think I am good at it, but an Expert? So, I started writing my posts and looking back to my first few months on AR...my blog sucked! Then, something really cool happened. I started making friends on Activerain, they gave me a few tips and I started feeling a little more comfortable as a blogger. I received a couple of referrals, which was great....But I wanted more. I wanted to reach the public, the consumer. So, I started spending more time on Activerain, reading and searching for the answers I wanted. That is how I discovered Bob Stewart. I ran across a challenge he had posted encouraging members to write Hyper-Local Posts. In return, AR would award bonus points. The challenge was long over, but I gave it a shot anyway. I followed all of the rules, but still something was not quite right. Shortly after I completed this challenge, Bob posted another challenge on "Shift". Great, I had already read the book, but went ahead and ordered the Limited Edition, which also included a download of Soci@l.
When I received Soci@l, I downloaded it, Printed it...It has since become my "Blogging Bible". It should be no surprise that my favorite chapter is "Effective Blogging - Writing Content that Ranks and Gets Read". While reading the chapter, everything started making sense to me. I never thought that I was an expert at anything, but in a little grey box on page 79 of Soci@l I found Six Reasons Top Agents Blog. 1) Improve your ranking in search engines. 2) Position yourself as an expert in a field or geographic area. 3) Advertise and.....Whoa, back up! Position yourself as an expert in a geographic area? I can do that. I absolutely love the area in which I live and work. I am involved in a number of community activites and events. OMG...I could be that expert on my geographical area! But wait, I'm still not a writer. Hmmmmm?
I continued to read and then on page 81, I read "Buyers and sellers aren't looking for award-winning journalism - they will happily settle for the basic facts delivered clearly with a minimum of grammatical train wrecks!" Okay, my enthusiam returned and I was ready to go.
After reading Soci@l from beginning to end and back through the highlighted sections, I had enough confidence in writing localism posts to really get moving. Soci@l taught me what to include in each post, how to use keywords to help build SEO, and the importance of just...Being myself (which my new friends had already been teaching me)! From there my localism posts starting pouring out. It wasn't long before people in my community started commenting on my posts, then my phone started ringing. People wanting to know more about a specific place, events and things to do, or maybe they were interested in a particular community. I have received one buyer and a couple of other leads from my localism posts, but I know that each contact I make through my blog is one more possible buyer or seller for me.
I continue to read Soci@l, make more notes, highlight a few more ideas and keep working to perfect my "Soci@l Skills". I urge each of you to download a copy of Soci@l today!
This blog post is a review of Soci@l: Attract Friends, Followers and Connections to Your Business. Soci@l is a free download written by Ben Kinney in conjunction with ActiveRain and Jay Papasan. In exchange for downloading the free copy of Soci@l and writing this review, I have a chance to win a free iPad and I'm getting 2000 ActiveRain points.
Download a free copy of Social here and find out how you can have a chance to win an iPad and be guaranteed 2000 ActiveRain points.
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