This blog post is my participation in the Active Rain Challenge about our Vision for the Future of ActiveRain, in which Debe Maxwell, CRS , Lew Corcoran and Patricia Feager invited us to participate this June.
Over the years, ActiveRain has evolved, and so have I as a member.
One of the reasons I enjoyed ActiveRain in its earlier years was its connection to consumers. I remember connecting with buyers and sellers through Trulia, which at one point owned ActiveRain. Looking back, I am a little surprised that ActiveRain did not continue evolving into a larger destination where consumers could come to ask questions and seek advice about buying and selling real estate. I think, there was a trend in that direction for a while, but the platform ultimately found a different path.
The value I found instead was something equally important.
Over the years, I have connected with wonderful real estate professionals throughout the country. Those relationships have become invaluable when a client needs a trusted agent outside my market area. Behind every referral is a person I have come to know through years of reading posts, sharing ideas, and participating in discussions.
ActiveRain has also helped me learn from practitioners who are succeeding in an increasingly competitive industry. Through the platform, I have discovered marketing ideas, technology tools, business systems, and emerging trends that helped shorten my learning curve. Maybe we will have a Zoom meeting to learn and do one at a time, just a single micro project like for e.g. "Learn to Design a QR code and place it on your marketing card". I think Craig Daniels will be an often invited speaker on this type of micro-training. Thomas J. Nelson, REALTOR ® CRS,ABR,PSA,RCS-D, CFSP has already started a similar in-person connection. Many times, ActiveRain members were discussing new ideas long before they became mainstream.
The addition of in-person events and Zoom meetings added another dimension to those relationships. Reading someone's blog is one thing. Hearing their voice, seeing their enthusiasm, and exchanging ideas in real time creates a deeper connection.
As I've grown professionally, I've also become more intentional about how I spend my time.
I have developed two simple questions that I ask myself after every meeting, webinar, conference session, or educational event:
Did this meeting answer the questions I had before I attended?
What action will I take within the next 48 hours because of what I learned?
If I leave inspired to try something new, improve a process, connect with someone, or serve my clients better, the event was valuable.
If I walk away wondering why I spent thirty minutes—or two hours—of my life there without gaining insight, inspiration, or direction, it is unlikely I will attend again.
That philosophy has shaped how I think about my future contribution to ActiveRain.
I want my posts to do more than inform. I want them to inspire action.
- Perhaps a reader decides to try a new marketing idea.
- Perhaps someone reaches out to a fellow member they had not met before.
- Perhaps a post encourages a member to attend a Zoom meeting, write their first blog article, embrace a new technology tool, or simply look at their business from a different perspective.
For me, the future of ActiveRain rests on creating content that leaves people better equipped, better connected, and more inspired than they were before they started reading. If my readers can answer, "What action will I take in the next 48 hours because of this post?" then I know I have made a positive contribution to the community.
Before I hit "Publish," I'll ask myself one more question:
If someone reads this post today, what might they do differently tomorrow?
And I'd love to hear from other members:
What is one action you hope your readers will take within 48 hours of reading your next post?
==============================
P.S. I would like to invite you to read a quote from "Amateurs! How we built Internet Culture and Why it matters" by Joanna Walsh.
... Everything from the production to consumption of online works is outsourced to users, but they have little or no control over the programming, storage, access or continued presence of what they create on commercial platforms. Though Instagram, for example, does not own the images it frames, its current terms and conditions include a ‘non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sublicensable, worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content’, weakening not only the financial but personal ties of creators to their own work. But what platforms cannot control is their need for the presence of the user – both as maker and consumer. As users are amateur and voluntary, though they can be tempted, flattered, deceived and shamed into participation, they cannot be forced to produce, transmit and consume work. Most aesthetic platforms – relying, for our unpaid contributions, on the illusion they foster that our presence there is a leisure activity – find it difficult to make users pay at the point of use. Platforms require continuous transmission for their existence – on ‘time as frozen or exploding,’ depending on person-hours spent watching, scrolling and clicking."
Comments(15)