ActiveRain Tutorials: November 2009

Each time I teach a webinar class, one of the things we spend a good amount of time covering is how to claim the domain name for your outside blog.  When you become a Rainmaker, a custom domain URL is part of your benefit.  You do not need to go to godaddy.com and purchase a domain name. So, I decided that I would take a  moment tonight and do a brief tutorial on how to claim your domain for your Outside Blog through ActiveRain.

Also, if you were wondering if an outside blog would be a benefit for you, you may want to check out a few great features of the outside blog.

First, a few of the awesome themes available:

• Business Casual Theme
• Easy Going Theme
• Blue Days
• Real Estate Red
• A Day at the Beach
• Granite

And here are a few of the awesome widgets available:

• Local Posts Widget
• Google Search Widget
• Feedburner Email Subscribe Widget

So, if you have not yet become a Rainmaker and started your Outside Blog, try it today!  Also, if you would like to learn more on how to optimize ActiveRain & your Outside Blog, see if my Blogging Basics 101 class is right for you!

So in case anyone was wondering, where in the world have I been?  Well, the past 7 days have been nothing short of a whirlwind!  Last Friday I awoke at 4:30 in the morning for a last minute decision to head to REBar Camp Raleigh-Durham aka #REBCRDU.  I drove the quick 3 & a half hour drive and was instantly greeted by many of our wonderful members.  I got to enjoy a wonderful day Lori Bee, Daniel Rothamel aka The Real Estate Zebra, Kathy Carson, Thom Abbott, C-Tann Starr, Lane Bailey Debe Maxwell & so many others. 

David Patterson did a great job opening up the event & gave ActiveRain some major props.  As the event began, in true Barcamp Fashion, I was asked to participate in a Blogging 101 Session. It was great to share about all the wonderful features of ActiveRain as well as how a blog can be used to increase your business.  I had a great partner for this session in our very own Debe Maxwell.  There were about 125-150 in our class with standing room only.  

Then, on Monday I headed out of town for Washington, DC to speak to Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in the Mid-Atlantatic Region.  The drive up north was great and I really enjoyed traveling up I-95 and seeing all the fall colors of the trees lining the highway.  It reminded me of my days of living in Pennsylvania and traveling to the beach during the fall.  The vibrant colors of the leaves always put a smile on my face.  In fact, the hotel I stayed at had some wonderful colors right outside my window.

Tuesday morning I joined Victoria Baker & Darrin Friedman at an even that Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage hosted called Real Estate in the Round.  It was an event that had over 400 agents in attendance from all around the Baltimore/DC metro areas.  Once again, I was given the opportunity to share all about the benefits of ActiveRain and how this wonderful network can be used to increase your bottom line.

This was a great opportunity to meet many wonderful agents and introduce them to ActiveRain.  Many new members signed up that day and before long will be experiencing all the same types of success stories that so many of our members already have. 

On Tuesday Morning, I headed to Reston, VA for an opportunity to share my Blogging Basics 101 class in person with about 20 Coldwell Banker Agents.  I shared with them in person the tips to writing a successful blog to make it show up well in the search engines while having an appealing blog for consumers.  After we finished in Reston, VA we then drove to Columbia, MD and did the class again for another branch of their brokerage.  In total, over 20 new members signed up on Wednesday and are trying out ActiveRain as a new Rainmaker!

As if my week had not already been hectic enough, as I finished up my final class in Columbia, I received a call from my father & my wife.  In panic, I quickly excused myself from the classroom to see what was going on.  I was greeted on the phone with some really shocking news!  My father informed me that I was about to become an uncle again! 

My brother & sister-in-law that were expecting in December had made a visit to their Dr. that day and she made the decision that it was time to have the baby now!  So as I drove home on Thursday from the DC area, I was constantly informed with progress reports on the birth of my nephew.  Then around 4:30 I received the big news. 

My nephew Jace Gabriel was born at 4:12 PM.  He was 7lbs, 5oz and 20" long.  Both him and mom were healthy & doing great!  I was delighted to hear this news, so as I drove home from DC in the remnants of Hurricane Ida, I knew I would have to add a stop onto my already 9 hours of driving at the hospital and see the newest addition to the family.

I was glad that I did.  Here is a picture of him that I shot at about 5 hours old.  He is beautiful and wonderful.  It reminded me of the day my little girl was born and my life forever changed. 

So while in the last week and a half I have driven over 1,800 miles, spoke in front of almost 1,000 people, it was all definitely worth it!  The new friendships formed, the great knowledge I learned & also shared made each & ever minute spent valuable to me.  Not to mention the blessings of a growth in my family while gone! 

So in case you were wondering, I am still alive, I am still teaching the basics of blogging. I have been busier than ever while loving every moment.  Over the next few weeks I have several other brokerages & MLS's set up to speak about ActiveRain & the basics of blogging 101.

So, if you have a brokerage or MLS that you wish for me to teach the basics of blogging to, feel free to contact me and we can see what we can do to schedule something over the next few weeks. I'd love the opportunity to share about all the wonderful features of ActiveRain as well as the power of having a blog on the world's largest real estate network!

Last evening I read a really interesting article over on HubSpot about the differences between businesses who blog and those who do not.  Did you know that companies who blog receive 55% more traffic than one who does not?  Over the past few weeks I have helped many of our members figure out how to have their blogs be seen by the public and show up well in the search engines in my Blogging Basics 101 webinar and many had no idea how powerful a blog could be for your online presence.

As I shared the other day, one of the biggest reasons to become a Rainmaker is so your posts will be able to be seen by the search engines and also consumers.  If the consumers are not able to read that what you have written and contact you directly for business, what is the purpose in writing?

I wanted to see if this 55% more traffic held true for our members on ActiveRain, so I decided I would pick two members.  I picked a random rainmaker that had 79,000 points and a random non-rainmaker that had just over 81,000 points.  Both began writing on ActiveRain within 2 weeks of each other and predominantly wrote posts about their local area and consumer centered posts. Here are the results:

The graph on the left are 8 posts from someone who is not a Rainmaker and posts are not able to be read by the public or indexed by the search engines.  The graph on the right was from a Rainmaker.  You can see that there is no comparison between the two.  Someone that is a Rainmaker is receiving 386% more views of their blog posts over someone who is not!  This number was astounding to me.  It made me realize right away the power of being a Rainmaker. On average that means that the post is being read by close to 500 others outside of the ActiveRain network.

I also want to point out, that this number does not take into account the views your posts will receive on Localism and also on your outside blog which also have strong web presences just like ActiveRain does.  Are you convinced yet that maybe you need to be come a Rainmaker?  If not, here are over 1,500 testimonies from our members,

In case you are still hesiatant to spend the money to become a Rainmaker, I want to offer you a special promotion to try out our Rainmaker membership that over 80% of our members have.  If you click on this special promotion link to upgrade, you will be able to try out all of the premium member benefits for the first month for only $5.00.  There are no long term contracts to sign, so if you do not see the results you want, you can cancel at the end of the first month and it has only cost you $5.00.   In addition to trying out our Rainmaker membership, you will also be eligible to take my Blogging Basics 101 Webinar where I will personally teach you everything you need to know about blogging, ActiveRain, and how to use both to optimize your online presence and take you to page 1 of Google.

Are You Ready to take your blogging career to the next level?  Get started today!