Authentic Real Estate Marketing: I love that Eddy's figured out...

I have to tell you Dustin, I disagree with your comments.  I have been an active participant in the "Active Rain" community for only a week and have met an enormous number of talented and special people.  Anyone concerned about a post being featured is missing the point!  I write my articles to share experiences with others and not for publicity.

I must have missed something Ed... What do you disagree with?   Do you think Eddy writes his posts to "share experiences with others and not for publicity"?  If not, then you're talking apples and oranges and I can't follow. 

Dustin I think there is a healthy dose of competition on this site lolol  Sometimes it can even get out of hand; but, for the most part, it does what you said, combines community and competition.

Ed is right too, we have lots of good friendships because of this community.  Happy New Year

Dustin,

Do I detect the warning signs of ActiveRain Addiction in you?   You've blogged about points and about the people ahead of you.  Watch out.  It's a serious thing this addiction. 

Catching up to Eddy is going to be hard.  He and Scott are duking it out big time to own CA.  Consider 'MOVE'ing your blog to a less competite location like South Dakota where you will dominate the state. 

 

Dustin: I’m not sure I agree with my friend (and “blog-mom”) Maureen about her “addiction” suggestion—I think I detect a little cynicism in this post—or a very warped sense of humor—I can’t really decide. Active Rain is certainly a social & professional networking site, a marketing site, a competitive game site, and a peer review site. In the months since we were invited we (The Codgers™) have come to know RE professionals from all over the country, learned much about their markets, and how they handle their respective businesses. We’ve come to know who we could recommend to a friend contemplating a move to an area, and who—well—not so much.  

I don’t know Ed (comment above), but I agree with him in part—the relationship part—The Codgers™ like being featured and freely admit it, it draws more people to our posts. Carole & Maureen are two of our favorites! Maureen was, in our early days on AR, our mentor (blog mom), and gave us sage advice to improve our posts.

Provocation generates comments, and you certainly seem provocative thus far…

Jay Merton

Thanks everyone for the great comments! 

Jay: the provocation is definitely intentional. Like you, I don't have to worry nearly as much about marketing my services, so I probably have a little more freedom in my posts. This might sound ironic from someone who started the first real estate community blog almost two years ago, but I didn't get into real estate to make friends (although blogging has had the wonderful byproduct of introducing me to some great people!).   

I'm always surprised at how freely people are willing to build up such deep connections with people they meet online and this goes for clients as well as real estate professionals.   Thanks to RCG, we get regular emails from readers (i.e. potential clients) who have never left a comment and yet pour their soul out to us when requesting my wife hooks them up with a real estate professional.  They tell me all about their family, their grandparents, their dream home... all before I've ever had a conversation with them! Amazing! 

Personality-wise, I'm just cynical enough that I have a hard time buying into the "best friends" thing on the internet, and I really only feel close to the people who are honest with me and have no gripes about provoking a comment or two!  ;) 

So, do you have a suggestion of how AR should select it's featured agents?

Hey Dustin, Actually Eddy got to where he is at by being a very early member of the network and one who had a great impact early on by inviting over 200 other members. He is a very smart, honest and all around nice guy who just happens to focus on posting stuff for his customer base. The good thing about AR, is it has a wide variety of personalities and a guy like Eddy does not have to be a great and entertaining writer to be an achiever on AR. There's more to it than just being able to write a good blog post. But I guess you proved that by getting comments on this one:) Ok I admit that was a low blow. But it was funny, wasn't it?

Maureen: I think the points system is definitely the right way to select the featured agent... I'd just adjust the point system slight. Probably something like occasionally reset and maybe use the ratings and page views to determine points for posting (which it looks like AR is experimenting with...) 

Bryant: I got nothing against Eddy's posts to be honest with you and I think he should be free to post anything that interests him and/or his readers. My post is not a judgment on him, but rather an acknowledgment that his interest is gaming the system. I happen to think that given the "rules" he's obviously a smart guy and I applaud his efforts to stay at the top of the featured agent list. 

I knew that Dustin, I'm just picking on you. It's like an initiation. We can't just let you slide in here without giving you a hard time that wouldn't be cordial. Matt paid me to say that:)

Dustin. Now that I have been given the clue as to who you are I think it's ALL very funny. Who's next on the hit list Dustin? <joke> :)

I am on Matt's payroll too. :) SVW.

TLW...ROAR!

yet this one is 113 words... before the signature.  Eddy had 63 words to spare...  I had not realized that Eddy had invited over 200 members. 

Good work Eddy!

Dustin my philosophy is, I don't want to participate in anything if I can't make friends along the way; life is to short to do it otherwise, for me. As for posting, I prefer if I can learn along the way, be made to laugh, or get good brainstorming ideas that helpl my business. You runa terrific blog site. You seem like a bright guy who can teach me something . I will read your posts and find out lol 

This BIGGEST challenge for us at ActiveRain is keeping the scoring system fair.  On one hand I think the points system is one of the biggest factors that helped ActiveRain gain momentum and has kept people coming back.  On the other hand it's a constant arms race to try to keep if as fair as possible and continue to award people that actively contribute to building the community.  If you haven't seen it yet, people get REALLY competive and irritated if they don't get the points they think they deserve :)

We've gone through many phases of experimentation particularly on awarding points for blog posts.  Each time we found they became highly manipulated so we've evolved to almost a google type algorithm that pulls in a lot of factors.  This allows us to tweak things if we need to as people try to game the system without divulging exactly how it works. 

Points work as motivation but they also serve an underlying purpose of helping us to rank and present content on both ActiveRain and Localism. 

Yes, there are a lot of ways to earn points on ActiveRain besides simply writing posts.  Sometime I'll try to get the FAQ's all updated...

1. Creating a detailed profile.

2. Inviting new members to AR

3. Linking back to AR

4. Writting blog posts

5. Commenting on blog posts

6. Bonus points (we manually give our bonuses to members who help us promote, grow and contribute to the community)

7. Uploading pictures to localism (NEW)

There are a few more coming in short order...

Okay Dustin, Somethings fishy here! Thats two posts in a row that could be called diversionary at the least.

Never mind Dustin, I have figured it out, which explains why your wife looked familiar.

Karen,

Welcome to my persona!  Something definitely looks fishy to me as well!  :) 

Where did you see a photo of my wife?  (Despite the fact that she's less than two feet away from me right now, I don't think I've brought her into AR yet!  I can't say the same thing about my mom, since I recommended to her that she get in here and start networking with agents!) 

Dustin,

I think I may have confused your wife with someone you blog with on one of your other sites but who also just started on AR. Your mom looks nice and this would be a great place for her.

Guess I will just have to get used to your persona.:) I will say that your blogs inspire a reaction, so I suppose that's a good thing.

OK I have to ask since this entry was discussed in Columbus during the Blog Tour USA stop here.  Or I mentioned it to someone who did not know that the featured members vary by state.  When you wrote this Dustion did you think we all saw Eddy when we signed in, that he was the featured member?

Does it feel like justice now that Jeff Turner, Brian Brady, Jeff Dowler have passed Eddy (and Scott) up? I think Eddy is down at 23rd or so for all members of ActiveRain .

What do you think about points, community and ActiveRain being more than a game 7 months later?