The nature of ActiveRain is that it is for many people a points driven culture.
Leave a comment. Get points.
Write a post. Get points.
Answer a question. Get points.
Reblog another's post. Get points.
Accumulate enough points, your price of participation goes down every 100,000 points. Rinse, lather repeat until you reach 500,000 points and a free account.
Gather more points and you move up the leaderboard, be it city, county, state or national.
Frankly it's pretty easy to get points in the community, participate and they're there for the taking. Type and type some more.
But pursuing points just for the sake of points can be detrimental. The goal needs to be point collection combined with meaningful content.
By itself, a high spot on the Leaderboard isn't going to do much for you. If merely being #1 was all it took, I should be swamped with referrals for the Cincinnati to Dayton corridor, but instead... Bueller?? Bueller??
By the same token if you think a lot of feature posts is going to cause your business to explode, again, more Ferris.
What makes things tick is writing meaningful content, especially when it's consumer facing and what your local home buyers and sellers want and can't find elsewhere. For us, that's niche posts about patio homes, subdivisions and similar topics.
Hollow activity just for the sake of gathering points can actually harm you more than help you. Your reputation with your peers is driven by whether they can expect a copy/paste comment or something that indicates you actually read the post.
I'll freely admit I don't participate heavily in the Rain outside of making sure I have a daily post. It's the hazard of the dual career life. Only so many hours in the day so I leave a handful of comments as I can, answer a question when I think I can add meaningful info, or maybe just leave a smiley face icon to let the author know I stopped by.
But for me, it's definitely not about points because I know it isn't the points that make my phone ring. And it's not the points that have built friendships across the country. No, it's about the activities that cause the point total to grow that keeps me going day after day. We can have fun, play around the watercooler a bit, but the more you put into this community, the more you get back.
Until next Tuesday, just Ask An Ambassador if you need help!
Bill of Liz and Bill aka BLiz
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