I Own This Neighborhood

I look at like this: Blogging or providing information (Answers to questions, etc) on OTHER PERSON’S sites needs to be assessed for potential risk. You are creating content for them for the search engines to recognize them as the authority on that particular topic/locale, and helping to establish in the minds of consumers that if they have a question about an area, they go to them – not you.

And most importantly: Are they going to become a competitor for search engine visibility against you? [And while it may be “free” now, are they likely to start charging fees back to you – once you have helped establish them as #1. You need to understand what their revenue model is based on. If they “have no revenue model” – you can bet that they do, its just not implemented YET.]

Some people shrug off the internet visibility concern with the rationale “Well, I’ll just make sure my pages on that site rank.” The problem with that type of cavalier attitude is that THEY control the site, THEY control the information, and you are establishing THEM as the authority – not you.

All of that being said: Do I blog/post/comment/answer questions on sites other than the ones I control? Sure, you betcha. But I do it on sites that I don’t foresee a reasonable circumstance in which it will come back and bite me by creating a monster I have to fight later on.

Jennifer – You don’t know how true everything you just said is. I have a follow-up comment.

UPDATE! Jennifers comment was dead on accurate.

My curiosity got the best of me and I wandered over to Localism to check out the changes.

I don’t have to worry about updating my content – they are only using the most recent posts; a good decision. I’d hate the thought of my old posts being featured on the site.

Looking around, I see the neighborhoods I created on the site have been used as a neighborhood you can “now” claim. For the low, low price of $7.50 to 15.00 per community, per month. Sounds like a Point2 Strategy.

Knowing my competition, the communities will sit “unsponsored”.

My content is better posted on my “Outside Blog” where I control the information and benefit personally from both, consumer interation and the search engines.

“I think that too many people which are in an industry that promotes “own” rather than “rent” are often way too quick to “rent” their online marketing space.”

Well said Eric.

When the beta version of Localism first went live (18 mos ago?), some of the savvy Rainers raised the exact issue that Jennifer mentioned. I didn’t “get it” then, but I do now. Today’s Inman article where Jonathan mentioned that NOW we can claim all those neighborhoods that WE identified and established AND got extra points for, can now be OURS for a fee. I feel like I just got sucker-punched.

Thanks, Paula! It’s such a shame they’ve gone to this paid model when they honestly could have generated some revenue by some other means that didn’t alienate their contributors. It makes me want to work on a clone that’s 100% free for contributors and visitors *forever* – and perhaps use that to build credibility on other product offerings, open the site up to discreet and relevant ads…something that wouldn’t tarnish the reputation and contributions. Another 20,000 foot view potential project LOL.

Paula, I’m sure your content, as humble as it may have been, was more than a list of keywords aimed at Google.

https://localism.com/blog/mi/detroit/core_city/posts/541955/Angel-The-Realtor

I thought Localism was going to be weed-free. How did something that obvious slip through? It’s embarrassing.

Suddenly my decision to add next to nothing to Localism seems justified.

What’s ironic is I’ve closed an escrow with someone who found me through Localism. But it’s still not worth it to me to have to pay someone to add content and fuel them.

Glenn I seriously doubt that most agents will really get it. Most of the agents on AR will not take the time or effort to start their own blogs.

Ken I think you are absolutely correct. Most agents are going to take the easy way out because they don’t get it. Paula will continue to own her local area as will you and many of the others that comment on here. Why, because we understand the importance of having our own blog and contributing to forums like this and not building something for someone else that we may have to fight in the future.

A few people already said it, but figured I’d chime in too…the one issue I have with AR and Localism as being the ONLY place you post is that it is NOT your blog/content – AR and Localism own everything.

What if AR goes belly-up? What if they decide to start charging for the service? If you don’t have our own established blog at http://www.myname.com, what will you do then? There’s a lot of “what if’s” for someone to solely rely on AR and Localism as their blog platform

That’s why I have my own blog – I own the domain and the content and no one can take it away from me except myself. If AR does something wacky, I’ll still have all my content on my own blog which they can’t touch.

The approach I linked to misses the point completely. We play to SEO so that consumers will find us, but if they find crap (like a detached list of keywords), they will quickly abandon us for other sites. I wrote about changes in the way people search a few weeks ago in my blog. Based on the hits I’m getting, people are no longer clicking every link from top to bottom on Google, but rather scanning links to try to see which one looks like it will provide quality information rather than a sales teaser or a spider web. I know I scan at least half of the first page before clicking any of the links. Do you?

Actually AR is still free and I do believe that you’ll get just as much Google juice today as you did last week. Localism sponsorship only matters when visitors hit a neighborhood page, but they still navigate directly to your blog (completely missing the sponsors) when they find you on Google.

Until the neighborhood pages of Localism.com become actual destinations, this argument is really much ado about nothing. The rest of the AR value proposition remains intact and is still totally free.

As much as I’ve felt weary of Active Rain for a while, I have a soft spot for it for the same reasons you do Paula. I got my blogging feet at AR, met tons of amazing people. I still go in there and post an occasional article and still don’t know what to feel about this whole Localism thing.

We all know that a site is nothing without content – we have built Localism from Scratch and if we stop contributing now, does it mean we are giving away our hard work to someone else who may be willing to pay the $7.50 or write a couple of posts that will be seen above my hundreds of posts?

I’m torn – that’s the bottom line. A side of me wants to buy all those cities I wrote content for and another side of me doesn’t want to empower them.

Good food for thought and still don’t have the answer. (and in my case, there are 2 people in my market place that have been adding content to those cities like crazy in the past few weeks)

Ines, you aren’t “giving away your hard work” because most people are going to find you and your quality content via search engine. It remains to be seen whether city pages will become attractive. There’s a reason Google became bigger than the actual content providers they linked to. Consumers prefer targeting searches to browsing in most cases and consumers can still find you at ActiveRain.

Frank – I don’t want to turn this post into how the consumer finds me but I have to tell you that after almost 2 years and too many posts on AR and almost 200,000 points, I only have 1 transaction to show from it. The consumer will find me and everyone else in that network.

Ines, you were featured in today’s take home edition of ActiveRain!

@Paula Certainly they would start charging somewhere at some point. Everyone needs to get paid at the end of the day, unless of course we are all retired.

The trouble I find is that, as many have already stated here, people are blindly working on a site that isn’t truly theirs; putting all their eggs in someone else’s basket (or as Eric said, filling someone else’s milkshake) without placing any in their own.

And many don’t understand the difference.

@Paula- I just realize that you are only two hours up the road in Indy! You just received a coupon for ONE MILKSHAKE. Next time I am up there, I will give you a call (GRIN).

@ Ines – I really hate how most agents can’t see that Trulia is our competition. So answering questions on TV is blogging, not sure if I should be amused or scared that someone with this level of intelligence is out there selling homes.

@Paula – You can always remove posts that are competing with your main site from AR. You will loose a few points, but you will remove content that is competing with your main income generating site, not to mention you are removing content that might end up helping your competition rank for the neighborhoods you aren’t willing to spend money on.

Ken – I have thought about it, since they are basically useless without working links.

Sue – Yes, the best place is your own blog. If you can get the consumer to your blog – they will only read your content, not the content of every other AR member who happens to be writing about your area, also. Best!

Paula, I just went back and looked at the site again. In addition to the issue you raise about paying for the content created by us, or else someone else benefiting from it by “buying” the neighborhood, there are several other things that trouble me. My posts are listed sequentially with all the other posts for Princeton. How does it help my business? If I don’t post for a while, my content wouldn’t even be visible, yet it is the biggest contributor to Princeton NJ. The site now is not based on consumer oriented searches. How would consumers find information important to them? As it appears to me now, it would be difficult for consumers to find either authority content or authority blogger. Perhaps, I am overlooking somethings very positive others see, since there are so many favorite reviews of Localism by active contributors.

Faina –

I may be overlooking some positive things also. Like you, I would not want other agents content displayed if I have paid for a featured neighborhood. I assume that will probably NOT be the case once they have sold the neighborhoods.

The biggest problem I have, is their use of the term “neighborhood”. Princeton, NJ. will most likely NOT be an option for a neighborhood. You will have to buy every subdivision or every small section you have ever written about to ensure your content is displayed when someone searches for that neighborhood.

In my previous posts to Localism, I submitted information on more than 30 different subdivisions, but, only one of them is worth the cost per month to maintain. Even then, there is only so much you can say about a particular subdivision within a city.

Quite honestly – I have made the decision, it is not worth the time to worry about whether someone else has my city. I can do more with my own blog. Although most of the pictures I have posted there were not great, I am not going to give them more information to use on the site.

Here’s something I love and food for thought – the Queen of Blogging,Teresa Boardman (in my opinion), does not have one post or picture about St.Paul on Localism. I listened to her many months ago about keeping your content on your own site, and am happy I listened.

Eric – I like Kentukiana better 🙂 When I was young – people would often comment that Louisville isn’t really “Kentucky”, until they wanted to tell me a stupid Kentuckian joke 🙂

I guess the real Kentuckians live on horse farms or in the mountains.(sigh)

Eric, it’s a catch 22 – when Zillow first came out, I signed up to see what it was about and I made the decision to not post my listings there. For awhile, I excluded Zillow from my Point2 site. Then RE/Max of Indiana started posting their listings there. Now, if I want credit for the listing, I have to go claim the listing as my own.

The consumer now knows about these sites and want their listing info everywhere. There is no going back and I am not opposed to opening the information to the consumer – I am opposed to erroneous information and having to pay for information which was provided by me.

I am now very careful about where I comment and post any information outside my own blog.

@ Paula “The consumer now knows about these sites and want their listing info everywhere.”

When I say Trulia or Zillow to someone most (90%+) give me a blank look and then when i ask if they have heard of these site they admit they haven’t. We assume way to much in this business and are giving way to much credit to these sites. The consumers don’t care how you do it, they just want their home sold.

“Then RE/Max of Indiana started posting their listings there. Now, if I want credit for the listing, I have to go claim the listing as my own.”

That would be enough reason for me to leave a company, actually it is keeping me from moving to an office that I really like currently. I would be their top producer by far, but I told them they would have to guarantee my listings never show up on Trulia or Zillow…so far they haven’t agreed to my terms. Not really a big deal as I am 99% sure that it’s time to open my own office.

I just started blogging about 8 months ago – and like many got my start on Active Rain. I have posted a great deal of quality content to localism and was just getting started on my “outside blog” (not with AR – but with typepad.) Now I’ve got a real problem. I think this whole thing of owning neighborhoods is going to be a MESS. They haven’t really cleaned up the localism posts the way they should have and I’ve posted so many subdivisions of my own city and surrounding areas that it would cost some serious coin to “own them.” Yet I haven’t yet established myself as an outside blogger – so I’m not sure if my posts will become less visible if I don’t “buy in” and so the question becomes one of buying “insurance” that people can still find me on AR while I’m building my presence outside AR.

One thing this has done is PUSH me to get the help I need to get a kick-a** outside blog rather than continuing to struggle trying to put one together for myself.

Personally I think WordPress is the way to go. You can get info at https://wordpress.org.

IMO wordpress is the way to go mainly because there are so many people that know how to use it and are willing to give free advice. Not to mention the amount of free themes and plugins that are available.

Near the end of last year I started thinking that I had too many eggs in one basket. I did a free outside blog, but didn’t like it. About a month ago I got help setting up a Word Press Blog. I’m happy with it, and trying to get it started….am not ready to give up on AR, I like them, but am ready to expand to doing my own thing. I only have a small handful of Posts on Localism so it doesn’t concern me.

WOW! I didn’t respect such a generous response. Thank you all very much. I actually called the tomato people on Friday and spoke to them and am thinking of going that way. It’s a MAJOR expense for a newer agent, but one that would probably position me well later on.

They took a quick look at my AR blog and called me a “sprinter in need of some tweaking” to move forward.

Just to throw it out there, if anyone truly wants to own their own blog outright – be able to move it anywhere, update it, add anything you like to it – you need to consider getting affordable hosting and using Open Source software such as WordPress or Joomla. Open Source is basically ‘free’ software supported by thousands of volunteers and coders who make our life easier by doing a lot of the hard work.

You can get very inexpensive and easy to use hosting as sites such as 1and1.com, godaddy.com, etc. Joomla is what I prefer as I like to have my website and blog in one spot – WordPress is traditionally used just for blogging. I personally find the Joomla control panel much more intuitive than WordPress and there are tons more features. (I’m biased, of course 🙂 )

TomatoBlogs is great if you decide to go with the WordPress platform, but you can also “go it alone” and setup your blog yourself. Many hosting providers have ‘one-click’ installs for both WordPress and Joomla. Templates are easy to install and there are usually many, many articles online that help walk you through any process. (@GotBob comes to mind, https://focusonfrederick.com – he did it all himself)

Cheryl – I haven’t tried Joomla, but love WordPress and agree it is best to have your own blog. You do a terrific job with your sites – you have one of my competitors for a client and I love her site.

Holli – Good idea cross posting. I need to do that on my static site to keep it fresh. I have a blog on the backend, just don’t do much with it and really should. Thanks for the motivation to get my hiney in gear 🙂 I won’t be buying a community either. I just can’t keep up posting too many places.

I’m with you Lane. I may do one part of my city, but when you look at it, all of us have to sponsor quite a few “communities” for this to work for us. I have a feeling this could get UGLY with people trying to slice my piece of pie smaller and smaller. I have been royally ticked off at the way AR has done this. They obviously went for the “CHA CHING!” rather than monetizing in a fair and equitable way. I’m working on getting a “tomato blog” but my finances are very tight right now. I’ll get it going, but I’m going to have to beg, borrow and steal.