The Official ActiveRain Guide

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!

As I have shared over the past few weeks, I have been extremely busy with Webinars for our new members teaching them how to write posts effectively for search engines & also to be appealing to consumers.  In the classes I share how to write posts to rank well in the search engines as well as making your posts appealing to a consumer who comes to read what you have written. 

During the webinars, one of the questions that normally comes up is Why do I need to be a Rainmaker?  While there are thousands of reasons why everyone should be a rainmaker, I decided to just share 6 of the most important ones.

• Google Dominance-  This is a no-brainer.  If you write it properly, it will rank well in Google.  It doesn't take months and years to start ranking well in Google.  If you don't believe me, read about one of the members who became a Rainmaker in less than 10 hours of sending two posts public was #1 & #2 on Google!  If you take the training that ActiveRain offers our Rainmakers and put it to use for you, the same results can be yours. 

• Blog views get a steroid injection.  If you are trying to figure out how to get more traffic to your blog, then a Rainmaker is a great option.  Did you know that our Rainmakers Average 500 views per post?  Here are some really interesting stats from a member who recently became a rainmaker.

                   Before                                                                         After

These stats were taken immediately after becoming a Rainmaker and you can see the results.  In an instant their blog traffic increased 4 times what it was on posts before being a Rainmaker.  This happens instantly because when you become a Rainmaker you get to have your posts show up in the search engines and also be read by consumers. 

• Increase of Income- This is probably my favorite reason for becoming a Rainmaker.  Once you become a rainmaker, you can really increase your revenue.  I don't need to prove that a Rainmaker Membership can increase your income, many of our members already have:

Over the past week or two, I had two referrals from my friends here at ActiveRain, AND one of the biggest closings we've had in months.  The closing came from a consumer who found my blog months ago and became a "fan". -Jason Crouch

While almost 60% of the members who joined Active Rain at the same time I did, have not used  this amazing marketing tool, I have garnered close to sixty (YES, sixty!!!) new clients through my blogging on AR.  I literally credit ActiveRain with saving my business during these trying times. -Mirela Monte

• Posts show up on Localism.  "The World's Most Complete Neighborpedia"  When you are writing content about your local area this gives you a great secondary avenue to share your information & increase your Internet exposure by double instantly.
  

• ActiveBlogs- Think of the endless marketing opportunities by having your blog show up on it's own domain name.  For example, which would you prefer seeing on a business card? http://activerain.com/blogs/jeremy or http://activejeremy.com?  Just how Localism gives you another avenue to share your content exponentially, your ActiveBlog does the same thing by offering a third place to syndicate your content to.
  

• Top Notch Training- The training & knowledge you can obtain on ActiveRain is alone enough reason to become a Rainmaker.  Between the webinars offered by ActiveRain and also the great information shared by members you can learn enough to revolutionize your business and take it to the next level.

So if you are not yet a Rainmaker, what have you been waiting for?  Get started today for only $5.00 for the first month. Or, if you would some training on how a rainmaker can increase your business, feel free to sign up for my Blogging Basics 101 Webinar where I will teach you personally how to get the most out of your membership. 

What are you waiting for?  Let's take your blogging career to the next level today!

Last week I wrote about the exciting new one on one training program that ActiveRain is offering for those who want to become a Rainmaker.  Well the response has been so great that I have been very busy with those sessions.  But, many have asked if I can do this as a live webinar so they can see things live as I point them out.

With that being said, I am proud to announce that I will now be offering Live Webinars each week for those that are new to blogging and have not yet become a Rainmaker.  These webinars will be on Monday & Wednesday every week. In the beginning there will be 3 sessions per week. Monday will host 2 webinars, one at 1PM EST and another at 6PM EST.  Wednesday's session will be at 1PM EST.  Each webinar is limited to only 25 seats, so the make sure you register immediately.  The sessions will last aprroximately 60-90 minutes in length.  Unfortunately, if you are already a Rainmaker, this class isn't for you.  But, there is a great training session that Steven is offering for those that are currently a Rainmaker.  Check out his full schedule here.

What will be covered in the Webinar?

How to Optimize Your ActiveRain Profile.
How to Insert Photos into your Blog
How to Insert Hyperlinks.
Setting up Your Outside Blog.
How to write effective blog posts for consumers & search engines.
How to use your blog to connect with your community.
Topics to write about on your blog.
Question & Answer

How Much?!? How Much?!?

This is the greatest part, these webinars are only going to be $5.00 per person! But wait, theres more!  The $5.00 that you spend to join these webinars is not going to go to waste.  Not only will you receive a top notch training session on how to write blogs effectively to show up in the top of search engines which is worth much more than $5.00 in itself, you will also be given one full month to try out our Rainmaker Membership.  That includes your posts being indexed by search engines, the ability to send those posts to Localism and also posted to your personal Outside Blog.  As a final bonus, you will receive 1,000 bonus points for attending the webinar.

Why do I want to be a Rainmaker?

There are plenty of reasons why everyone should want to be a Rainmaker.  I am going to share just a few.  First, becoming a Rainmaker means that your posts will have the ability to harness the power of our 160,000+ members and the massive amount of search engine dominance that ActiveRain possesses.   Over 75% of ActiveRain's 2 million visitors per month come directly from the search engines.   Also, Rainmaker accounts consistently outrank members personal websites in searches.  Our Rainmakers posts average 500 views per post.  Others are receiving much more traffic (25,000 views!).

How do I sign up?

Well signing up is rather simple.  Simply fill out the form below with your contact information and I will send you an email confirming your session and also how to register.

If you were wondering why you would want to be a Rainmaker, here are 6 reasons why everyone should be a Rainmaker. Also, here are some awesome results from a member who took my webinar: Take Rainmaker Webinar today, the #1 spot on Google 10 hours Later!

One of the most common objections I receive when consulting someone on social media, is "Jeremy, I work in an area that is made up of an older generation.  They aren't into twitter and Facebook and all this Internet stuff.  So, I don't know if writing a blog would be a big benefit to me."  So, I asked a few more questions about the demographics and came to the conclusion that it appeared the average age range she was referring to was somewhere between late forties into late sixties. 

So this morning I started to do some research to see what type of age groups are making up social media and if older generations are participating or if they are non-existent.  The first place I started was here on ActiveRain.  I remembered the wonderful article by Art Kruschka titled: The View from the 84th Floor (which btw, Happy Birthday Art!) in which he wrote about celebrating his 84th birthday on Monday!  Art has been a very active member here on ActiveRain.  In fact, since starting here in March 2008 at the young age of 82, Art has published 566 blog posts!

Next, I decided I would visit both my Facebook business page & also ActiveRain's to see what the age breakdown looked like.  Here are the results:

This first graph is from my personal Facebook business page.  You will notice that only 35% of my group is under the age of 35.  While 35% of my fans are over the age of 45!  Also, I have twice as many fans over the age of 55 than I do between 18-24.  That stat really shocked me!

This graph is for fans of ActiveRain's fan page on Facebook.  The numbers here were even more astounding.  Fans under the age of 35 only make up 18% while there are just as many fans over the age of 55.  Fans over the age of 45 make up almost half of the members. 82% of the fans are over the age of 35!

After viewing these two graphs it leads me to believe that while many believe that Facebook is just for teenagers and college kids it appears that the majority of users are those over 45 years old by a long shot.  With that being said, I started to doubt the validity in the statement that the older generations are not on the Internet and definitely not involved with social media.

Are you still thinking this might be the case?  If so, let me share one more thing that should solidify my results that social media and Internet marketing isn't just for kids. 

Ivy Bean just celebrated her 104th birthday the beginning of this month and has become an instant celebrity.  Where you might ask?  Well on twitter of course!  I just followed her on twitter and became her 46,000 follower!  At first when I heard about her being on twitter, I thought it was some promotional stunt that someone was trying to just collect followers.  But when I investigated things I found out that it was legit.  Take a minute to watch this awesome video from Ivy.

So I ask if this statement is true?  Older generations are not reading blogs or using other social media platform.  I will let you be the judge of that.  My personal opinion is that it is the exact opposite, more and more are signing up for these different social media platforms every day.

It seems that everywhere you turn lately you are hearing buzz words like Social Media, Web 2.0, and the latest buzz word, "New Media."  You hear experts debate the best way to use twitter and facebook to increase your business.  Tweets from celebrities like Oprah & Shaq are posted all over the news and discussed by millions.  All of this buzz and hype have people seeking more information on how to use these two services to generate business.

But, one of the other types of social media and in my opinion the most effective avenue is being pushed to the wayside.  The amount of hype that you hear about writing blogs and using one for business seems to becoming a dying breed and lost art form.  That being said, I decided that it was time for me to do some research to see if blogs really were losing steam and becoming an ineffective means or if the "gurus" were just omitting an important component to any social media strategy.

The first thing I wanted to see is what is driving traffic to ActiveRain. Are search engines still what brings people to your site, or are they finding your sites through other social media means like Facebook & twitter. Over 75% of the traffic Came from search engines.  On the other hand, the two social media giants, Facebook and Twitter are only accountable for 1.65% of web traffic.  Seeing this, was a major shock to me.  I thought for sure that both would be in the top 10 and probably bring somewhere from 12-15% of our traffic. In retrospect, if you remember my post about the importance of labeling images, we learned at that time that 3.65% of our traffic comes from image searches.  That is more than double two social media giants!

Since it seems like social media is not great for directing traffic, I next decided I would see how a blog ranks in comparison to regular websites.  Whenever I ask someone if they use a blog on a regular basis, the top objection/reason they say is "they already have a web site that gives them an Internet presence.

I started doing some typical searches that a consumer would do to see which show up higher in the rankings.  My first keyword I did a search for was Austin Relocation Package.  The #1 result out of over 600,000 for that term was a blog by member Jason Crouch that he wrote in March 2008.  What was even more interesting was that Jason's website, only ranked #6.

Next, I decided to do a search for a community that Virginia Hepp, another member markets on both her blog and also on her website called Copper Bluffs in Mesquite Nevada. The Results were astounding!  Virginia's ActiveRain, Localism, and Outside Blog captured places 1-6 while her personal website showed up in the results at #8.  If you don't believe me, take a look at this search for Copper Bluffs Mesquite Nevada Real Estate. 

As I continued to do searches, this seemed to be the recurring theme.  Blogs consistently outranked personal websites on just about any and every search term I used.  This leads me to the conclusion that if someone is just using a website and has no active blog that they are updating on a regular basis that they are missing out a major chunk of potential business.

The third test that I used was to check activity from and whether it has decreased over the past few months as Twitter and Facebook have grown.  

A few months ago I wrote a post titled: 40,000 Visitors To Your Rainmaker Account in Just 25 Days!  This post shows how over a one month period of time I wrote 25 posts that garnered well over 40,000 visitors to my blog.  I also went on to share in that post how the best performance I ever had on my regular website was just over 3,000 hits.  My blog had more than 13 times the amount of traffic!  Since this was written several months ago, I decided that I would run the numbers again to see if my blog is decreasing in traffic since other social media sources are gaining such popularity.

For the last 25 posts, the total number of visits is 47,881 in comparison to the 40,699.  This averages out to a 6% increase or almost 300 more clicks per post.  This would lead me to believe that instead of my blog losing traction to other social media realms, it is actually gaining popularity over the past 5 months and becoming a stronger tool in social media arsenal.

So in closing I ask this question to you, Are blogs a technology of the past and something you should not focus on any more?  From the research I have done, I do not believe that statement to be true.  In fact, I believe the opposite.  Your blog is something that needs to be the main component to your social media strategy that you should focus on. What do you think?

In case you missed it earlier today, ActiveRain introduced the ability to now upload an HD profile picture in which you can crop & edit right on the network.  If you missed the announcement, take a minute to read all about it on Brad's post: It's time to update your photo- In HD.  To me, this is such a wonderful feature because for some reason, it seems the pictures of me where I am actually smiling and have my eyes open always have someone else in the photograph. (I should win an award for the worst person ever to be photographed.)  Now, I can use some of those pictures & crop out the surrounding people without needing to use photo editing software.

The video below will show you just how easy it is to use this feature.  I uploaded a new photo of myself, edited & saved it in less than 2 minutes.  Remember though, when choosing your new profile photo, make sure it is at least 600 x 600 pixels wide or you will receive an error message.  As always, if you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact me for help!

I get asked often how I created my custom header for both my ActiveRain Blog and also my Outside Blog.  The process of creating one is actually pretty simple to do.  Instead of doing a tutorial with screen shots, I thought it might be easier to see how I created my header & uploaded it in a video format.  So, I made a generic header for my blogs today & taped it as I made them.

The entire process from beginning to end only took me about 5 minutes.  I actually spent more time locating the photograph I wanted to use & enhancing that.  So, if you are unsure about how to design your own header, watch these two videos below and you will be on your way to creating a great looking new header for your blog in no time!

This first video walks you through the process of actually designing the header.  It shows you how to re-size, crop, and also add text to your photograph.  I used a free online photo editing software called picnik.com to create mine.  If you have photo editing software that you are familiar with, you can use that & have the same results by following the steps.

Now that we have created an awesome looking header, it is now time to insert it onto both our ActiveRain profile & also our Outside Blog.  This video will walk you through uploading the picture to both places.

As always, if you run into any problems, do not hesitate to contact me.  Now go off & add Jazz Up Your ActiveRain & Outside Blog with a Custom Header!

The number 1 question that I get asked each week by new members is how to insert photos into your blog and move them around.  I would guess this question comes up anywhere from 3-5 times each week.  Adding photographs to your ordinary blocks of text in a blog post can take your boring posts to another level. 

However, many are confused on how to insert photos, or use the different components of ActiveRain's photo editor, so I am going to break this down into several components. 

The first part I am going to show you is how to insert photos either from your computers Hard Drive, or from a link to the photo on a web hosting service like Flickr. (Remember to read the TOS of the web hosting site before uploading photographs for commercial use.)

The one advantage to loading your picture to a web hosting site first is that it gives you another link in your blog that helps to build your SEO & Google juice by linking from the photo site to your blog.  You will notice that since I uploaded the picture of the Lilly Pads from my photo account, I have the ability to go back & place a link on it as well back to the photo album.  Since the picture on the left came straight from my hard drive, there isn't a way to link back to another area.  The other nice thing by linking this photograph is that if someone wants to see it much larger, they can click on the picture and will be directed straight to where the photo is available in full size. 

This first video will just show the 2 different ways to insert a picture onto your blog. I broke this tutorial into two parts to keep the videos from becoming too long. When you are actually inserting the picture into your blog, you would do both processes of both tutorials before clicking the update button.

This second video shows you how to align the photo in your post, re-size it & also place some white-space around your picture so that the words of your post do not run into your picture.

Here are a few final reminders for inserting photos onto your blog:

• Do not use any photo that is not yours without written permission from the owner.  Using a photo without permission can result in an instant lawsuit and cost you thousands of dollars!
  
• Remember the importance of labeling your photos!
• Keep your photos on your ActiveRain blog under 550 pixels in width.  Any wider than that and you can run into major layout issues on your Outside Blog.
• Turn off Pop-Up Blockers. The number #1 issue that people run into when trying to insert a picture is that they have a pop-up blocker that is prohibiting them from loading a photo.  Sometimes even after changing the settings they run into issues.  If this is the case, hold in the CTRL button on your keyboard when clicking the links and it should allow the boxes to load properly.
• Give Credit to the Photographer.   Some places have a creative commons license which allows you to use another persons photo, but you must give them credit for taking the picture. 

The photos I used for this demonstration were taken from my Flickr Set that were taken on my recent trip to Atlanta & our journey to the Atlanta Botanical Garden.

I hope this tutorial answers any questions you may have on how to insert an image into your blog.  If you have any other, do not hesitate to contact me.

I get asked several times a week by members on how to insert links into blog posts.  So, I decided it was time to do a blog post about how to do this.  Watch the short video below as I walk you through the process of adding links & unlinking on your ActiveRain blog.

As always, do not forget to label your link! It takes only a second but can really increase the power of your blog exponentially!

If you are having trouble viewing this video, click the button to watch in HD & you can view this tutorial in full screen mode.

I just finished reading Erin Golding's post: How on Earth Do You Blog So Much and in there, she made the following statement:

(I can't figure out how to embed videos into my ActiveRain blog so if anyone can help, that would be great).

I wanted to make sure she got the answer, so the first thing I did was read through the 80 comments thinking for sure someone had left a link to a post on how to do this.  To my surprise there was none.  To my even bigger surprise, when I searched ActiveRain for an post I couldn't seem to come across an updated blog post with information on how to do it.  So, Erin, this tutorial is for you!

If the video is too small to view, try watching in HD.