What brought you to Active Rain? What did you want to get out of being of AR?

I have been pondering these questions, recently in the past few weeks as the New Year began. I reflect and look at what the benefits or the there lack of are on all my activities. I joined Active Rain initially in 2007. I posted my profile and forgot about it.

 My initial objective was just to get my name out to the “www” not knowing or understanding what it involved. It has been a long evolving journey. Next I discovered what a great place to find “referrals” from the community. As I was moving in this direction, I started cultivating relationships with fellow Realtors. I noticed I was “evolving” on the Rain.

 I started adding my input on member posts. I was giving  advice, recommendations next thing I realized, I was also taking recommendations and advice from other members. I was discovering, that this place AR is more then just a place to build “Referral Relationships”

 Next thing I know, I was writing posts. I was writing about my area, where I live. Then I discovered “outside posts” vs. “inside posts”. Slowly I was getting hooked.

 As time was passing by, I started to make Friendships. As my Evolution was taking place, so was Active Rain. They were evolving as well. Then “Localism” appeared out of nowhere. Now I was sponsoring a community. I saw a new opportunity to get in front of potential Buyers and Sellers. I was writing for the potential clients as well as the Active Rain Community.

 In the mean time I was learning about SEO, Google Juice and all sorts of other good information. Next thing you know I am syndicating my Blog Posts to all sorts of other Social Networking Platforms such as Facebook.com , Trulia.com, MyDwelling.com to mention a few.

 Then out of nowhere, here comes the New and Improved outside Blog, that will ping the search engines, wow what they will think of next? I see a lot of fellow Active Rainers are already on board and using it and ranting and raving how great it is. 

So back to my question  to you is :  what brought you to Active Rain and what do you want to get out of being on AR?