Comparison of Active Rain and WordPress for Real Estate Blogging(with a video review)
Realtor blogging is a necessity to generate leads online. It’s the only option for a realtor with a minimal budget and a desire to generate leads online. For Real Estate Brokers targeting entire cities, it’s the ONE good way to beat Trulia,Realtor.com and Zillow.
Active Rain: Real Estate Blogging platform. 293,556 real estate professionals.
WordPress: CMS designed for blogging. 51% of the TOP ONE MILLION websites in the world use WordPress. Real Estate Website providers build websites on WordPress and ALL the good IDX companies build WordPress compatible plugins.
Active Rain and WordPress | Why Compare the two?
When agents or brokers discuss Realtor Blogging they are going to hear “Active Rain” or “WordPress” repeatedly. Oddly both these realtor blogging platforms shouldn’t be compared but should be carefully scrutinized through the lens of your need. Real Estate bloggers use the two services for different reasons. I created a video that explores the uses for both blogging platforms.
Active Rain | Wordpress Video Review
Active Rain for Realtor Blogging | How to maximize your Active Rain Blogging
Active Rain is best used for:
- Getting or giving real estate referrals – Referral Exchange section –> LINK
- Reviews on Real Estate Technology. Active Rain Reviews are done by Realtors for Realtors with no motivation except education. Real Estate Lead Generation review –> LINK
- Learning marketing, digital and pre-digital, sales tactics, processes, operational tips. Vendor recommendations.
- Realtor Blogging – Active Rain blog posts are read by other Realtors.
- Search Engine Optimization
Active Rain provides referral traffic.
Active Rain provides high-quality backlinks
Active Rain provides high-quality NICHE SPECIFIC real estate back links. FOUR of my top TEN referring content pages are from Active Rain.
Active Rain Price | Membership Levels
FREE membership. It ONLY ALLOWS other active rain members to view your blog posts which would be fine EXCEPT they also don’t allow DO FOLLOW backlinks.
PAID membership is $199.00 per year. If DOES allow do follow backlinks and non-members can read your blog posts. It was one of my very first investments for inboundREM.
WordPress for Real Estate Blogging | Why Successful Real Estate Bloggers use Wordpress.
Wordpress is open source. Here is how “Open source” works. You or your developer download a free copy of Wordpress. You sign some terms and conditions in exchange for a lifetime license. You know OWN your content management system. That means you OWN the content you put into the CMS. The best Real Estate Bloggers know it’s better to control their content as opposed to using a website is owned and controlled by interests that are not their own.
Matt Mullenweg created WordPress(with help) and has reportedly turned down hundreds of millions for Wordpress’s parent company Automattic. Good thing too Automattic was valued at 1.16 billion in 2014. That’s pretty cool. Here are some other cool WordPress statistics.
One more WordPress Statistic. WordPress has hired 118 people in 13 years. 106 still work there. Of all the technology bets you can make in your real estate career building your Real Estate Blog or Real estate website using WordPress is one of the better ones.
More Developers make PlugIn’s for Wordpress than any other CMS by A LARGE MARGIN. A Plugin is a small program that adds’s functionality to WordPress effectively allowing you to CUSTOMIZE your WordPress website. For instance, I use the following plugin’s to CUSTOMIZE every single Real Estate Website/Blog that I build.
inboundREM’s Real Estate Blog WORDPRESS Plug-In List
- YOAST (SEO)
- ASKIMET (Spam Prevention)
- Wp Smush Pro (Optimize Images)
- IDX IMPRESS(Add’s IDX search widgets to Wordpress content pages)
There are more plugins that are situational. But the ones I listed above go on every Wordpress Real Estate Blog that I build. Still not sure which blogging platform is the best idea? Or maybe you need some help strategizing how to use both simultaneously? I might be able/willing to help. Leave your contact info and make sure you specify which blog article you were reading.
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