How My ActiveRain Points Earned Me a Call Today from the New York Times!

 

While it is certainly easy to dismiss the points that we receive for blogging and commenting on ActiveRain, I must admit that I enjoy the recognition and the competitive side of this system.  I even wrote a recent post on this topic:  The Active Rain Points System - Anyone for a game of Pacman? Pinball? Asteroids?

At any rate, I received a call during lunch today from a reporter from the New York Times.  Needless to say, my first question was, "How did you find me?"  I knew that it would be from the internet, but I couldn't help but smile when she told me that she found me on ActiveRain. 

 

Here is an abbreviated version of our brief discussion:

NYT REPORTER:  I was searching on Google and you were the top result.

ME:  I'm really curious to know what term you used.

REPORTER:  Let me see here.... "Austin real estate agents travis county"

ME: That's terrific.  I would be happy to talk with you.

REPORTER: I can tell that you're busy having lunch.  Could you spare about 15 minutes around 3:30pm your time to talk?

ME: Of course! 

She went on to describe what the story would be about, and left me with a couple of questions to mull over before our talk. 

When we spoke later, it was a great conversation, and the article is basically about public perception of environment and ecological issues, including individual carbon footprints, auto pollution, whether people are looking for homes that are walking or biking distance to shopping or work, and related topics.  She promised to let me know when the article was published, and to get me a copy.

 

While ANY call from the New York Times is awesome (unless you are a murder suspect), I wanted to share this because the page she found was this one:  http://activerain.com/states/TX/Travis%20County

Since I am the #1 agent for points in this county, she called me first. 

 

 

A few weeks ago, I also received a call from Texas Realtor magazine.  The reporter for that story mentioned that she found me on ActiveRain, and that she had generally found ActiveRain members to be more savvy than the average agent.

I just received my copy of the magazine a couple of days ago; after reading the article (which was about organizing the bookkeeping for a brokerage, along with organizing personal finances as a real estate agent), I realized that this call was also the result of having a good number of points, as Chris Tesch was the other agent interviewed, and she is right ahead of me on points for Texas (currently we are #3 and #4).  Here's a link to the article: http://www.texasrealtors.com/web/7/54/magazine/issues/08/0108/features/grip.cfm

Recently, my good friend Julie Neerings in Utah wrote a post about a consumer who contacted her solely because of her solid point total in that area (What's Your Point? An ActiveRain Success Story).

So, although I would never recommend writing a post solely for points, I do think the point system is brilliant and it offers another opportunity to get good exposure for "outsiders" who find us here.

Keep on blogging!

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