Localism Sponsorship: Hype or Value?
July 10, 2008
By: Jeremy Rivera
Author's Website: http://www.theriversidehomesource.com
What does the Localism Real-Estate Revolution Mean?
As of July 9th Active Rain opened up “The New Localism”, which has been in beta with ActiveRain for a while. The marketing for the site is that it will be a “revolution in real-estate”.
In the past, while localism was in beta, you had to join Active Rain to be able to post articles to specific areas. They purportedly are opening this feature up to the public, but as of this morning the Register section says that “We’re not taking new accounts right now — sorry! “. Not sure why they made such a hoopla about opening up the platform to the public…but then not open them up at launch.
Localism Appeal
The platform is much cleaner and “2.0″ feeling than when it was in it’s beta stage.
They had a clunky picture of the united states that served as a launch point into the communities. I do like the way that they’ve added a good search utility to access the geographic areas more efficiently.
What’s this sponsorship stuff?
Active rain and Localism are releasing a sponsored position per area in the range of $7-$15 a month. The reasoning behind it? According to Jonathan Washburn from Active Rain
We realized that the Localism community and city pages would rank much higher with the search engines if they had some component of static content, and after much deliberation we decided that selling sponsorships for this component would be the fairest and easiest way to get this content created.
So what’s included in the Localism sponsorship? Well it will be “static’ content on a specific community page. You get to write and provide the content and pictures. You get your own picture, contact information, link to your blog, and it looks like 3 outbound links. Obviously the value for website owners looking for local relevance can purchase the links and get the juice from the locally relevant page flowing to their site. You can also register a free account (soon I guess) and start posting content under your profile.
The Downside
Real estate agents and the real estate industry is a market of individuals, and in the past, individual agent’s websites dominated the search engine results. However, with more technology rolling out, start up companies with venture capital are making themselves felt. This is an opportunity for a larger company to harness User Generated Content to increase their search engine rankings, and even charge people to write their content for them (Sponsorship). Localism will then potentially start ranking for geographic areas, pushing out the real estate agents who are contributing. It is also to be seen if the links included in the sponsorship are seen by Google as “Selling Links”.
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Comments
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Drew Meyers on July 10, 2008 1:36 pm
Here is a detailed Q&A from Jon Washburn.
Jay Thompson on July 10, 2008 2:55 pm
I don’t know how to answer the “Hype or Value” question. Mostly because apparently I don’t “get” Localism.
I work primarily in the East Valley of the Phoenix Metro area. I see Localism “neighborhoods” that range from 4,000 home master planned communities to 100 home subdivisions that no one outside the subdivision has likely ever heard of.
At $7 a pop, it would cost me $973/month to “sponsor” the existing neighborhoods in Gilbert, AZ – a town of 200,000 people. I don’t even remotely see the value in that.
And from what I’ve read, people can create new “neighborhoods” within existing neighborhoods???
To quote Jon Washburn’s post:
“Answer: Each submitted community will be sponsorable. The two main requirements are that the community have a unique name and reside within the geo-graphical confines of a city. For example one person could sponsor “Queen Anne” Seattle, and someone else could create and sponsor “North Queen Anne” Seattle.” (my emphasis)
So can I create and sponsor “Northeast Queen Anne”? How about “North by Northwest Queen Anne”?
How is this controlled?
Call me confused….
Jeremy Rivera on July 10, 2008 7:39 pm
Jay,
I think that that is definitely a loop hole in the Localism scheme. It is a little hard to see the value in the Localism sponsorship from that perspective. To play the devils advocate, viewing it from an SEO perspective sponsorship gives you 3 followed links from a topically relevant page that you can direct to any page you’d like. The pages do seem to gather and pass good page rank and value.
From an advertisement standpoint, we don’t actually have any sort of metrics that let us know how many people view each community…if that was included in the sponsorship, then it might be more attractive, do you agree?
Brian Wilson on July 11, 2008 11:21 am
I love this blog because of the quality of the authors and commenters. Kudo’s to Drew for creating a positive atmosphere of intellectual engagement.
Jeremy, I appreciate the balanced perspective. I applaud the ActiveRain team’s efforts and based on past experience, they will work through the issues. Building a platform that reaches across every real estate market in the country especially with an existing content base and format that needs to be integrated is not child’s play. Go for it guys!
Jeremy Rivera on July 11, 2008 11:24 am
Brian I appreciate the thumbs up, and also respect Drew for opening this platform up
In the end, I do respect the Active rain team, and hopefully Localism will be successful and beneficial to RE agents and users alike.
Jay Thompson on July 11, 2008 11:49 am
“if that was included in the sponsorship, then it might be more attractive, do you agree?”
Absolutely. And of course that data can’t be provided, yet, because the system is brand new.
I’ve got no ill-wishes for AR,the people that work there or the agents that use it. I do believe (strongly) that an agent would be better served by hosting their own blog. But AR is a *great* place to network and meet other real estate professionals.
The jury is out on whether they’ll be able to attract real estate consumers.
Jeremy Rivera on July 11, 2008 11:58 am
“The jury is out on whether they’ll be able to attract real estate consumers”
I agree on that point…It doesn’t seem to me like they are really focusing on the real estate aspect themselves, but trying to get into rankings for community information… Since their primary posting source has been Realtors, I think this may have tilted the site in the past towards real estate, but if they’ve opened it up to the public, then I think they’re going for a more general and community oriented audience/participation group.
Drew Meyers on July 11, 2008 12:14 pm
Brian-
Thanks for the kinds words. When are we going to see the next Brian Wilson post on GEB?
Brian Wilson on July 11, 2008 12:26 pm
I knew there was a risk to “coming out of the dark” and posting! We are finishing up the launch of our 2nd phase here in two weeks which will enable me to me social and less of free-loader
.
Jeff in Hawaii on July 17, 2008 9:24 pm
Jeremy – not sure if there is even value in the links as I do not see any PR on the state pages or cities. Is that maybe because there is duplicate content from AR? Still might be worth a couple links, but then it might not take long before Google nukes them. Because they would qualify as a paid link and that is a big No-No with G.
Brad Andersohn on July 18, 2008 2:16 am
Hype or Value? Hmmmm….Can I say Both? What comes first, the hype or the value? If I had to make a choice, I’d have to go with value.
That may not be fair to answer since I’ve had the chances and opportunities internally to see the entire vision.
There may have been some hype in the beginning, but there will sure be value in the end.
Jeremy Rivera on July 18, 2008 6:06 pm
Jeff,
I also was considering how Localism is just flouting the sponsorship with the links for sale. Maybe they think Google won’t notice…
I can see some relevance, if they allow anchor text, coming from a related city page. I do see a couple pages with page rank- In fact, their la Jolla page is PR5.
Brad,
As a site owner myself, and poster to AR, I too hope that it’s success full and valuable in the future…hopefully it won’t be a failure because it’s a pretty good thing for users to have more and more quality information.
Bill Gassett on July 30, 2008 2:41 pm
My money is on Active Rain making the new Localism site something of great value. Only time will tell but I will be real surprised if it does not become a huge success.
sean on August 9, 2008 12:06 pm
Localism from what i’ve seen is going to be huge. Their layout and ease of transferring over posts from current posts already on Active rain is great.
They’re predicting Localism will garner the same amount of traffic as Zillow and Trulia combined and while real estate agents currently hold the cards there ( providing pertinent information that only realtors know) soon the site will be open to everyone and everyone will have a chance to claim their community as their own including being able to claim they are the local expert.