BiggerPockets Founder's Blog

Many of you may not know that BiggerPockets has a system to allow members to take private notes on other members and on property listings.

That's right, Your Notes are PRIVATE!

Your notes are viewable ONLY BY YOU!

Taking notes on other members is a great way to stay organized, to remind yourself of conversations or discussions, etc.  Essentially, notes allow members to keep a virtual file on those people that they come into contact with on BiggerPockets!

Here's how BiggerPockets Notes Works:

1 - Find Notes Tab on a member's profile and click on ADD NOTE

 2 - A dialogue box will ope, allowing you to create a note.  Write your note and then save it, or cancel if you don't want to.  Notes can be deleted at any time.

3 - After saving the note, you'll see it every time you open the user's profile and view the NOTES tab.  Additionally, notes can be viewed from within the DASHBOARD by clicking on the NOTES tab on the sidebar.

See View from the DASHBOARD below.

That's it!  As you can see, creating notes is an easy way to remember things about other members on the site.

BTW - You can also take notes on ANY property listing on the site.

Questions?

Over the past 2 days we've rolled out a set of AWARD BADGES for those members who are amongst the top contributors to our forums, blogs, blog comments, bulletins, referrals, etc. 

Here are a few of the badges you could qualify for:

Top Poster

Top Poster this Week

Top Poster This Month

And here's how it would look on your profile:

So, get active and you can end up being one of the top contributors to BiggerPockets and get your profile blinged out with awards!

As many of you know, we recently launched a Stats page that highlights the leaders within the BiggerPockets Community.  Part of that page shines a light on those members who are the Top Referrers to the site.

 We highlight those members who are the top referrers of the week, month, and all time.

 Getting to the top of the charts in this category is currently pretty easy, and a great way to get some increased exposure for you and your profile.  Here's how:

How to Refer New Members for FREE Exposure

There are 3 ways to get referral credits for letting new members know about BiggerPockets.

1. Use the INVITE link found across the site to send an individual invite.  Just enter your friend or colleague's Name and Email address in the form and once they sign up (they will get an email with instructions on joining), you get credit for the referral.

2 - Use the REFERRAL LINK on the INVITE page.   Just copy and paste the REFERRAL LINK from the INVITE page into an email and send it to your friends ad colleagues.  If they sign up using that link, you'll get credit for the referral once they sign up.

You can also use this link on your Blog, Forum Signature on other sites, etc.  These two methods are great ways to bring eyeballs to BiggerPockets and give you all the credit!

3 - IMPORT your contacts from Gmail, Yahoo mail, or Hotmail.  From the INVITE page, you'll see a tab labeled IMPORT CONTACTS, which allows you to import all of the people in your addres book to the site.  This feature allows you to import all of your colleagues in one fast shot.  As in the other methods, once your contacts sign up, you'll get credit.  NOTE: We never store any login or password information entered from your accounts.

FYI - The third tab on the invite page allows you to track those invites that you've imported from #3 above.  You can elect to resend an invite or delete it.  

We'll soon be adding Badges on member profiles and on different areas of the site that highlight those members who are the top referrers and others who appear on the stats page. 

Get started referring people to BiggerPockets.com today and get a head start on your new found exposure!

BiggerPockets is not only a community for sharing knowledge, for networking, and making deals, but it is also a marketing platform for people in the real estate space.

Here are several easy ways to use BiggerPockets to market yourself and your business:

• Create a Detailed, Professional Profile with Photo - BiggerPockets profiles have been designed to give you the opportunity to share information about yourself and your business with the rest of the community and the world.  Our profiles are search engine optimized and can be found on all the major search engines.  They give people a way to find out about your contact information, experience, goals, and of course, your activity on BiggerPockets.  Profiles that are not completely filled in do not appear in our networking page or site's front page.  A complete profile means one that includes an avatar or image.  If you don't want to share a photo of yourself, find a picture that matches and use it. Remember, profiles with photos get a TON more traffic!

• Create a signature and get active on the forums - Our forums are visited by thousands of people every day.  If you're an active forum participant, you can easily start building a good reputation among the community.  Those people who prove to be knowledgeable and helpful to others often get a TON of business from their participation on the forums. I know some people who became so flooded with business that sadly, they could no longer participate!

  Part of getting noticed is having a signature at the bottom of all of your posts.  You'll want to edit your profile and select the signature tab to create your sig.  Make sure your company name is accurate in your profile, and select the "Use my name and company in my forum signature" button.   Then use the blank space next to "Forum Signature" to enter your website URL, phone number, or email address (if you want people reading your posts to see this info).

• Create a Blog - BiggerPockets Blogs are easy to set up and use and require no programming knowledge.  We've essentailly created our own proprietary blogging platform that not only allows you to communicate with the world, but helps promote you.  BiggerPockets has implemented many search engine optimizing features to help you get your name out there by blogging.  The key to successful blogging, however, is not just having a blog, but having one that shares Quality content.  If your blog is just full of spammy crap, no one is going to visit your profile, website, or anything else.  Check out some more of the blog's features.

• Write some Articles - BiggerPockets has built a phenominal article directory for the benefit of both the average real estate consumer or investor and for the benefit of the articles' authors.  Since we're talking about marketing benefits here, we'll focus on the authors.  All articles on BiggerPockets give the author a place to create a byline/signature.  This is the perfect place to market yourself:  share links to your website, tell folks what you're up to, promote your latest book.  Our articles are viewed by tens of thousands of people every month both on site and through our articles feed.  Why wouldn't you want some added exposure?

• Participate in BiggerPockets Bulletin - BiggerPockets Bulletin is a real estate social bookmarking tool that allows members to post interesting real estate related news and other links to share.  Our members can then make comments on these articles or vote on those that they find most interesting.  Got an interesting article or story that you wrote?  Share it on the bulletin!  With participation comes visibility . . . with visibility comes just what you're looking for - free marketing.

• Join or Create a Group - Groups are a great way for people of similar interest to come together.  Being part of a group on BiggerPockets allows you to be seen by those people, and bring renewed exposure within your own, mini-community.

• Just Get Involved! - We've created an incentive system for those members who get involved on the site.  Our stats page highlights the most active members of the day, week, month, and all-time.  This page is visited my tons of members, and the search engines alike.  Show up on the stats page because you're active, and you're going to see more traffic to your profile!

BiggerPockets Blogs Improvements

We've made several new improvements to our blogging system this morning that I thought important to share:

1. Members can now post to their blogs using either our WYSIWYG (simple) formatting system, or select the ADVANCED tab and create their blog posts using HTML.  We added the ability to use HTML so our members can have more control over their design.

   
   

2. We upgraded our Blog Customizer color picker.  The old one was a bit disorganized and we figured we'd simplify the process.

   
   

Thanks to all of you who have started blogging.  There are some great new blogs on the site (a few that aren't so great, too) that are well worth checking out! 

Jump on our main blog page and check them out!

We've integrated trackbacks into our blogging system to help out members communicate with other bloggers -- on site and off.

According to Wikipedia:

A Trackback is one of three types of Linkbacks, methods for Web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking, and so referring, to their articles. Some weblog software programs, such as Wordpress, Movable Type, Typo and Community Server, support automatic pingbacks where all the links in a published article can be pinged when the article is published. The term is used colloquially for any kind of Linkback.

Our trackbacks should work with all of the major blogging systems.

How Trackbacks work on BiggerPockets Blogs

All you have to do is link to another blog post within your post.  You could link to a blog on BiggerPockets or any blog offsite, and the post that you link to will be notified that you're linking to them .

Linking to other blogs is a great way to gain publicity for your own articles, and to communicate with other bloggers.

Of course, you should not abuse these trackbacks, for the purpose of SPAM. 

Here's a few great points courtesy of RSSPieces:

• Each TrackBack allows you to have a conversation between blogs
• It is seen by the search engines as an emphasized link
• It is a courtesy for other bloggers to see where they are getting traffic from
• It will allow readers to follow an article between multiple blogs

Some Additional Resources on Trackbacks:

• What Are Trackbacks and How Do I Use Them?

• How a Trackback after a Comment Can Start a Relationship