I was recently reading “Is your brokerage website so 2001?”. That’s what got me thinking about my own website. The article argues that most real estate websites are all the same. Set it and forget it was the idea back then (2001 onward). Create a website and clients will come.
I met with a local website developer yesterday afternoon. We had a nice chat. I’ve been thinking for a long time to update this website. The problem is, it is not really a website. It’s a blog.
For me, the terms blog and website are interchangeable. I always forget that they are not. The difference? Blogs are dynamic with new content being added every day or week. Websites are static. They are more like online brochures. Some have dynamic aspects to them. Some have a blog component.
The Greater Fool
One of my favourite blogs is – The Greater Fool – Garth Turner on Economics, Real Estate Money, and the Road ahead. It is almost a daily blog. He has lots of adoring followers. He tells them what they want to hear. He is often a little over the top, embellishing the bad news. The world is flat. We are all going to sail off the edge. But I like him, because he is a great balance to the real estate news that comes out of the boards, many banks and sometimes news media. The Greater Fool is a counter weight.
His blog is really an old fashioned blog. It looks like a blog and it acts like a blog. I don’t think he has ever changed the format, not since I’ve been reading him anyway
HuffPo
The Huffington Post is another of my favourite blogs. It doesn’t look like a blog. It looks like a newspaper. Of course, it is much much bigger, with serval writers producing stories every couple of hours. Like a newspaper, there is a lot to look at, but I can always find a story to read. Here are two other favourite website/blogs I often visit: Mashable, Citylab. Notice the style?
Keith Marshall
My website looks a heck of a lot more like Garth Turner’s than the Huffington Post. There are a lot of changes needed. These include:
Having pictures of homes
Having pictures
Easier navigation
“Website look” instead of “blog look”
Mine is an old website so there are broken links, missing pictures, out of date information information…
Over the next little while I am going to update it, making it more pleasing to the eyes. It’s my winter project. I’m more than a little apprehensive about messing with my website. It’s doing what it is suppose to do. What if I break it?
