Geek
It was Todd Carpenter who first called me an underestimated geek. I don’t write much about technology I write more about what to do with it and what it does for me. When it comes to all around geekiness I rate pretty high but I won’t go into it, ask Todd.
A couple of nights ago I was asked why I use Typepad. We all know that real estate bloggers are supposed to use Word Press. I am not sure who made the rule or why and there was a time when I considered exporting my blog.
Three Years of Typepad
When I started my blog more than three years ago I chose Typepad. At the time I wasn’t impressed with what Word Press had to offer and I wanted to get started right away. My goal for my business blog has always been the same and my focus has always been on producing content. I produce so much content that it is hard to find the time to learn about plug-ins, upgrades and everything else that goes with Word Press. I do however spend some time keeping up on the latest developments just in case I am missing out on something that would give me a reason to make a switch and I have a wordpress blog.
Affordable and easy to customize
Many of the people who use typepad don’t see all the features and they don’t know how to use them. The online help is fantastic and I explore it often. Typepad isn’t free. I have to pay $148 dollars each year to use it. That seems to be a major hurtle for some but I figure I am worth it. For that amount of money I can have as many blogs as I want and have multi-author blogs and the price includes hosting. There is also an account for $90 dollars a year that provides almost as much but limits the number of blogs to 3.
A typepad blog does not take long to set up and is easily customized. They keep making it easier and adding more features. Some features features can be added by installing various widgets. Widgets are kind of like plug-ins except they are installed with a couple of clicks of the mouse.
When I set up my business blog I did it correctly. It has had a great page rank for years and still comes up number one in the search engines for St. Paul Real estate.
Google Loves me anyway
The blog has several photo albums embeded and one of them brings in a lot of business. It is a directory that most people don’t notice but Google knows it is there. I have also discovered that single property pages embded in my blog have instant google juice where as single property web sites seem to get lost on the web.
As a safe guard I have all of my content backed up and have some strategies for quickly starting a new blog somewhere else if there is some kind of a problem. I don’t anticiapte any problems but at this point my blog is my business and I won’t take any risks with it.
Three Blogs Three Looks
The three blogs I have are all very different. The real estate blog uses custom CSS curtesy of Jim Cronin at the Tomato. The real estate weenie is my own design. I used a standard template and customized it. No CSS skills needed. The wildflower blog uses a template and I am using a multimedia layout to handle the photos. It isn’t really a blog. I am using it more like a directory and Google likes it just fine.
Over the holiday’s I will be moving my mobile blog to tyeppad. Typepad handles mobile blogging with the greatest of ease. I sometimes use it when I can’t post on my business blog any other way. The feature has been built in since early 2005.
For bloggers who want a business blog and who want to spend their time generating content and not on the technical aspects of blogging I recommend Typepad. It is a time saver.
