The life of a community blog – RealCrozetVA

Community.

A friend wrote some time ago that part of finding success is to give a sh*t. Giving a sh*t is hard. But it’s rewarding and meaningful. This post? Not about real estate, other than that a tremendous component of “real estate” is community.

Just over nine years ago, I started RealCrozetVA with a simple goal -“to provide a forum for Crozet to (hopefully) discuss their thoughts about Crozet’s growth.” At the time of the blog’s inception, Crozet was smaller, Old Trail hadn’t yet begun, the new Crozet Library was still being designed, and there was palpable concern, and questions, about what was happening.

In the past nine years, a lot has changed. Facebook and Twitter, for example, didn’t exist. Now those channels have become major components of the RealCrozetVa communication voice. I’ve never spent the time to figure out a “strategy” per se, but some things are more appropriate for Facebook, some for Twitter, and I’ve started a “recently on facebook” category on the blog to archive the conversations there.

Two thoughts on the changing technology – 1) I wish I’d done a better job of archiving photos of Crozet. 2) One of the constants in this journey has been WordPress.

The Crozet Gazette launched a several years ago and has provided consistently great reporting, something which is sorely needed by the community.

Charlottesville Tomorrow started and is awesome.

I added a calendar component some time ago (archived: 2024), but last year spent the money on a plugin that’s made the calendar much, much more functional, enabling community members to add events on their own.

I’d love to be able to make some changes to the design (like add an “add to calendar” button) but that’s likely to not ever happen by me.

But really? The “success” of RealCrozetVA is thanks to the community’s involvement, their comments, likes, replies, etc.

Have I “gotten business” from RealCrozetVA? Maybe, but that’s never, ever, been the goal. I occasionally write about the Crozet real estate market (46 posts in 9 years – about 3% of the time), merely as a reminder that I do happen to earn a living as a real estate agent.

One thing that is absolutely critical is Blue Ridge Internetworks (archived: 2015) who provide the hosting and support for RealCrozetVA for free. Thank you.  (I’d get their fiber to my house if I could)

I’m grateful for the community in which I live, and hope to continue writing about it for some time.

* I’m always looking for guest posters, though!