Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Cozy cohousing home near downtown Sacramento

[David L. Mandel (dlmandel]

A few words from a member of the offending websiteless community here.
        * We were built and all occupied long before the Internet era, so we 
found other ways to "sell" ourselves to our future neighbors.
        * In all instances of the very occasional turnover since then, there's 
been no shortage of people someone of us knows who want to join us.
        * We have an active and very useful private Google site for 
information, governance, meeting notes, etc.; and an active members' list-serv 
for news, urgent information, requests for stuff, etc. So we're not total cave 
people.
        * A quick Google search using our name leads directly to basic 
information (with one very untypical photo) on the cohousing web site; and a 
slew of photos on a page at the Cohousing Company website -- so it's not like 
we're undercover or something.
With all that, yeah it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a public community site. 
I'll suggest it to one of our kids.

David Mandel, Southside Park, Sacramento



________________________________
 From: Michael Barrett <mbarrett [at] toast.net>
To: Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org> 
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2014 10:36 PM
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Cozy cohousing home near downtown Sacramento
 


Because nobody changed it (yet).
I read the initial notice of a "Cozy cohousing home near downtown Sacramento" 
for sale, and as I 
often do, wanted to "look" at the community - and discovered no website. My 
comment was:

Sounds like cohousing, has cohousing in its name, is listed at 
http://directory.ic.org, BUT DOESN'T
HAVE A WEBSITE !
Well, I guess it's not a requirement  . . . . but it's sort of customary ? . . 
. .  expected?


Seems to have set off a totally unexpected firestorm of comments, some with 
quite strong opinions.
Michael

at Shadowlake Village in Blacksburg in southwest VA - where the temperature 
only went down to a 
balmy -3.1°F the other night, surely a lot warmer than Madison where I see you 
got to  -18° 
(assuming you are actually in Madison and not just an alumna who has perhaps 
long since moved onto 
warmer climes)
http://www.shadowlakevillage.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Karen Carlson" <kcarlson2 [at] wisc.edu>
To: "Cohousing-L" <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2014 11:18 PM
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Cozy cohousing home near downtown Sacramento


>
> Is there a reason why this discussion is under the subject line of "cozy 
> home..."?
>
> Karen c
>
>
> On Jan 9, 2014, at 8:20 PM, Muriel Kranowski wrote:
>
>>
>> I don't mean to offend, but I do think the "we don't need no stinkin'
>> website!" folks are looking at it from the wrong perspective - that is, if
>> promoting resales is important to them. The significant perspective is that
>> of the possible outside purchaser, one with no prior connection to the
>> community.
>>
>> These days, people who have serious intentions typically don't just phone
>> and say "tell me all about your community." They expect to learn some basic
>> info about you before they decide to make that first contact, and they
>> expect to find that basic info on your website. I suspect that mindset has
>> been encouraged by the easy availability of on-line reviews for products,
>> restaurants, and just about everything that you can buy or rent or
>> experience - people want a preview before making any kind of commitment.
>>
>> I also think that not having a website gives the impression that your
>> community is closed to new people. It's like saying "Move along, find
>> another community to check out, we're not in marketing mode here."
>>
>> You can look at other communities' websites and crib heavily - no need to
>> be super-creative. You do need a few photos, but surely someone has a
>> digital camera or at least a smartphone?
>>
>> You need to say how many units, their general configuration and size,
>> describe the common house and the site, and anything special or unusual
>> that you do or have - your particular "flavor" as a community - and of
>> course, give people a way to contact you, by phone if you have a contact
>> person who enjoys chatting with people, and (or only) by email. You can
>> link to the national website cohousing.org to provide the basic FAQs for
>> "What Is Cohousing." Have someone who can write well (even, or perhaps
>> preferably, someone who doesn't live there) review it for good English
>> usage and a coherent and welcoming message before it goes live - sloppily
>> written text will hurt your community's credibility.
>>
>> It's true that someone needs to be the website manager if only to update
>> the Units for Sale/for Rent page, but once you've put a basic website in
>> place it need not take a lot of time or special know-how to keep it up.
>> Just don't let anyone create for you a highly technical site that only he
>> or she knows how to maintain; stick to basic easy-to-use website-building
>> software.
>>
>> Plan to look at it every few years so you can update if needed. We did a
>> complete overhaul of our original website about 5 years ago and haven't
>> changed its basic layout since - added a few photos to the Photo Gallery,
>> and of course the sales/rentals page is kept up-to-date.
>>
>>     Muriel
>>     Shadowlake Village Cohousing, Blacksburg, VA
>>
>>
>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>
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>
> 

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