In the News

Buying or building a new home is an emotional journey, especially if it’s your first home. It’s only natural to want to share that journey with your friends and family. And you may even be able to help your friends and family with their own home purchases in the future as they watch you go through the process. So what’s the best way to share this journey with the people that you love? You have several options like:

A Blog

Some people might think blogs are old-fashioned, but blogs are still going strong. And they have some distinct advantages if you are looking for a reliable way to share your home buying journey with the people you care about. Blogs are easy to set up and most blog sites are free. Although you can invest in a custom domain name and pay for hosting if you want to make it easy for others to find you online. Some of the advantages of using a blog to document your home purchase and renovations are:

• Low cost if not free
• Custom domain name option
• Easy for people to find
• You can customize the way the site looks
• You control all of your photos, videos, and information
• Your blog can’t get shut down or mass reported like social media posts

Some of the disadvantages of using a blog are:

• Cost if you use a custom domain
• Time spent updating the blog 
• Time spent on design or learning how to use the blog effectively

You can also use a blog in conjunction with social media by creating short posts on social media that direct people back to your blog where you can put more information, longer video clips, and photos. 

Instagram

Instagram is a wildly popular social media app that is photo based, which makes it a great choice for sharing something like a home buying journey. You can share photos of homes you are considering, renovations that you do on the home you purchase, and photos of items that you want to buy for your homes. A big advantage of using Instagram for sharing with friends and family is that you can link directly to products. So instead of setting up a new home registry for gifts you can link a post directly to items that you would love to receive as housewarming gifts. Some of the other advantages of using Instagram include:

• You can post photos and videos to your feed
• You can link photos to products or link back to your blog
• Friends and family can comment directly on your posts
• You can post stories that are temporary videos and will disappear after 24 hours
• Accessible on smart phones or a computer

Some of the disadvantages of using Instagram are:

• Your friends and family need accounts in order to see your videos or comment
• Your content will be lost if you lose your account
• It can be tough to reach customer service if you have a problem

A good compromise is to use Instagram for some things but not put all of your content on Instagram. 

Facebook

Facebook is the most senior friendly social media platform so if you have a lot of older relatives who are interested in following your home buying journey Facebook is a good platform to use. Many older people are familiar with Facebook and how it works and they have Facebook accounts. They will be happy about not having to sign up for a new platform to see your content. Facebook is a relatively easy to use platform but the interface can be clunky. If you are going to use Facebook to post photos and videos of your new home it’s a good idea to make a private group for your friends and family where you can share your home safely. 

TikTok

TikTok is one of the newer social media platforms and even though it’s perceived as being a social media platform primarily for younger people it has some great features that would make it ideal for sharing a journey like this. TikTok users create and share short videos, so you would be able to share fun video clips and informative videos too. There is a learning curve for figuring out how to make great video content. And your friends and family would need smart phones with the TikTok app on it to see your content. But if you’re planning on documenting renovations TikTok is a great platform for that.

Ultimately no matter what platform you use to share your home buying journey your friends and family will be excited to watch you find, buy, and decorate your dream house.