Mike Brewer
Social Media at the end of the day
Why should you participate in social media? Simple answer, the conveyor belt principle. At the end of the day, you do it for two reasons; 1. To make friends 2. To drive them to your point of purchase (website). Not unlike a conveyor belt moves your groceries to the checker, your social media sites will move your new friends to your website where your goal should be to move them along in the purchasing process.
It drives me crazy when I hear people talk about creating big expensive, flash media, dramatized and theatrical websites. I say, why? Nobody goes to your website any more. They get to your website. There is a big difference. So, why not create a great website that furthers the relationship you will be creating at your MySpace, Facebook, Squidoo and blog site. The sites that will, if they have not already, drive the lion’s share of traffic to your site. It’s FREE marketing. It’s FREE to get them to your site.
I love Forrent.com and many of the other ILS’s out there but when I can drive it for FREE I wonder if I need them.
On an aside, it humors me to see the major ILS’s jumping on the social media bandwagon and tauting it as if they have been there all along. Social media is moving into it’s third or fourth year by my estimations. I say welcome to the party and in the same breath guess what, smart owners have been here for a while and understand it as well if not better than you. I do applaud Forrent for being the front runner in the adoption process and am quite interested to see how their business model further evolves.
On a further aside, I often refer to the day I created a Squidoo site for my Equity Residential Portland portfolio that outranked every major ILS and our own eqr.com site any time of the day or night. My passion for social media was cemented the day my ForRent rep challenged me to do a search so she could show me how well ForRent ranked on Google’s organic search results and my Squidoo page came up first. Not once but nearly ten times she tried, each time with different but relevant search terms and each time Squidoo ruled the day. Cost to me? 20 minutes of my time to create the site and 5 minutes to email it to five of my friends.
That’s it for my Saturday morning rant. My apologies if it seems all over the board. The kids will be stirring soon and we will be off to the zoo.
Your fellow property management maniac. M
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Check out PadZing if you have not already
Dear Mike,
The PadZing website has been updated as of May 1st, 2008 with the latest rent and vacancy information. Click here to view.
The statistics are based on actual rents and availability from almost 800,000 apartment units nationwide, taken directly from their property management systems.
The PadZinger tool is just one of the many upcoming new features.
April
was a busy month showcasing PadZing in the marketplace at two industry
events. First, we unveiled the next version of PadZing at the NMHC
Research Forum in Chicago April 15th and previewed it at the Apartment
Internet Marketing (AIM) Conference in Scottsdale the following week.
The reaction? Unlike anything I’ve seen in this industry! People see
huge value in PadZing’s unique ability to provide real-time market
data. It’s still in beta but based on the crowds’ reactions to the
sneak previews at both events, the excitement level got us even more
pumped about what we have to offer the industry.
Currently
on PadZing you can only drill down to the county level, but with the
next release you will be able to drill down to the zip code level and
beyond, to a Microsoft Virtual Earth
map showing specific geographic regions and neighborhoods. We’ve been
working directly with Microsoft and their developers to make this a
showcase of their mapping technology and our market data. One really
cool feature is the PadZinger mapping tool which allows you to type in
an address and restrict competitive properties results to a
user-defined radius or polygon.
We
expect to begin inviting people to experience the private beta in the
coming months. If you’re signed up on this mailing list you’ll be among
the first to see the next generation in apartment market research tools!
Mike Mueller > CEO
Realty DataTrust > PadZing.com
O:480.776.5350 :: C:602.692.7715
mmueller@realtydatatrust.com
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NAR expects home sales to improve soon
A National Association of Realtors (NAR) study shows house sales remained soft in March, but the organization is forecasting sales will begin to improve over the summer. [Click here for more]
I expect the weather will improve soon. In fact, like the NAR, I am certain that it will happen over the summer.
Is the damage you impart on your credibility offset by the mere chance that you will be The One that calls the bottom? Just wondering.
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Blog Design Revision
Just a quick shout out of thanks to Brent from Aptconnect. Thank you for the suggestion to move the recent comments section on the right hand side of the blog to a position above the fold.
We are looking to be the best blog in the property management universe and can only do so with the help of the community. So, thank you again Mr. Williams and have a brilliant day. M
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Apartment Guide
Mike Brewer · · 1 Comment
Got this from their earnings release;
Apartment Guide and ApartmentGuide.com’s results were primarily due to the Company’s continuing actions to strengthen client relationships and provide value-added online enhancements, including tools to better track results and demonstrate Consumer Source’s effectiveness in generating customer leads and leases.
I have seen my AG rep once in the year I have been in Saint Louis. Hmmmm, not sure that statement is entirely accurate.
Technorati Tags: apartment guide, property management, apartment marketing
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