Apartment Blogging

#apartmentmarketing: Blog Format Question

Mike Brewer · September 8, 2011 · 9 Comments

Short and sweet today –

One of my favorite blogs, one I read everyday without fail, is Valeria Maltoni’s – Conversation Agent. First rate content always.

Apartment Blog Trunk

I gave up on RSS feed reading about a year ago as I spend more time in my inbox. Nearly every blog I read is done through Outlook now and as such I give more time and attention to the things I read. In other words, I generally do not skim the headline and move on.

About a month ago Valeria made the decision to truncate her email subscription delivery meaning we only see a portion of the message and are forced to click on a link to see the rest.

Result: I read fewer of Valeria’s material to the end. Sorry Valeria.

I understand the reasons for cited in her Saying it in 200 Characters post back on Aug 10, 2011.

My question – should apartment marketers truncate their blog post offerings? We are trying it a Mills [Shameless plug – the Mills Blogging Team is Putting a Dent in the #STL market place].

Would love to hear this communities thoughts? And, thank you in advance for taking the time.

#Apartmentmarketing: Waiting

Mike Brewer · July 3, 2011 · 2 Comments

“If you wait until there is another case study in your industry, you will be to late.” Seth Godin

It goes against the old axiom, ‘good things come to those who wait.’ Anymore you get cooked in the squat if you wait too long. With the advent of the Internet came an accelerating pace of change. Moore’s Law even exists, to some extent, in the world of property management. We are seeing newer, bigger, better and flashier ways of attracting new people and keeping relationship with them over a long bit of time. It’s nuts out there.

Oh, and we have a blog…

Multifamily: Second Mover’s Advantage

At Mills Properties, we like to think that we are exercising the second mover advantage. While we did have our company [internal] blog in place nearly three years ago now; we were a bit delayed in getting our forward facing blog out to pasture. It did put us behind the eight ball and in the same respect, it allowed us to make observation of several other industry movers and shakers. That time and those observations gave us the ability to design a strategy that has yielded some very good results for us.

At just six months in we have achieved the following with our blog:

It’s been the result of some hard work and dedication on the part of many people, first and foremost. Beyond that I would suggest that it’s been the result of setting back and making some observations, learning from others experiments and applying as much as we could.

Today’s call to action – wait. Sometimes, it is okay to wait, watch, learn, strategize, act and fail fast. We did!

What have you gained by waiting?

Mills Properties: Blog Stats

Mike Brewer · June 9, 2011 · 2 Comments

Thought it would be fun to share our Neighborhood Blog stats from time to time in a snap shot view.

Melissa P wrote about the team in her post titled: (B)usiness (L)ove and (O)ther (G)uts whereby she laid out the overarching premise of our new marketing strategy.

Our first blog post went live on November 24, 2010 and since that time we have achieved the following.

Stats are accurate as of lat May, 2011.

MultiFamily Blogging: Letter to The MultiFamily News Editor

Mike Brewer · May 1, 2011 · 3 Comments

Dear Diana Mosher,

Lost Me

I recently read a MHN blog post titled: Who Owns the Residents’ Experience? and I found myself a bit taken aback on a multitude of fronts. In the vein of pure professional and constructive feedback, I think posts of this nature demand a little more homework to include some real world example as a way of backing up key statements.

Left Me to Question

The article carries an interesting perspective but I think it’s a bit off as it relates to the property management world across the American landscape. So many of the REITs and privately held firms have made problem solving central to every role in the organization. Be it the Porter, Leasing Consultant, Property Manager and every position in between. And, they have been doing so for as far back as I can remember.

For example, when I worked for Equity Residential, we kept a lock box stocked with gift cards from various businesses around our community and the entire team had authority to “make it right” with any person who did not feel we were Making Life Easy [A thoughtful Equity tagline] for them. The team also had access to the use of concession monies if necessary. In that respect, it was not just the L.C. that owned the relationship, it was every member of the team, no matter the circumstance. Issues that made it to the home office were very rare and very extreme in nature.

Now that is not to suggest that there were not thresholds with regard to how much you gave away to right a wrong but the point is every person on the team was not just empowered but expected to take care of the people who spent both time and money with us.

On the point of pay; the lead and subsequent statements make it seem like the industry short pays leasing professionals in an effort to cause high turnover. I’m fairly certain that is not the case and maybe I just misunderstood the statement. In my own experience, I see L.C.s who make in advance of A.M.s and P.M.s in some cases. I think it really depends on the various comp structures out there. This point in the article does not seem to be well researched and is validated a bit by the qualifying remark in the lead paragraph.

As for churn and burn; I think this position more times than not is a stepping stone for other industries. In my own experience, I’ve lost some great people to getting their degree in a discipline outside of the property management world. In essence, many good people use the position to earn some very good money while they go to school. Others work it until they figure out what they want to do when they grow up. And, rarely do I see an L.C. move into a corporate marketing role. Another point in the post where I yearned to see the premise.

Any more, P.M. firms are shopping the market for professionals outside the industry who bring a very diverse marketing discipline to the table. It goes way beyond most L.C.s capacity, background or wherewithal. Not to suggest it never happens but it is more of a rarity than a normal course of business.

To close, I very much enjoy the content provided by your magazine but this one fell a bit short.

Your Left Wanting Loyal Reader,

Mike Brewer