Mills Properties
#Apartmentmarketing: Attention Economy
Instead of one-way interruption, Web marketing is about delivering useful content at just the precise moment that a buyer needs it. – David
Meerman Scott
Seth Godin quipped that engagement is hitting people with the right message at the right time so as to have them take action [engage]. I think we have to take that word engage and thus precise moment further. To truly engage, at least in my head, you have to be enchanted, you have to be moved, you have to yearn for more so much so that you have no choice but to act on your desires. It the deepest throes of emotion. Words like love, anger and the many nuances of each come to mind. It’s not just a like, unlike, +1 or the such. It’s deeper.
Mr. Apartment Manager Man; “I am done.”
It’s not unlike the gentleman I met with last Friday evening. He, unfortunately, was moving out of our Central West End Community. Reason? In his words, “I am done.”
You see about three weeks ago, the entire roof of his five story building blew off and landed in the parking lot beside and the street in front. Thank the one that governs it all that no one was hurt as it could have been really bad.
In response to the situation; our team entered every apartment in the building and place plastic over beds, electronics and the such. Most were thankful. Not the gentleman I met on Friday. His beef? We did not leave him a note to let him know we had been in his apartment.
Engage
Somewhere in the wake of the roof being pulled off the building by straight lined winds; his attention got engaged. The premise aside; he was moved by an aggressive deep seated emotion. He engaged with some ill language and barbed personal remarks for the onsite team and the rest of our Mills management team. He got so engaged that he ended up leaving the property.
The Point
I think we are headed toward true engagement – we are not there yet. We use the word but in it’s loosest of senses. We are in the early innings of a very long ball game that is frankly destined for infinite extra innings. Think in terms of singularity. Think in terms of love, hate and other extremes. That’s engagement. For now we are just courting. Or, at best out on a blind date and liking our mate because our friends suggested we should. Now it’s up to us and the million other people out there participating with brands to fall in love or fall in hate.
What do you think?
Photo tip to: Online Ninja Blog
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#Apartmentmarketing: Blog for Juice
Mike Brewer · · 1 Comment
No matter what, the very first piece of social media real estate I’d start with is a blog. – Chris Brogan
Blog About Everything Unrelated
United Blogs of Benetton is one of my very favorite blogs. It was one of my early inspirations when I started writing a multifamily industry related one back in 2005. The thing that struck me most about the blog is that it had absolutely nothing to do with their core business of fashion. In fact, I remember reading a post they wrote back around that time that suggested their reason for doing so.
I can’t find the post so I am doing my best to recall here. The gist was that they thought that the real value of blogging was to give the people that read it the essence of what they valued as an organization. In other words, they wanted to translate the values of their organization by way of compelling and worldly content.
Our First Company Related Blog
When we started our first company blog in 05′ we did just that. But in lieu of a forward facing, community gathering effort; we brought out the personality of EQRs Portland Portfolio. We called the blog: Portland Rocks Newsletter and the content consisted of stories about our teams. Be it work related or a personal experience we allowed just about everything.
Everything that is except for content about EQR or any specifically related to our apartment communities. Our chief aim back then was to invite people into relationship. Whether they bought from us or not was not the point of the blog. If they did, we considered it icing on the cake.
And, fathom this for a minute. It had nothing to do with SEO or SEM back then. Whoa!
It’s All About the Juice
Fast forward to today – everyone has a blog and everyone is jockeying for the first page of Google search. And, we all do it for Google Juice. We wrap it in 800 count Egyptian cotton [Read: adding value or enhancing experience].
All that being said, I agree 100% with Chris B.
AI: Start a blog today – if you have not already!
M
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#Apartmentmarketing: Share
People share, read and generally engage more with any type of content when it’s surfaced through friends & people they know and trust! – Malorie Lucich – Facebook Spokesperson
Know and Trust
When it comes to using social media to market apartments, I think we are still in the early miles of a endless endurance pace across the deserts of Africa. Some in the business have caught the fact that business is transacted by great story tellers. And, it is incumbent upon us, on the selling end, to give exceptional reasons for our buying constituents to echo the very stories we tell them when we sell our goods and services.
Park Clayton Apartments
Park Clayton rests just about a mile from Washington University in Saint Louis. The apartment community is but 104 units and boasts zero meaningful amenities outside of location. Even that has it’s challenges as it relates to getting to the university. It sits on the opposite side of a major freeway that disects its way to downtown Saint Louis. Yet we have Likers and we have occupancy.
Our Mills Branded Park Clayton Specific Facebook site boasts just over 300 likes. They are made up of current residents, former residents, industry professionals from in and out of Saint Louis and employees of Mills. Within in the diverse mix of people is a group that hails from the Far East and they love Park Clayton. They love the Luaus, they love the open houses to show off our upgraded units, they love the annual St. Patrick’s Parade that makes its way down the street in front of the building and they love Reb’s dump joke Friday. And they love to share.
Share to Rent
About a year ago Teresa, the Property Manager, used Facebook to give away some goodies and the response was over the top. One resident shared with over 100 of his friends in order to stand out in his quest to receive the prize. He shared the story with his friends in the Far East and they shared back. And, they shared back in a big way. You see, this young man had friends who were in wait to come to the states. More specifically in wait to attend Washington University in Saint Louis. And, you better believe they leased at Park Clayton. All because we told some stories that people could share.
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#Apartmentmarketing: Waiting
“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?
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Multifamily #trust30: Future Text
Day 27 of the #trust30 challenge. Getting close to the end; I think I will miss the daily exercise a bit…
Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Imagine your future self, ie, you 10 years from now. If he/she were to send you a tweet or text message, 1) what would it say and 2) how would that transform your life or change something you’re doing, thinking, believing or saying today?
(Author: Tia Singh)
Multifamily Tomorrow
My tweet would be;
Listen attentively. You will be all the better for it.
That would give cause for me to listen more and speak less. Take more action and give less lip service.
Your listening attentively contributor,
M
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