social media apartment marketing
Apartment Marketing: Friendslist
Friendslist might be something to keep an eye on. Especially in light of the shrewd move by Forrent.com in creating an exclusive, carve their client marketing partners right out of an avenue of advertising platform, relationship on FBs Marketplace. Could a platform like friendlist make the likely crazy expensive quasi-distribution point irrelevant? Likely not but I secretly hope so…
Friendslist offers a cleaner interface to start, but that’s nothing new. What it does is connect buyers and sellers, or people who are looking for jobs and people who are hiring, through the people they know. Yes, Oodle does this to some extent on Facebook Marketplace, but Friendslist takes a slightly different approach.No offense FR. But, please know whether it was you, AF, AG or any other provider, I would feel the same. The move gave me every cause to expedite the reallocation of near $550,000 of FR specific marketing spend over the last 18 months. Not a complete departure but a semi-massive one. Stay tuned…
Apartment Marketing: PSE
You likely know from your own experiences both on and off line that Emotion Sells! Excitement Sells! Cool Sells! Gossip Sells! Optimism Sells! Humor Sells! Anger Sells! iPhone 4 Sells! Well – more appropriate to this post concerning the iPhone 4 – Being Part of the Cool Kid Tribe Sells! Wit Sells! Deep thoughts by Jack Handy Sells! Heart Felt Sells! To Big to Fail Sells! And B.S. Sells – in spades! Point? It’s the stuff that hits the hardest and softest parts of that thing called heart – soul – spirit and mind! So get out your Kleenex or pick up that axe in need of a good grind – as we have absolutely nothing to tell you that you don’t already know –
Scott Stratten from the very popular UnMarketing Blog cut the idea of sharing down to its core recently –
UnMarketing » Blog Archive » Word of Mouth Has Changed, Sort Of
Look at what gets shared on Facebook, or retweeted on Twitter. Funny stuff, brilliant knowledge-filled posts, sad things, stuff that angers you.
Repeat after me: People. Spread. Emotion.
Apartment Facebook Like Page: Rules for Share
It’s kind of like Steve Leonard’s rule for customer service : Rule number one: The customer is always right. Rule number two: If the customer is wrong, see rule number one! I am adopting Scott’s mantra as it relates to sharing content on your Apartment Facebook Like Page or your Apartment Twitter Status updates: And, to distill it into a set of rules [I hate rules but for the sake of keeping] Rule number one: People. Spread. Emotion. Rule number two: If there is no spread, see rule number one!
Apartment Marketers: Afraid to Blog?
Below is a link to a story that resonated with me relative to a conversation that was broached on Mike Whaling’s: Apartment Marketing Gone Digital’s last episode. I believe it was Eric Brown that made the point about the lack of conversation about blogs as it relates to apartment marketing at NAAs 2010 convention.
Apartment Blogging: Fear
I agree to some extent with Eric that there is a dearth of examples with apartment blogging in the Apartment Space as I think the offerings are growing everyday. For example – Mills Properties – is on the verge of launching seven regional blogs in addition to revamping the Mills employee-centric blog. In addition, JC Hart, Trillium, Paragon, Village Green and PCMG have ventured down the path of blogging and from my perspective are doing a good job of it. I applaud the fact that these firms have taken the endeavor on as an in-house marketing function.
With that, I feel it necessary to make the point that I am not an advocate of ILSs that offer blogging as a part of their advertising package. And, time should be of no excuse. I would rather hear the fear stuff like; I am afraid of what others might think of my choice of topic, my grammar, my spelling or what if I can’t think of anything to write about. Not that those things are not important but – time as an excuse – save it. This is something you make time for at the expense of other things.
Apartment Non-Blogging
To the topic at hand – the following post was offered up on the Conversation Agent Blog a couple weeks ago. In it Valeria Moltoni suggests alternatives to blogging that could and are effective in building your digital footprint. If you are not into creating original and or mashed up blog content – this read is for you. The premise is that participation is an equally compelling form of content creation. She offers some real practical applications using LinkedIn, Twitter and others. So – if you just can’t bring yourself to do it and you elect not to farm it out to a third party, try this method.
Enjoy and let us know your thoughts in the comments below –
Conversation Agent: Blogging at Work if You Don’t Have a Blog
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. Participation is content because it is what will activate your content in the context of the conversation. Remember when you worried about nobody coming to your blog? It’s the same with content in other places – you’ve got to interact to activate it.
Apartment Talent: The Price of Waiting
Hey there! Nice to meet YOU! This post is for those of you that serve on the stages of our industry. That is to suggest the leasing, assistant managers and property managers out there. I like what Seth had to say on his blog a couple of days ago about waiting for validation – here is an excerpt:
If you’re waiting for a boss or an editor or a college to tell you that you do good work, you’re handing over too much power to someone who doesn’t care nearly as much as you do.
Keep Cool Keep Control
Some time back, I attended a group counseling session that described it this way, when you lose control, it’s like you have a string attached to your heart and you give the prompter the string and you allow him or her to pull that string at will. In other words you give up the very control that was given to you on the day you loudly pronounced your place on earth. It’s frankly a travesty of monumental proportions. It’s not unlike that in business – be it sales, marketing, finance, transaction, operations or the such. You cede control under the guise of waiting for validation and you cede control of your future.
Relating it back to Seth’s post and also to caring about what you do in the apartment space – beat your own best self everyday of the week. Remind yourself daily that no one will challenge you more than you will challenge yourself. No one person or thing has control over you unless you cede it to them. There are so many opportunities to build Your Personal Brand today – so many ways to take control of Your Future –
Using Social Media to Market Apartments – Ripe with Opportunities
For all intents and purposes – new media in it’s concerns with marketing apartment homes is in its infancy. It’s the perfect space to join in the conversation. Blogs not unlike this one are the perfect place to; come and observe – start to participate – use for a catalyst to start your own blog and reference back to now and again once you are up and running. Rest on this notion – not even the best of the best in this space know where the platforms and mechanisms will be two to four years from now. It’s any one’s best guess at this point. In spite of that they keep innovating – they keep plugging away – steady trying, refining and trying again. You can too. It’s the way Brand You is made. The alternative – the price of waiting? – Your Future.
What are you going to do today?
Apartment Marketing: How to Use Facebook Like Pages to Lease Apartments
I love emails like the one below -but before we go there:
Over the past few weeks we have started to quietly roll out some of our Facebook Like Pages as we gear up for the Get Social with Mills Initiative . One of the issues we’ve run into with this slow roll out is anxious PMs and MSs like Teresa and Mike at Park Clayton Apartments. They were ready to run – so, we let them go and in just over two weeks they took the like numbers from 7 to North of 225.
How to grow Your Apartment Facebook Like Page numbers
How did they do it? To make a long story short Mike brought an orphaned stuffed yellow duck to the leasing office for Teresa to see and each time they tried to put the duck away – residents asked to have it back as a mascot. With that T and M – [I often use the first letter of peoples names – with that T is for Teresa and M is for Mike] decided to have a – Name the Duck – contest . In conjunction with that contest they decided to give away a few fun prizes for the resident who yielded the biggest number of Likes to our page in a weeks time.
The Apartment Like Page Results
T and M put on North of 200 Likes inside of two weeks time. Not only that – they yielded something much more important in my opinion – check out the page and I think you will quickly discern what I mean. That point brings me to the email below –
How to use Facebook Like Pages to Rent Apartments
I will let the email speak for itself –
Have a compelling weekend – M
—–Original Message—–
From: Park Clayton <parkclayton@millsproperties.net>
Sent: Thursday, June 03, 2010 12:55 PM
To: ‘Mike Brewer’ <MBrewer@millsproperties.net>; ‘Tracy Seubert’ <TSeubert@millsproperties.net>
Subject: Great news!
Hey guys,
I have some awesome news about our facebook fans. One of my residents came down to tell me that his friends in Taiwan are watching us on facebook and they think it’s great that we do resident events and have contests. He says they told him they want to move here when they get to town just because of what they see online!
Also, he brought down his laptop and we spoke with a couple of his friends in Taiwan who want to move here in August. The program they use to chat/talk internationally is called, “skype.”
Teresa Richardson
Property Manager
Park Clayton Apartments
photo credit: blog.hubspot.com
