Who do you want as your fans?

One of the first things you should do before your roll out your apartment community’s social marketing sites such as Facebook, Twitter, your blog etc. is decide who you are targeting for your online community. The content of your social sites depends on your target.

I see 3 main target categories:

1) Residents – if your focus is your current residents you can focus on apartment community such as onsite activities, maintenance alerts, community polls, etc.

2) Rental Prospects- I know many apartment managers want social media to bring them new leads. If this is your goal you might want to create a site like a Facebook page focused on prospects. Content here could be rent specials and open houses. Many communities don’t want to advertise their concessions to current residents if they can avoid it, and hopefully many prospects will someday be residents. Keep this in mind if you target this group.

3) Anyone – The more fans the better. Some communities are running campaigns to get residents to invite their friends to fan the community page. Are these the type of fans you want. Will they care about your community-centric posts? Perhaps it doesn’t matter this is PR and you are spreading the word.

What do you think?

This is true Jackie- On our communities facebook page we have not only invited residents, but also friends and family to join in. My personal friends have actually been the best word of mouth for me!! I asked all of them to jump on my community page and they all did within 1 day! Once they were friends of the community page I started seeing their friends jump on as well. This is creating more and more of a buzz each day. I also invite prospects who come through our door to become a fan. This way they can follow up on current specials as well as see what resident activities we provide at our community.

Great Post.

-Christine Millier
Community Manager
The Laramar Group

Good topic- one that will echo throughout 2010 again. At the moment there have been few that have come forward with stats that their FB page has brought leads. Maybe some perhaps. Overall it has been a work in progress resident retention tool. Fans are good yes- but interactions.. now that is the magic potion. Content is key. Building your community is key. Monitor and measure the fan base. Look for ways to reach the audience..that will be the determination of your success.

What's most important here regardless of who you decide to target is that you do it as a fan page and not a friend profile. One of the keys, as Jonathan indicated, is monitoring and measuring. With a fan page you get analytic tools to track that engagement. With a profile you do not. Very important!

I would hope you have HONEST residents that would 'Fan' your page...

What I mean by that, is that they make comments or posts about REAL problems; and when they are solved, the outcomes.

I would target two groups: 1) current residents, and 2) locals who can potentially influence prospective renters. Too often, it seems that targeting prospects directly through the same channel creates too much noise -- it's a turn-off to the groups in #1 and #2 I just mentioned.

I like the idea of segmenting the marketing messages to separate prospects from current residents. This is tough to do on Facebook or a blog. Facebook rules even say that status updates on Pages must be sent to everyone who is a fan, so there's zero opportunity to segment there unless you create multiple Pages.

@Christine: What kind of success have you seen with your page so far? Have you seen an increase in traffic since you've been able to build buzz through your community's Page?

I've been meaning to jump into this conversation for a while - great topic Jackie! I was actually expecting some response on your third suggestion, in that some people say that inviting industry folks to be fans is a bad idea. But I'm with you that the more the merrier! Perception of success is incredibly important when trying to develop a community - If a prospective fan sees the page with only 17 fans, they are less likely to assume being a fan is worthwhile. So if you can get the ball rolling, it will impact future fans "fanning" your fan page!

I also really like Mike's comment about locals - I would include local businesses too, with arrangements that you cross-suggest each other's fan page.

Here is an example fan page I ran across today, with a whopping 568 Fans! Not sure how many of those are actual residents/prospects, but it gives the impression of a great community. (And plus, they are actually getting a lot of participation, too!)

I have had some trouble with some of our sites, because many of the apartment advertisers keep fanning us. We advertise with them, but they advertise to our residents and the prospects many other apartments too. Anyone else have this problem? they keep popping up and I keep blocking them.

An interesting question and conversation, however I have not seen the answer to the question I always ask as I sort through seemingly endless fan requests or referrals (and that is not an "ego" thing - at least half the invites are people/places I've never heard of) - "What's in it for me to be your fan?"

If I know and respect you or your company, I'm happy to be a fan - I will probably have fanned you before you can invite me. But as a local business, potential prospect, or typical resident, why do I want my name on your page? All too often, (and this is true on Linkedin as well), I get a generic email with no personalization and no "WIIFM". The more personal the request, the more likely I am to pay attention; and I think that is the case for most people.

When inviting a local business, maybe a quick sentence on median income/buying power of my residents or average length of stay; for a prospect, mention several benefits as told to you by your residents or even a short quote from a happy resident; and for your residents, a statement about how supporting your fan page will most likely result in them having better neighbors (well, it could happen . . . !)

Thanks all for the good ideas! Doug

Suzanne - Are you saying that the apartment listing sites/guides/etc are fanning your page and then using that to get to your residents?

Doug - You are definitely right that people are swimming in information and connections these days, so they are becoming more and more focused on the WIFM aspect!