The old adage goes something like, "There's no such thing as bad publicity, as long as they spell your name right". If that's truly the case, then I'd love to hear the thoughts inside the inner circle of Seth Godin's latest venture, Brands in Public, which went live just last week. If you haven't heard, Brands in Public is a website which aggregates many of the public conversations surrounding a given brand, and displays them in one location. Sounds great, right? Well, maybe not... if you're the brand. Brands in Public launched with the plan to create brand "pages" on their own, without the prior consent of a given brand, and then charge companies $400/month for the ability to "own" their page, thus allowing them to manage the content. This created quite an uproar across the social media spectrum, including allegations of "brandjacking", and in response, Brands in Public backed away from their initial plan, now planning to only create pages for brands which have opted into their user agreement. This may have tempered some of the initial public outcry, but I believe the situation highlights many of the questions which top brands are pondering internally in recent times. How can we best engage past, current, and future customers online? Which social tools should we embrace, and which should we shy away from? And most importantly - how can we translate all of this effort into new customers and sales growth?

 

In today's world, there are the few social business essentials that all brands should treat with the same regard as their homepage URL - a Facebook Fan Page, Twitter username, and Yelp Business page, which all serve as important communication channels to reach different segments of potential (and existing) customers. These tools can't guarantee that the conversation will always be positive, but they do allow brands to actively participate in the public discourse, and when appropriate, engage their detractors. We all know by now that we can't control the conversation surrounding our brand, but we can manage it - by promoting our objectives, highlighting our successes, and responding to our critics. Where I differ from Seth Godin's approach is in how we manage it - and more specifically where we manage it. 

I have had the pleasure of conducting a few online meetings of late; otherwise referred to as "Webinars".  As a presenter that is accustomed to adjusting and transforming presentations based on audience response, I found the process to be initially difficult from a delivery standpoint.  There were times when I had no idea if anyone was even in the room, as I would ask a question, and no one would answer, or I could hear people assisting clients in the background, once the mute button was turned off. My perception was that people were coming and going: for all I knew, they decided to go practice the skill I had just taught - or maybe they were sleeping.  It's difficult when you can't see your audience.  

Managing an effective online meeting can be like herding cats; chaos may abound.  Or, you can get smart, take control and manage the process effectively.

These events have been a good learning experience,and have inspired my "top 10" list for conducting successful online meetings.  Enjoy.

1. Suggest or insist that the group meet before or after hours.  It is impossible to conduct business and learn a new concept at the same time, and if you have hired good people, they simply won't be able to, nor should they, resist the client standing in front of them.

2. Send two or three reminder emails before training, and let the group know that you will start promptly on time.  Tell them that if they join late, to please do so as quietly as possible, as if they were entering a live meeting already going on.

3. If you're expecting a large crowd, tell them you'll set up the meeting 10 minutes early to make sure everyone is able to sign on.

4. Ask the participants if they can see your screen as they join.

5. Ask participants to mute their phones as you get started.

6. It is always good to "clear" the session to begin by utilizing the Stop Showing button, then Start Showing again before you start.

7. Command of the room and receiving feedback is very difficult during a Webinar.  Include questions that you will expect feedback for on the handout.

8. Speaking of handouts, they are crucial and should contain exercise boxes.

9. When you are ready to begin, ask the audience if they have your undivided attention.  Ask if anyone will need to leave to conduct business during the session.

9. As part of your introduction, make sure to tell the audience what they are going to learn, to refer to handouts when conducting exercises and what the benefit to them will be.

10. If you ask a question, and get no response, ask the group a clever question like, "Do I assume that  I am not conveying this concept well, or are you all shouting answers and have forgotten to turn off your mute buttons?"

A good online meeting should last no longer than 1.5 hours, and 1 hour is optimal.  Managing the meeting is crucial to success, and will result in a team that has been trained in a new concept and is ready to practice technique.

What are your favorite Webinar/online meeting tips?

Hello Insiders,

 MyNewPlace recently conducted a survey of internal data and found that renters across the nation are increasingly searching for 3 BR apartments instead of 1 BR apartments. The trend began right after the official beginning of the recession, in 2007. Nationally, 3 BR apartment searches overtook 1 BR searches in the first quarter of 2009.

 

Last week Google launched a new service they say will allow us to "help and learn from others as you browse the web."

What if everyone, from a local expert to a renowned doctor, had an easy way of sharing their insights with you about any page on the web? What if you could add your own insights for others who are passing through?

Now you can. We're launching Google Sidewiki, which allows you to contribute helpful information next to any webpage. Google Sidewiki appears as a browser sidebar, where you can read and write entries along the side of the page.

I'm 'friends' with a lot of apartment properties on Facebook. (No, I'm not going to get into the whole page -Vs- fan page issue here). As a result of being their friend, I get their newsfeed on my home page. A few weeks ago, I saw this:
 
Don't forget Saturday, September 12th is our Open House! Residents, please remember we will not be available for package pick up, work orders, renewals or common questions. We will be available during our regular hours on Sunday so please come... see us then for any of these things! You will also be able to leave messages on the voicemail and get ahold of maintenance if you have a maintenance emergency. 
 
    (The bolding is mine; I want to make sure you read the really important part.)
 
Now, is this just me, or is it simply wrong to basically 'cut off' your residents on a Saturday for virtually ANY needs they may have (other than emergency maintenance)? I kept thinking, "If I were a resident and wanted to get a package on a Saturday -my only day to do that sort of thing - and I was told I couldn't because the property was too busy leasing - I think I might want to move out.
 
Am I nuts? Am I missing something? I'm looking at this simply from 'facebook value' as a resident. How would a post like this make you feel?

 

Better safe than sorry. Sure, it’s trite … but it’s also true. Every property manager should consider a well thought out emergency plan to be an essential part of his property management duties. In an ideal world you will, of course, never have to use it. However, should you ever find yourself in an emergency situation, an emergency plan may literally mean the difference between life and death for your tenants and between a property making it through an emergency episode intact or not.

What kind of plan do I need?

Begin by carefully thinking through worst-case scenarios that could potentially strike your property. Obviously, all properties should have a fire escape plan, but you may be subject to other natural disasters depending upon your location. If you are located in California, for example, you may want to have a plan in place should an earthquake occur. If you live in the mid-West, you’ll want to have a plan of action in case of tornadoes; if you’re in the South, plan ahead in case of a hurricane. Also bear in mind that even the most prepared person can’t foresee all potential scenarios, so it may also be wise to have a general evacuation plan on-hand to prepare for miscellaneous events that could put tenants and your property in danger.

 

There are 3 important things you need to know BEFORE you create a Facebook Fan Page for your apartment community.

Think of your Facebook Fan Page as an online version of your apartment community. Make this space inviting and fun! The following are three things you need to know before you start your Facebook Fan Page.

1. Do NOT set up the Facebook page using a leasing agent profile account.

If you must, create a business profile account. This is because Facebook does not currently allow everyone to transfer ownership of Facebook Fan Pages. If an account is created by a former employee, they will still have administrator access to the Fan Page.

While apartment occupancy in the Midwest basically lines up with the national norm, most markets in the region have contained rent cuts at comparatively small levels. Effective monthly rents in June were 1.8 percent off the year-earlier figures across the 10 Midwest metros that MPF Research studies most closely, sliding at about half the pace recorded for the nation as a whole. However, there's an exception to that generally more modest pattern of rent cuts in the Midwest, and it's a big one. Chicago, which is twice the size of any other market in the region, suffered rent reductions of 3.4 percent in same-store properties between mid-2008 and mid-2009.

It's certainly not surprising to see sizable rent backtracking in Chicago's top-tier, newest apartment product. Most of those properties are found inside the Loop, and they face tremendous competition from individually-owned condos offered for lease. However, the metro's steepest rent cuts over the past year actually have occurred in the 1980s-generation properties and the 1990s-era units, with much of that stock not downtown but in the suburbs around O'Hare International Airport and westward into Naperville and other sectors of DuPage County.

While numerous factors have played a part in shaping the struggle seen in Chicago's apartment market recently, one number really stands out. That figure is 200,000, the approximate volume of job loss recorded over the past year, with Chicago now whacking positions at an absolute level more severe than in Detroit, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Atlanta, which ranked as the nation's key job cut centers in the early stages of the recession. (MPF Research's definition of Chicago includes Lake County, sometimes considered a separate metro.)

We are hard at work on several interesting Experiments here at the Urbane Lab that we believe will provide your Apartment Internet Marketing a real boost. The Urbane Way serves as the Multifamily Marketing Think Tank. Our Lab Techs actually test each experiment that we cook up in our Apartment Marketing Laboratory.

One of the reasons we have a 50 Times Unit Multiple, meaning we have 5o monthly web visitors per unit at the Urbane Apartment Web Sites, which for our boutique portfolio of 300 units, translate into 15,000 monthly web site visitors is because we are constantly tinkering and experimenting.

We are telling you about what works and what doesn't, based on Results. What is your Web Site Unit Multiple?

See our newest Internet Apartment Marketing Trick below, 

Keywords
Lots of folks clamor about what are the best Keywords, including us here at the Lab. Keywords are pretty important. Your Keywords are also a big part of your Title Tags, which we reported a few tricks about regarding Google Real Estate a few days ago.

At Urbane Apartments we ask a different question than Where Did You Here About Us, because we all know the prospect doesn't really remember. There has been a lot of benefit to the answers we get. Here it is; "What Search Terms or Words Did You Google to Find Urbane Apartments" and if they didn't use a Google Search to find us, the next question to follow would be, "What Search Term Would You Use to Find Urbane Apartments"

What To Do With Keywords
The obvious thing is to use as many rich keywords in your on line text as you can, still providing quality content. But that is what everyone is doing, or should be doing. Doing what everyone else does helps you stay a commodity. In order to Break From the Pack of Apartment Commodity, you have to do things different than the apartment community across the street.

More Domain Please
So one early morning when I couldn't sleep so well I jumped on to mydomain.com and started punching in a our list of Keywords we use at Urbane Apartments. To my surprise, most of them were available as a .com and or a .net domain.

We grabbed those up of course, a real steal at $9.99 per year, per domain. We then set up individual Landing Pages, with again, more rich keywords and content copy, all pointing and linking back to our main web site. You could also set up those domains as single one off word press sites too.

Domain Tricks
The point here is this, if say "pet friendly apartments phoenix" is one of your keywords, or keyword strings, and if that string is available as a domain, (it likely is) when you control that and set up a single page "Mini Web Page" guess where everyone that types that keyword in as a search term land, right on your page!

On top of that, the SEO benefit from have say 25, 35 or 55 more places on the internet YOUR copy and content show up, with links back to your site, further propels your On Line Marketing Effort. Happy Domaing!

Do you remember "St. Elsewhere" from the 80's?  Long before ER, Chicago Hope, and House, we had St. Elsewhere.  Now, I'm not old enough to really remember the plot lines of the show, nor could I tell you who starred on it, but what I do remember is the opening of the show and the theme song.  It had this underlying rhythm line that mimicked a heartbeat and over it played a very catchy melody.  As the heartbeat and melody played you'd see all of the doctors and nurses and respective characters doing their jobs and smiling with cheesy 80's smiles and big hair.  I was able to find a video clip, and though the quality leaves much to be desired, you'll be able to see young versions of the ever attractive Mark Harmon, the amazing Mr. Denzel Washington, Howie Mandel WITH hair, a young version of the dude who played Mr. Feeney on Boy Meets World (as well as voiced KITT in the origonal Knight Rider series), not to mention a very creepy looking Ed Begley Jr.