Apartment Blogs

I'm not sure how it happened but somehow it's March 1st. At the beginning of each month to get my creative juices flowing I have two random/fun traditions.

1) I change my desktop wallpaper. There are numerous resources for finding new and creative desktops but I'm partial to Smashing Magazine's monthly calendar desktops. Each month various designers submit their artwork/photography with an incorporated calendar for that month. Here is March's edition.

My current background:

*Ok first, I must preface this post by saying it's almost 5:30, I've had too much coffee and I think everything is funny right now.

But really ... I read a post on MSN today, wait no MSNBC - that's a legit source right? Well I thought so, until I saw this article's headline Cold sheets? Hire a human 'bed-warmer'. A bed who?

LONDON - International hotel chain Holiday Inn is offering a trial human bed-warming service at three hotels in Britain this month. If requested, a willing staff-member at two of the chain's London hotels and one in the northern English city of Manchester will dress in an all-in-one fleece sleeper suit before slipping between the sheets. "The new Holiday Inn bed warmers service is a bit like having a giant hot water bottle in your bed," Holiday Inn spokeswoman Jane Bednall said in an e-mailed statement.

This morning's article from Daily Finance starts off "another day, another new product from Google". As an iPhone user I'm pretty excited by all of the fast moving mobile additions Google, and many others, are making these days.

Google's new addition is pretty self explanatory:

"Near Me Now," a service that makes it fast and easy to learn about your immediate vicinity with a much simpler interface than other local search applications use.

Dominos Pizza recently created a great video on how they utilized social media and costumer criticism to "Turnaround" and come back with a new and improved product. There are no shortage of venues for customers to make complaints these days. What's important to ask is how businesses are utilizing this customer feedback to improve.

(Preface: I hate Beware of Such and Such email forwards I get. As soon as I get one I check out its validity via my trusty friend Google, perhaps you've been acquainted. Ok, now that that's out of the way we can get on with this.)

My responsibilities here at Ellipse are pretty broad. Any phone call that come into the office directed towards "a marketing person," "the PR person," "whoever handles your marketing", "your tradeshow coordinator", you get the idea, comes to my desk. Today I received a call from Dana calling from NAA* asking for "the person who coordinates your tradeshows."

He was calling to let me know that there had been a few cancelations at The Headquarter hotel for the June NAA Conference in New Orleans. Since we were previous attendees it was a courtesy call to see if we'd like early booking rates at $50 per room/per night less than if we waited until closer to the time to book. He told me since we were exhibiting we'd probably want to have our rooms starting June 23rd (the night before the event) and "you're probably like everyone else who likes to do the tear down on the final day and head home." We discussed how many rooms we'd probably want - I told him we'd had 8 rooms at Brainstorming and I believed it was 6 at the previous NAA in Vegas. He asked me for names for each room letting me know I could change them as it got closer. He already knew our address and company name so I only hesitated for a quick moment when he asked "what card I'd like to hold these rooms on." I told him I'd need written confirmation and that an Executive here would need final approval. He said “that's fine, I'll fax you a credit card confirmation form right now and as soon we get that back we'll be good to go.”

I learned an interesting statistic this morning, there are more than 18,000 redbox kiosks and new kiosks are currently being installed at a rate of one per hour! My first reaction was "wow, we're in the wrong business!". But, I am of the school of thought that there are lesson to learn from every business. The case study that I read, essentially concluded that no matter what product, or even service, we are offering - we need to give our customers (residents) less choices.

As product managers, we have somehow convinced ourselves that our customers both want and need more choices when it comes to our products. This thinking has allowed us to heap on more and more choices for our customers to make: colors, pricing plans, features, etc. However, it just may be the case that the one thing that our customers really don't want is to have to make more decisions in order to buy our products.

So, here's my question for you – how many choices do your prospects have in the decision making process? How many floorplans are there to chose from? How many pages on your website give choices other than lease an apartment with us?

Big Money recently released The Big Money Facebook 50, a ranking of the brands that are currently making the best use of Facebook. Various metrics—including fan numbers, page growth, frequency of updates, creativity as determined by a panel of judges, and fan engagement—were factored into each page's score and ultimate rank on the list.

Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Disney, Victoria's Secret and iTunes round out the top five. James Ledbetter notes that contests and other promotional activities drove the success of most of the list members.

While I'm really excited to see a list like this put together I'm a bit disappointed that the listings don't actually link to the respective fan pages. So, I decided to look up ap few of these fan pages and see what I think works about them. What's great about social media is what works for one brand can usually easily be transferable to another.

I received an interesting article in my inbox this afternoon – How to respond to customer feedback from Word of Mouth Marketing Blog. The first point of advice is to choose a designated customer feedback responder.

Equally important to knowing how to respond to customer feedback is taking the time to pick the right person for the outreach. Find someone who is knowledgeable, patient, and loves helping people. When customers are upset, it takes a special person who’s passionate about what they do to convert a former critic into a new fan.

I think I'd file this bit of advice under "so simple most people don't think about it." It's most certainly true that it does take a special person who's passionate and patient to speak with a frustrated customer/resident. At the same time if you have a customer that's over the top excited you'd want your staff responder to be as excited as they are.

During the holiday season many businesses, including apartments, host charity events in the spirit of giving back. With the state of the economy some residents may not have extra cash to contribute to many causes this year. Ideal Bite, one of my fav going-green blogs, has a suggested giving back project that I think would be a fun/easy resident project.

Is figuring out what to do with your used kicks a total mystery? Here's a clue: Donate your old footwear to a reuse or recycling program to save landfill space or help out someone in need. Nice work, gumshoe.

The Benefits:

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.