Birds of a Feather and
Residents of Like Mind
Birds of a feather flock together. You’ve heard it before
and face it, you know it’s true. Those of like minds always find a way to get
together. Those that are surrounded by those that don’t have like minds
eventually wonder off and surround themselves with those that do. We’ve made it
half way through 2012 and let me tell you this statement is truer today than
ever before.
We live in an era where we have more access to likeminded
individuals than ever and guess what? We’re becoming more and more comfortable
with flying off to where ever we must to meet up with our tribe.
This new generation is not hesitating to do what they have
to do to get acclimated with those who assist them with feeling like they
belong and even more so like they are living their best lives.
Have you considered this in your thoughts and plans
regarding retaining your residents? What if you are losing residents simply
because they lack of feeling of connection and belonging? You do realize that
if this is the case nine times out of ten you will never know.
What if you put practices in place that allowed you to more
closely gauge your residents’ level of satisfaction? What if you were able to
take more control in the area of actually engaging them? Well I’m here to tell
you that you can.
It frustrates me to no end to see so many property managers
continue to do the same thing over and over again expecting different results.
In 2010 residents ranked “social activities” as #29 out of 30. I know
personally that it wasn’t so much that residents don’t care about connecting
socially it’s that they don’t care about managers hosting events that they may
or may not hear about and expecting them to come out and have a blast with
strangers.
We can’t throw away the idea of doing events all together we
have to do it differently, better. We have to do it in a way that it is more
effective.
Why are you hosting the particular events you’re hosting?
Are you finding some grand idea in an on-line forum and just throwing out there
hoping it will stick? Are you creating events based around your personal
interests, likes and desires? Are you just doing what you did at your last
property only to meet your quota?
Have you considered actually learning what it is that your
residents want to do? You do realize that their schedules are all over the
place and sometimes trying to get a large percentage of them to come together
all at one time is practically impossible now a day? The new way to approach
this is to help your residents create their own individual “events” on their
own time and to support them and lead them in making this happens.
In a nut shell I’m saying that your residents need you to
open the door and give them the OK to create the connections they seek when
they seek them and with whom they would rather connect with. This takes a bit
of time and focus but once you build this sense of community you will be
relieved in knowing that social interaction is going on within your community
constantly and not just at some random party that you decide to host.
Your like-minded residents want to meet each other. Be a
property manager that cares to connect them. It will be a gift to them in more
ways than you can imagine.
For more tips like this or to hire me to come out and assist
you with creating communities within your community log onto
www.residentkeepers.com