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Home Insider Blogs Brent Williams's Blog Apartment Community or Personal Accounts in Social Media
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May 14
2008

Apartment Community or Personal Accounts in Social Media

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Posted by: Brent Williams on May 14, 2008 19:00

Tagged in: Social Media
I want to throw something out there and get some opinions on how you think apartment communities should deal with their residents/prospects through social media. Specifically, should the contact be made by the community or the staff members within the community? For example, do you want to hear from "Heather, Manager at XYZ Community" or do you want to hear from "XYZ Community"? I'm torn on this concept, although I have admittedly not spent that much time pondering the issue.

By having the account be of a specific staff member, they can create much stronger connections with the prospect/resident. If just the community name is used, even if the recipient knows an actual person is behind the correspondence, does it feel a little less personal? Also, the recipient might not always know who they are talking to within the office, which creates a strange, uncomfortable aspect. On the flip side, if a staff member leaves, that means creating a new connection with a new account, if individual accounts are used. If one community account is used, however, that transition can be much more smooth. I hope that made sense.

I think I recommend a mix of the two. Have a corporate account plus individual accounts. Maybe that's cheating, and is probably more work, but it just makes sense. You have the stable account plus the more personal connections. Besides, we are always taught that prospects lease because of the leasing consultant more than they lease because of the community. If that's the case, expanding on that connection should be key.

What do you all think?


Comments (2)Add Comment
677
written by Melissa Robbins, May 30, 2009
Its good to know others out there think about these kind of details. I've been accused of being too detailed oriented so I've trained myself to think big picture over the years. But often its the details that matter.

Idealistically, in the trend of business transparency, I would say go with a personal touch and include the name of community representative. However our industry can experience a large percentage of turnover. This is why many companies use email address like abcleasing@xyz.com and abcmgr@xyz.com instead of the common firstinitiallastname@xyz.com.

Knowing this it might make more sense to set it up under the community name. Although any solid forward thinking company that experiences little turnover (thank goodness we have a lot of these in our industry too)should not be afraid to personalize their accounts. So I guess my answer depends on the strategy of the company and their comfort level with social media.

Anyone have any testing experience with this subject?
62
written by Brent Williams, June 01, 2009
Great comment, Melissa, and maybe there is a middle ground? With the issue of employee turnover, I see you point, so maybe they adapt their usage of the medium to incorporate their name, even if the overall account is by brand? For example, in a Facebook message, make sure to actually sign the message with the person's name, rather than leaving it open to question of whom they are talking to. Or on Twitter, end each post with the author's name, such as "- Brent". Yes, you lose characters, but you retain that emotional connection better...

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