Many of you reading this blog have taken the right move and started up a MySpace page to reach your prospects and residents in new and dynamic ways. Some of you have done the same on Facebook, and even have created a group on Facebook.

 

 

Quick story from my daily life at AptConnect. One of the weak spots of AptConnect is that so many companies simply don't know about us yet, no matter how incredibly jaw-droppingly cool our product is. ;) So we end up doing a lot of "outreach" marketing to communities in our local market (even though we are a national company). We haven't quite gotten the hang of individual community marketing yet since it is so much different than selling to the corporate side, which means we're not sure if doing a walk-in approach is better or worse than setting up an appointment. Either way seems about 10 times more difficult than getting an appointment with a corporate executive, which is surprisingly easy. So if you have any suggestions on this front, please let me know!

Anyway, I called up a community today and before I even could explain what we do, she said, "we're already doing that." I could have just invented Cold Fusion or a way to end world hunger, and I guarantee that I would have gotten the same, "we're already doing that." We are extremely unique and I can guarantee that they are NOT working on anything close to what we have to offer, and it got me thinking: I wonder how many opportunities they are losing out on because of the knee-jerk reaction of trying to get the salesperson off the phone. There are TONS of great cross marketing opportunities, unique differentiating products and services, and a host of other interesting tidbits out there that they will miss out on because they decided to close the door to anyone new in their property. And that doesn't include all the higher costs they undoubtedly incur because they aren't letting competing bids in the door.

In the end, it doesn't much bother me personally, because our company doesn't fit in well with a community like that who isn't interested in engaging their residents in new and exciting ways, but its too bad to see everything they are missing out on!

I have quite a few new readers lately, and it occurred to me that they might not be familiar with this blog's history or myself specifically. Let me give you a rundown of why I started it up. I have a background on both the property management side and vendor side of the equation, although I'm currently on the vendor side. Regardless, as a rule this blog isn't meant to talk about myself or my company (although it does slip in every once and a while); instead, I use it to discuss issues affecting our industry as a whole, specific community ideas, and a few things for the vendors out there.

So feel free to throw out topics or respond to the posts. It's meant to be an open discussion, and not just limited to my thoughts. I hope you enjoy it and if you have any questions or comments, feel free to let me know!

A Florida condo conversion was having trouble selling its units. So what did it do? It made one of its pools clothing optional! I sure hope the residents are "purdy".

(The old link I had to this article doesn't work anymore, so no additional info!)

Through the different multifamily blogs out there, we have recently discussed monitoring your brand online and proactively addressing any concerns raised in open forums. Well, I had an interesting experience happen to me yesterday that wasn't quite a "brand" situation but it applies regardless.

I use a service called "Twitter", which is an up-and-coming online conversation tool. (My Twitter account is:  http://www.twitter.com/brentwilliams2 - feel free to follow me!)  Essentially, it gives you 140 characters to post with, which gets posted to all of your "followers" news feeds on the site. It's actually a lot simpler than I'm sure you are thinking. Anyway, I posted a "Tweet" (that's what the posts are called) about a service I use called Jott, specifically some information that was in a Jott survey.

Anyway, to make a long story short, Jott was scanning the Twitter news-waves for its own name and the Director of Marketing personally emailed me to ask me to shut up about the survey (apparently, I wasn't supposed to talk about it per the survey user agreement). Although they weren't using it for this purpose, they could have easily been tracking mentions of their company name to get informal feedback from their customers who have posted about Jott. For example, a user might post, "Jott's interface is horrible, but I love the service anyway," which gives great, although non-specific, feedback. This user probably would not have taken the time to actually email Jott directly, so this is information that they would never have known about. Multiply that by several hundred and now you have a good set of feedback to work with. This way, they can get a sense of what they are doing right, what they are doing wrong, and even take steps to address it! I know that "evil" Comcast is trying the same thing, although I'm a little more pessimistic about their intentions...

(I know that I threw out a couple of services you may have never heard about before, so if you have any questions, feel free to message me)

A week ago I made a post about carpooling your way to resident retention. Well, for some reason I'm still stuck on the car-concept with apartment communities and was wondering about car sharing today. Are you familiar with any community that has a car on site that residents can "check out", while paying a fee per hour? On the one hand, I think it would be a great perk for city dwellers who want the flexibility, with the per-use fee offsetting the cost of the vehicle. Plus, you could cover the vehicle with logos for your community so it will be like a rolling billboard. On the flip side, I wouldn't have a clue what type of liability issues there might be, and if the driver is a bad driver, those logos might turn negative, I suppose.

Any thoughts?

I was reading yet another article today about rising gas prices and how people cope, either by taking mass transit more or finding carpools, and it occurred to me that our communities have a perfect opportunity to provide a value-added carpool matching tool for our residents! I'm sure this has been going on for years in more environmentally friendly cities for quite some time, but this could really be a benefit across the country.

The obvious benefit is to reduce your residents' gas expense every month. But what about another, less apparent, benefit of creating resident connections? Suddenly you have groups of 2,3, or 4 riding in the same car every single day, talking about their hobbies, their families, their lives in general. Not all groups are going to become fast friends, but at the very least they have familiar faces in their own community, somebody to call in an emergency that is only a few seconds away, and a general sense of connection to their current community. And at the very best you have created pairs or groups of very good friends who strongly impact eachother's decision to renew.