Carmen Benitez's Blog

So, you've read through countless fun blogs from within and outside the industry and yes, you've smiled to yourself as you've had to thumb through silly posts about the author's dogs or sunglasses and/or other gimmicky things to keep you reading. And yes, you've gone a step above and read through more authoritative beats like Mashable or TechCrunch or HBR to yes, still find yourself having to smile and get through gimmicky articles on social media. 

And in that time frame of lost minutes  (and yes, hours), you were trained over and over to think that social media was about #fans #followers #tweets #comments #posts and other "measurements". Well, guess what they were wrong and you were wrong to believe it. These vanity metrics simply don't add up to leases or renewals. At the very stretch, they are ONLY good for brand lift, which you likely will ONLY consider once you can DEMONSTRATE you have a handle on building true marketing and leasing ROI. Otherwise, I give it to your boss to tell you to eat it and find something else better to do with your time.

And the reason is simple, we as an industry need to spend the very little time we do have to market (how many of you truly have a full-time dedicated marketing manager on site???) on getting a return from it. 

I don't pretend to know everything about social media. But what I do know is sound common sense for a business. So, if you're ready to listen and to learn, then please continue reading.

Apartment communities, like the other 79% of corporations (Altimeter 11/04/2010 research) have attempted to deploy social media. They've enlisted social media consultants and/or "hired" internal social media strategists to help them accomplish the following:

Wow. It finally arrived. Facebook Places is now offering deals which is going to be a HUGE shocker to Foursquare as it continues to recruit new users of their application. Lucky FB that they already have 500Mn to market this fun new app! So...what is deal and what can it do for your community?

Here is the gist: It allows you to offer a variety of promotions to its users and user friends to enrich and engage through social networks at a far greater rate than before.

You have four "deal" options through Facebook deals. This includes:

Mobile marketing is definitely here and now. The Financial Times reported last Friday that Starbucks and Loreal are hitting mobile marketing with full force and for good reason. The reason: Geo-fencing. This term simply means to capture an audience that gets geo-tagged when in proximity to your business. SMS has been doing this, as has radio, but for rich media through mobile phones, it has been able to take off in main part due to Placecast, a privately-held US based company that enables GPS service to locate customers and drive rich media messages to them outside of platforms like FourSquare. 

So, what does this mean to you? Well, in the very near future businesses like property management companies will have the ability to lure potential customers in for an open house or a weekend leasing event through platforms like Placecast. 

In addition, these rich media ads property management companies can design will have the means to cross promote and offer specials to nearby retailers for stopping in.

Here are some interesting facts about the world of mobile and how it affects "this American life" (fyi...I am a huge fan of Ira Glass and WBEZ  This American Life  broadcast--which happens to cover this week people's fears of sleeping, including bed bugs)

These stats were drawn direct from Pew Research:

Nearly half of all adults (47%) go online with a laptop using a Wi-Fi connection or mobile broadband card (up from the 39% who did so as of April 2009) while 40% of adults use the internet, email or instant messaging on a mobile phone (up from the 32% of Americans who did this in 2009). This means that 59% of adults now access the internet wirelessly using a laptop or cell phone—that is, they answered “yes” to at least one of these wireless access pathways.

Pulled from his Twitter update last week:

We, in the United States, have been blessed for the last fifteen plus years of enjoying essentially free internet. As a business, a company could purchase a domain for a few bucks and upload some html and the business was "in business". Initially, we had some digital islands, or groups, like Compuserve and AOL that made you purchase access to their hubs. Then Yahoo, MSN and other free hubs came around and eliminated the need to "pay to play". We started to once again enjoying free access to explore and search the internet. And then we fell in love with Google. Google over the last ten years gave us the power to quickly explore the millions then billions of websites just by adding in a few key words to a search. This search became very powerful, so powerful that Google realized their ability to "sell" keyword searches and bought out groups like DoubleClick to better understand the people that clicked through. Adwords, Google's primary revenue source, auctions keyword phrases that made sense to business for a certain dollar amount and business, realizing the opportunity, gobbled it up and started hiring companies or people to handle their new online ad spend. Well, this happy marriage between Google and business continues, but then emerged social and mobile technologies. 

During this time period, MySpace, Napster, Friendster and eventually Facebook sprung up and created social networks, or new versions of digital islands, to connect people to each other b/c of like mindedness. As you are aware, it swelled to gigantic proportions and people began to use these digital islands and not the Internet to explore and communicate their likes or wants. In addition, pretty Apple, with all its shininess, developed the iPhone, a universal interface that allows for companies, like mine, to develop applications and advertisements for businesses to better interact with either other businesses or consumers. These applications, also digital islands, gathers people and isolates them away from the internet and solely into their application. 

While all this is happening, multifamily housing marketers and executives are trying to find ways to get in front of people. They start by getting their website live. Then they pay to promote their communities on ILS's and promote through Craigslist. Then, they play with PPC on Google and realize it is important to be seen through this massive search engine. Which makes them realize that, "hey better to be on the ORGANIC search related side than the PPC sponsored ad side". So, then they hire SEO specialists to keyword their websites, set up link backs and tag their sites to get the best possible outcome from organic search. What they don't realize right away is that OTHER ILSs and competing websites are doing the same thing. Which prompts them to take advantage of BLOGGING with a blog page and go SOCIAL with their facebook pages, Twitter accounts, YouTube channels, Flickr galleries all for the attempt of getting seen and potentially engaging with a very active resident fan base. And I can tell you all this worked...until Google introduced Instant. 

Interested in how REAL real estate prospective buyers are finding the home they love through social media as well as wanting to learn ways companies in real estate are using social media and mobile applications to create compelling reasons for consumers to choose them over their competitors? Then please click here to read the full article published by the Chicago Tribune on Friday, September 10, 2010. In it you will find great tips and pointers from industry leaders including some from myself (Carmen Krushas: Fetch Plus). 

I hope these points help further your methods to marketing to those wishing to find their perfect (apartment) home!

We love the do-it-yourself group. This is you and me going to the Home Depot and picking up our favorite gardening supply to either change up something easy and fast in the garden or home. We also are seeing more and more of this group springing up digitally, especially through smart phones and mobile applications. Quantcast, a company that directly measures more than 200Bn requests for internet content notes the significant shift from web based to mobile based applications in 2009 with trends pointing even greater shifts for 2010-15. This includes:

North American mobile web share up 110% (Dec 09 vs Dec 08). 

Given the mobile web islands that are being created because of apps (yes, mobile apps need to be considered singular digital experiences that separate users out of the internet and away from your websites--[which is a totally different yet very important discussion on how to market and maintain brand control in this new digital and non-internet world])  the do-it-yourself group (also called the Prosumer) seeks apps to control and maintain a "do it yourself" approach to their lifestyle, which includes everything from buying tickets for a favorite show, checking routes on which way to drive due to traffic crunches and/or determining where to eat because of other's feedback and even if the restaurant is at the moment too full or too empty. So, with that being said, the multi-family housing industry has a great opportunity to determine just what are those do-it-yourself applications they can build to RECRUIT and RETAIN residents. 

The percentage of growth in mobile commerce applications is very healthy and very significant across all segments, and realizing commerce growth in certain segments helps the multifamily housing company determine how to properly keep their residents top of mind. Based off this graph provided by John Levett of Juniper, a multifamily housing application that makes sense to develop is one that offers residents the opportunity to engage with the apartment community about local events as well as the opportunity to pay rent through their mobile application.  As mobile app use continues to develop it is important to stay focused on consumer behavior usage of these apps and design accordingly.