Kerry Sugrue's Blog

May is the perfect time to start thinking about container gardening at your apartment community, so I asked my friends at Gethsemane Garden Center for some advice.  Check out these five tips for keeping your property blooming this season.

Summer will be on its way in no time!  Before you head to your local gardening center, here are a few criteria you should consider to help you select the perfect flowers, edibles and containers for your space; and achieve success in your gardening endeavors.

1. What type of sun exposure do you have?

With social media constantly changing, it can seem like the options are endless, so where do you start? Look no further!  Here are 25 things you should be doing with social media right now:

1. Set up an account and start taking pictures with Instagram.  It is an easy photo taking and sharing app that was recently purchased by Facebook, so there are big things to come!
2. Create a Pinterest board of apartment-friendly decorating ideas for your residents.
3. Partner with a popular neighborhood restaurant to provide your residents with a Facebook exclusive offer.  Post a status update with coupon code to redeem 20% off.  It will make your fans feel really special.
4. Tweet street cleaning schedules to make sure your residents don’t get tickets.
5. Take a poll on your Facebook page asking residents what brand of coffee they would like in the lobby this month, then let them know you listened!
6. Choose a resident to highlight as your Resident of the Month on Facebook in an effort to help everyone get to know their neighbors.
7. Create a Facebook group for your employees to swap ideas, ask questions, give praise for a job well done and get to know each other.  Make sure the group is set as private.
8. Start Trivia Tuesdays on Twitter and give away small prizes to your residents for correct answers.
9. Ask your residents to Like you and follow you on social media websites!  You would be surprised how simply asking will help grow your fan base.
10. Keep your LinkedIn company profile up to date with current job openings and company information.  You can recruit top talent this way.
11. Read multifamily industry blogs, like Multifamily Insiders and Apartments.com/blog, to stay on top of trends and news.
12. Start a blog that provides relevant apartment living, neighborhood and community information for your residents.
13. Respond to all comments and mentions on social media, whether positive or negative, in a timely, professional manner.
14. Create Facebook events for your community get-togethers so residents have all the information on the website they check most often, as well as the ability to see who else is attending.
15. Tweet the weather forecast first thing every morning to help your residents decide what to wear.
16. Host a charity like-a-thon and donate a certain amount of money or volunteer hours for every new Like you get on Facebook during a period of time.
17. Add your social media profiles to all of your current marketing materials, so people know you are active on those websites.
18. Start accepting maintenance request via your Facebook wall.  Make sure to respond to each request and follow up after the job is complete.  This will show current and prospective residents how great your customer service is.
19. Create a Facebook application with your leasing office and community staff photos and bios, so your residents know who to go to with questions, as well as the names of the people that make their community run smoothly.
20. Tweet fun, easy recipes that residents can make during the work week.
21. Wish residents happy birthday on Facebook or Twitter.
22. When the first of the month is rolling around and rent is due, tweet out a reminder for residents.
23. Create a social media policy and training course for your employees to ensure they understand the importance and responsibility of online behavior.
24. Capture nice things your residents are saying about you online and repurpose them in marketing materials or in a slide show that plays on your lobby TV’s.
25. Monitor mentions of your property management company name, community name and neighborhood on social networking websites and respond accordingly. 

Whether you are just getting started with your social media strategy or you’re paving the way for others in the industry, it is imperative to have a policy in place.  In this digital era, your employees need to be well versed in appropriate online behavior when they are representing, not only themselves, but  also the brand.  Policy can be a scary word for employees, which is why your social media policy should really be more of a set of guidelines.  Here are a couple tips to get you started on your set of guidelines:

1.    Team Effort – Creating a social media policy at your company should be a team effort.  Gather a cross-functional group from departments like PR, legal, strategy, sales, marketing and senior leadership.  All of these people will play an important role in crafting your guidelines.

2.    Common Sense – Make sure to include guidelines that you may think are common sense in your policy.  You cannot assume everyone thinks the same way and it is better to be safe than sorry.  Some examples of this would be:

I’m not a businessman.  I’m a business, man. – Jay-Z

Last week I was called to the Mother Ship with the rest of the super cool social media nerds, gaming dweebs and techy geeks.  South By Southwest Interactive is a massive conference in Austin, Texas that draws technology gurus and eager-to-learn marketers from around the world.  After attending a handful of sessions every day for five days, there was one that really stood out to me: Y Rappers R Better Marketers Than U.  The name of the session immediately drew me in and the Creative Directors from SapientNitro, who presented, did not disappoint.  They discussed seven lessons they learned from rappers, not all of which I agreed with.  Below are my four favorites and how we can apply them in the multifamily industry.

1.       Stay Legit – Understand who your audience is and create a persona for your brand that appeals to them; then stick with it over time.  Like Jay-Z’s hustler persona, it’s ok to evolve, but don’t stray too far from the core.  As a management company, who is your key audience?  Are you a high-end community for urban professionals?  Are you close to a university and attracting undergrads?  Develop your marketing materials and online voice (persona) in a way that appeals to your audience.

It may have taken a while to get here, but winter is upon us.  If you are lucky enough to live in a warm climate city, you don’t have to worry about snow removal.  But for the rest of us, winter means investing in a durable pair of boots, warm gloves and a shovel.

Although every city is different, most have an ordinance or code about keeping walkways clear during the winter.  As a property manager or owner, it’s important to stay informed on your city’s policies concerning who is responsible for snow removal, when it has to happen and to what extent.  It’s possible to be held liable if someone slips and falls on your property or a walkway that you are deemed responsible for clearing.  Your city should make this information public and easy to understand.  For instance, the Chicago Department of Transportation has a website, pamphlet and video explaining the importance of snow removal for residents and businesses.  The City of Denver lays out how they enforce their snow removal policies and what their consequences are, while the City of Boston gives clear Do’s and Don’ts.  Visit your city’s website to read about ordinances specific to you.

If you haven’t heard of Pinterest yet, you will soon.  The popular new social site allows users to Pin items of interest onto virtual tack boards.  Links to cupcake recipes, interesting photography, Blackhawks players and wedding dresses have been inundating my feeds on both Facebook and Twitter, as people put together their boards.  The platform is still an invite only, VIP kind of site, but you can request an invitation anytime or receive one from a friend.  Here are the main things you need to know in order to speak Pinterest-ese.

Creating Boards

Some people think making a New Year’s resolution is silly, but I would guess it’s because they never really followed through with one.  I think making a promise to improve or make a change is a great way to set yourself up for an awesome year!  With the ball drop only a couple days away, here are some tips for making a great resolution.

1.  Be honest – When deciding on your resolution, be totally honest with yourself and realistic when setting your goal.  Start by picking one thing to work on and then build from there.  For instance, if you want to get back in shape this year, don’t make your goal to run a marathon.  Instead, try to make it to the gym four days a week.  Once you feel good about that achievement, add something else to challenge yourself.  Make sure to celebrate your successes along the way.

2.  Get started right away – Start planning now so you can get started on your resolution the first week of January.  Those first couple days will bring a lot of motivation that you don’t want to miss out on.

Back in January 2011, Facebook introduced their newest advertising product; Sponsored Stories.  These ads, which live on the right hand column of Facebook, use people’s friends to endorse a brand and encourage them to engage as well.  For example, let’s say I Like Apartments.com on Facebook and then I write a status update that says “Searching for my new apartment on Apartments.com!”  If Apartments.com has purchased Sponsored Story advertising, my status update, along with the brand, will be promoted to my friends.  Essentially, Apartments.com would be using me as their brand advocate to my network on Facebook.

Starting this January, one year after their launch, Sponsored Stories will start to appear in a user’s newsfeed, instead of in the normal ad position on the right hand column. This new position will increase their visibility to users.  Although mobile users will not see Sponsored Stories with this roll-out, it’s rumored that the 350 million users will start to see ads starting in March.

They have been talking about it for a while, but Facebook Timeline is officially launching.  This new view for profiles takes your life and puts it into; you guessed it, a timeline layout.  There are a lot of people asking why all the changes and can’t Facebook leave good enough alone?  It’s about providing a more user-friendly experience, said Kate Aronowitz, director of user experience and design for Facebook, in an interview yesterday morning.  Using the right hand control, users can quickly scroll through events, friends, photos, wall posts and more from any year in their life.  Although Facebook wasn’t around in 1970 (come to think of it, Zuckerberg wasn’t even around then), users can upload photos from that year to truly create a timeline of their life.

Timeline is still in its opt-in phase, but all users will be transitioned over soon.  I enabled it a few months ago to play with the usability and I really do like it.  I easily found wall posts from my college roommates that I had completely forgotten about.  Sure, I could have found these with my wall today, but the key word is easily.  These posts and other content are called Stories in Timeline.  You can star your favorites to highlight them and hide others you don’t want people to see.

Don’t be nervous about setting up Timeline.  Facebook is giving opt-in users a seven day grace period between setting it up and pushing it live to your friends.  Take some time to find a good Cover photo, which is everyone’s introduction to your profile (mine is from when the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup) and get started.  For more information and to enable your Timeline, visit Facebook.com/Timeline.

With the holiday spirit all around, this is a great time of year to get your residents together and show them your appreciation.  Here are a couple fun ideas that you can do around your apartment community:

1.       Resident gifts:  A small gift for your residents is an easy way to say thank you for living in your community and the holidays are a great time to surprise them.  Order T-shirts or sustainable bags with your branding on them for each resident.  Print some festive notes to say Happy Holidays and put them in your resident mailboxes.  Each resident can use the note to redeem their gift from the leasing office.  This would also be a great time to have them update their contact information with you.  Your residents will love their new swag and your branding will be all over the city.