Apartment Search

Here are three quick tips to help your email messages reach your subscribers’ inboxes, avoid spam complaints and maintain your status as a reputable sender:

And I'm not talking the married kind of engagement. (although that can be pretty pricey too)

I'm talking the price of engagement in regards to social media. I was not a bandwagon social media user. I wanted to understand how to engage and converse with our residents and potential residents before I jumped on the social media train. I also wanted to understand how to measure engagement and then translate that to value for our clients. 

For me, the  issue with social media is not the time it takes to post, blog or tweet, the issue is engagement. Are you maximizing on opportunities of engagement? Are you talking at your residents and prospects are talking with them? Having thousands of fans or followers are great but what are you doing with them?

What gives you the best engagement bang for you buck? I have included my top three.

DON'T BE A NEWS FEED HOG

Posting and tweeting are a marathon, not a race. If you clog up their news feed, they are sure to unfollow or unsubscribe. Studies show a post every 3-4 hours is the sweet spot.

INSIGHTS

Are you looking at your insights page? Your insights page has a wealth of information and demographics. Use that to your advantage when posting. 

FEEDBACK SCORE

Look at your most successful post (in terms of likes, comments, impressions, re-tweets, etc) and figure out your feedback score. For the posts with the highest feedback percentage, do you see a pattern of posts people engage with most... sports, fashion, decorating ideas? 

I benchmark everything. As a Director of Marketing, making sure my marketing team's time is well spent requires just that, benchmarking everything. Have we figured out the secret formula to social media, engagement and ROI.. not yet but I'm working on it. :-)

Happy posting!

Sparkle Hammond, M.Ed.  First Communities | Director of Marketing
shammond@firstcommunities.net
www.century-apartments.com | www.facebook.com/centuryapartmenthomes

Last week Google announced on their blog that they would be transforming their search experience into something rich with people and personal content.  Google claims search is limited to public webpages that are created by people you’ve never met.  At the heart of this new ‘search,’ Google is looking to bring your social world closer to you than ever before:

“Search is pretty amazing at finding that one needle in a haystack of billions of webpages, images, videos, news and much more. But clearly, that isn’t enough. You should also be able to find your own stuff on the web, the people you know and things they’ve shared with you, as well as the people you don’t know but might want to… all from one search box.” – Amit Singhal, Google Fellow

Google will be bringing this content directly to your browser by personalizing your search results page in three very specific ways:

1. Personal Results: Find information meant only for your eyes, such as Google+ photos and posts – both your own and those shared specifically with you – on your results page.  
2. Profiles in Search: Immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following in both autocomplete in the search bar and the results.  
3. People and Pages: Find peoples’ profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest and follow them with just a few clicks.  

What is Google telling me?

Google will continue to show all of the natural results and ads you would normally see on a results page, but now you will also see websites that your social circles have shared as well.  Just like Google did when they rolled out Universal Search, they are now pushing content from Google+ into the search results along with Google News, Images, Maps and Video.  You will no longer need to leave Google search to find information your friends or family have shared.

What kind of impact will this have?

It is no secret the tiny component tying this new search experience together is Google+.  If you ever questioned whether a Google+ account was needed, you may find it more vital than ever, especially if you are a search marketer.  Think of this new search environment as search results sprinkled with Google+ suggestions.  This format of search is not new, but rather an update to the current Universal Search in which all Google products are being represented on one page.

As with any Google update to search (remember the Instant Search craze?), this new approach has caused quite a stir in the search marketing community as Google critics and enthusiasts alike are alarmed with the direction Google is taking.  Danny Sullivan, one of the most respected people in SEO, has written several great articles on this subject.  You can read about his concerns with this new search format on his post Search Engines Should Be Like Santa From Miracle On 34th Street.

What Can I do?

For starters, create or update your Google+ profile. You should also spend some time to build a strategy around the messaging you want to deliver via Google+.  The idea is to be engaging, so people can share your content, which gives it the most reach.  In a world where search is now personalized by what friends +1 or re-share to their circles, engagement levels should become a top priority.

I’d love to hear your take on this updated search.  Do you like this new direction Google is taking?  Feel free to leave a comment or take the conversation to Twitter (@AmadoCan).

Happy searching!

Note: This was originally posted on the Apartments.com Blog - http://www.apartments.com/blog/uncategorized/googles-latest-search-plus-your-world/

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. 

Do you know where your residents are coming from? Knowing the source of your leads – especially the ones that convert to leases – is critical in terms of determining where to spend your advertising dollars. Here are five friendly suggestions on how to keep track of your various lead sources:

1) Just ask – It may seem obvious, but providing a quick and simple survey as part of your leasing process will go a long way in determining where your residents are coming from. Keep your survey short, but specific. For example, knowing that someone found your property online isn’t quite as helpful as knowing if they found you on and ILS like Apartments.com or Craigslist. Keep in mind after visiting several apartment search websites, your residents could be confused about which ones they used. Try giving them a visual representation of websites that you advertise on to help jog their memory.

2) Stay organized – If you use multiple Internet Listing Services, be sure you are keeping track of how many leads you receive from each one. Note the date, prospect’s name, lead source and if you have followed up. This will make it easy to cross reference information to make sure it’s accurate.

During the marketing portion of our training, one of the most important topics that I thoroughly cover is the posting of Craigslist ads for apartments. Craigslist is an incredibly advantageous marketing tool, because not only is it effective, but most importantly, it is absolutely free!
 
There are many more complicated layers to posting ads on Craigslist than just simply logging-on in the morning and posting an ad and being done with it. I always harp on the fact that Craigslist will only be as beneficial as you make it, in that posting one time a day is basically a complete waste of time. This statement is especially true if your property is located in a large city where Craigslist is a widely used apartment marketing tool, such as Los Angeles, where on average, there are 30,000 apartment postings PER DAY! Although this is an extreme example, if one were to post only one ad in the morning, that ad would be pushed back to page 4 or 5 within the hour. With this being said it is most beneficial to post multiple ads throughout the day in order to get a gauge on response time in terms of when most people are searching for apartments on Craigslist in your area. Post an ad first thing in the morning, one at lunch, another at mid-afternoon and one right before leaving the office. This will allow for a stronger presence on Craigslist, therefore increasing the likelihood of an individual stumbling across your ad.

Once you've established the number of ads that you are going to aim to post on a daily basis, then it comes down to how exactly you are going to draw attention to your particular posts. Scrolling through a full page of Craigslist ads can be quite nauseating, because there are 100 posts on each page with all of the titles looking remotely identical. With this being said the best thing one can do is scroll through a page of ads and figure out ways to make a title unique. Simply typing a title stating a phrase like "Apartment For Rent" in normal caps is not exactly what I would classify as an attention getter. Make the title something that will stand out and change the font up a bit to an attention grabber, like all caps. "DOWNTOWN LIVING AT ITS FINEST" will certainly present a higher likelihood of getting clicked on than the previous example I used, because it is a statement that will stand out amongst all of the listings.
 
As equally important as the title, if not more so, is the attachment of pictures to your listing. I will say right now as someone that not only teaches others how to post on Craigslist, but also as a Craigslist user, I WILL NOT click on a posting if there are not pictures attached. Pictures are literally the only way to make a listing unique, in that without them, the listing is just a description that is probably very similar to every other ad that one could possibly click on. When I am looking for any merchandise on Craigslist, I typically bypass all of the words in the description and scroll straight down to the bottom to see what the product looks like. The pictures really and truly make the ad and I can guarantee you that if you were to post the exact same ad using different contact names, one with pictures and one without, no one would call after seeing the ad without pictures over the ad with.
 
These are just some easy steps to take in order to increase the odds of receiving traffic from a Craigslist ad. Just keep in mind that all it takes is one phone call from an ad leading to a lease to make the five minutes it takes to post the ad completely worth it.

I know consumer reviews are scary.  Trust me.  Having worked in public relations my whole life, user-generated content that can disparage a brand I’ve been working years to uphold, has kept me tossing and turning more than one night.  Something you used to have control over is not totally in your hands anymore: your public image (e.g. branding, advertising, marketing collateral, and even to some degree, the press being generated about your company).  Sure, people could complain about your property, but that was typically somewhat contained.  Today, anyone can publicize their praise or contempt for your brand by going online.  What’s worse than consumers finding it?  Consumers looking for it, especially renters.  In fact, 58% of renters, who are also active on social media, told us at Apartments.com they search for additional apartment information and recommendations online when looking for a new place to live.

My name is Tammy Kotula, and I’m addicted to review websites

By Salvatore J. Friscia, San Diego Premier Property Management, San Diego, CA

Every property owner should require tenants to issue a refundable security deposit which is held on file to insure against non-performance of the lease agreement. Non-performance may be, but is not limited to, anything from damages occurring during occupancy to expenses accrued due to the tenants conduct or failure to pay rent.

The confusion begins with the property owner not knowing how much to require the tenant to issue for the security deposit. It is important to understand that security deposits for residential properties are controlled by statute and call for nondiscriminatory  and equal treatment. It is a prohibited discriminatory practice to charge a family a different amount then an applicant without children. It is also prohibited by law to require an excessive amount for the security deposit. In addition to collection of one month’s advanced rent, the maximum security deposit allowed (at least in the state of California) for an unfurnished unit is two months rent and three months rent for furnished properties. [California Civil Code 1950.5(c)] Check your local area laws for similar guidelines in your area.