FourSquare

It seems like over the past five years or so, an infinite number of marketing channels have emerged. We bought pages on listing sites, then we created our own property websites.  Now web pages are generated for our property just by having a resident “check in” on Facbook or Foursquare.  Seriously!

 This makes it extremely challenging for an apartment community to have one coherent brand on the web. So what’s a marketer to do?

It’s the question every property manager and industry partner wants to figure out: just how much does social media help build our brands, improve services, save money, and create new revenue?

I think it’s especially difficult to calculate social media’s rewards because they flow into many different buckets. I’m not implying this means we should shirk the responsibility of measuring ROI—but remember that there are benefits beyond leads, like branding, customer service, and SEO lift to marketing pages with proper social media integration.

It can take a long time to see that social media is generating leads, leases and sales, so we naturally try to justify our investment with other data, including increased page views, inbound traffic generation, SEO, and engagement.

I was chatting with Mike Whaling yesterday, and we both agreed there are definitely some quick wins out there to help optimize your brand, stores, properties, etc. online.  It can be time consuming, but claiming your business's pages on Google, Bing, Yelp!, etc. can be quick ways to get some SEO juice for your websites and help promote your business on those additional channels.  Where I struggle from there is with a content strategy ongoing.

Here’s the honest truth, you can’t half-ass it anymore.  Search as we know it today is changing, and if you aren’t trying to be part of or help create conversation then I will predict that drive-by may become your best lead source.  OK, that could be extreme, but the algorithm is changing from a keywords model and more value is being put on conversation and connections with real people to a brand.  Criticize Google+ all you want, but even if that doesn’t do exactly what they hoped it most definitely highlights how Google is giving more credit to social connections.

I spend a lot of time thinking about social media engagement. What’s it mean? How do we improve it? How can we use it to help our clients grow? One way to find out is to look at what other companies are doing.

I’m currently reading Onward, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s memoir of returning to save the company he founded. Early in the book Schultz says that social media has always been a huge priority for Starbucks. On the face of it, he’s right.

With its 600 million users and average daily session time of 25 minutes, Facebook provides an exceptional opportunity for visibility, Google indexing, live search ability, and fan engagement.

But, if you build it, will they come? And if they come, will they stay and engage?

Be Interesting

Keep your audience engaged and offer something of value. When fans “like” a certain brand’s page they need to be provided with content or activities to keep them active on the page. In order to keep your page “alive” it is important to launch something interactive daily.

Here are some interesting and creative ways to engage and interact with your residents:

 There are multiple ways to leverage foursquare to advertize your community, flaunt property traffic, and ultimately increase your property’s bottom line.  One of the best parts about foursquare is that little to no managing needs to be done by the location for visitors to check-in and share your community virally.  However, by getting involved and knowing how to maximize your property’s foursquare potential, you can truly get the most out of this valuable social tool.  Listed below are a few simple steps to follow to reach Apartment Marketing bliss on foursquare.

OK, I'll admit it. I'm a Foursquare GEEK, and now, with the launch of Facebook Places, I am TOTALLY CONFUSED. There's so much news out about Facebook Places - what will be the best tool for helping your outreach or marketing efforts at your apartment communities? Which application will help you stay connected to more apartment residents, attract more apartment prospects, give you more positive exposure?

Some background:

I use facebook as a place to connect with friends and collegues, keep up with the latest news about places/businesses I "like," and connect with other like-minded individuals.

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: