After reading my business partner Brent Steiner’s post this week on maintaining some perspective as it pertains to monitoring your online reputation, posted as a result of the Twitter hysteria over the Horizon debacle, I must say, I feel relieved.  The myriad of “conversation” playing out on this subject is astounding – as though this is the only thing residents and property management peeps are doing all day long.  I can picture it now, man walks into a leasing office, and waits patiently while leasing professional finishes her morning round of monitoring her online presence.  “Just a minute,” she says, “I just have to make sure nobody is ticked off at us this morning.  I’ll get to you in a minute.” 

Some of the advice I have seen of late as it regards to online reputation management (let’s call it ORM, as monikers seem to be all the rage in the social media world – nobody but you is supposed to know what you’re talking about, as this makes you look smarter than those people that have not yet “embraced the conversation”) – is not contexted to speak to the world of real life property management professionals.  Having recently spent some time on site, in the “real world” it is way more difficult to monitor your ORM when the in-person resident is coming and going all day long.  Let’s not forget that people do quite often appear physically to view and lease apartments, renew leases, make complaints, (believe it or not, some of our residents don’t even know what “Yelp” is), ask when the mail will arrive and jaw with the leasing professional because they have nothing else to do, and crave some human conversation.  I suppose we could just tell them to go join the conversation because we need to wrap it up and go join it ourselves, but that’s not being nice.  Let’s not forget about phone calls.  Remember that handy little device?  Guess what?  People use it.  They use email too.  In the world I see, property management professionals have difficulty just conducting following up and keeping their gosh-darned Craigslist ads up to date.  Insisting they now constantly manage everything people are saying about them on line is likely to send them over the edge.   In closing, if I may serve as the voice of reason to property management professionals worldwide, (because make no mistake, in most cases this will become the responsibility of front line professionals), first, take a deep breath.  Then, take care of your residents.  Really well.   Make sure you are attempting numerous points of contact throughout residency to gauge satisfaction.  Social media may help you do this.  It is a valuable tool when used as part of a strategy – one of the many tools you have to deliver and determine satisfaction levels and flush out concerns.  Be aware of it, learn about it and utilize it, but don’t become consumed by it.