I often blog over at Multifamily Insiders. It’s a great site, and Brent Williams has really put something together over there that is truly amazing.

A couple of weeks ago, I cross posted my “Social Notworking” blog post. And last night, a resident weighed in. As so many blogs are posted on Multifamily Insiders, it’s very deep into the site right now and you might not be able to read the response, so I am cross posting it here as well.  Here you go:

If you don’t mind, I’d like to share my “I’m actually a resident” perspective about a few of these specific online venues.

RATING SITES
I’m with Steve. Go with ratings sites like Yelp.com and even apartmentratings.com. If blog writers responding to blogs is so valuable, don’t we have the opportunity to respond to resident posts good and bad with grace and poise? My husband actually chose to send me to a local spa from a ratings site because the owner responded personally to all comments good or bad. And most of them were good. You will have to overcome the automatic distrust of the manager, but the best way to do so is to not be defensive.

MY VOTE?–Do it…if you can do it well!

FACEBOOK
As an avid user of facebook, the only way I’ll find any information is if my friends are directly connected. I have too many friends to keep up with to go looking for other events/causes/networks in facebook. I might, just might, see something on the side that someone “liked” or became a “fan” of, but the chances of me clicking on that are next to none.

Also, many are getting wise to the possibility that people may actually look at your pictures and check your status update. So “friending” your local apartment community might not always be the best idea. Especially if you didn’t pay for two pet deposits, and your status update often talks about your two big dogs. Having connected with many of my fellow residents and then becoming friends on facebook, I have found out many things they wouldn’t want our manager to know.

MY VOTE: Is it worth the time? Probably not. I just think there must be something we can do better.

TWITTER
I agree that getting tweets about your property are great, but getting residents and their friends “following” your properties’ tweets is a a huge challenge. It would have to be something pretty amazing, like “Come on down to the clubhouse. Cookies are warm and fresh.” Or “Firing up the grill for our resident bbq today! Are you coming?” I especially like the first because it is something that isn’t advertised anywhere else. Twitter would be the exclusive host of this information.

In fact, did you know that a bakery, I believe somewhere in the UK, started doing this whenever new batches or new products were hot out of the oven. Whenever they tweeted, they would be sold out of that product in a very short time through phone orders and stop-bys. That’s amazing to me. However, be realistic…apartment homes and freshly baked, hot out of the oven bread is not the same thing.

MY VOTE: Sure! Yet again, if not done well, will absolutely waste too much of your time. My opinion is to focus on current residents first.

MY NUTSHELL OPINION/DEFINITION: Social Networking is about finding your fans, and letting them spread the word, whether it is online or just down at the local Starbucks or Moms Group. Decide what your target market is and prioritize well. You HAVE to do a lot of other forms of marketing, but only do social marketing if it is truly beneficial (facebook, twitter, etc., not including ratings sites). And take good care of those fans, a.k.a. residents. Do so, and they will be fans for life with or without tweets

Whether you agree or not, well said.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 at 4:38 am and is filed under Resident Retention, Marketing, Leasing, Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.