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WOW. I have been hit by a flu or cold bug and feel absolutely spent.
My apologies in advance as I am taking the day off from blogging. I do look forward to getting back in a day or two as we have much to get out there.
Take care and have an Insanely Great Wednesday. M
More on the idea of an apartment resident forum on your website or portal. In the beginning it will be crucial for you to have people who not only stimulate conversation but moderate it as well. Let's call them information specialists for now. IS people will have to produce the content and dialog and it is my opinion that they should be prepared to produce good quality but in large volume and in small chunks. This need will change as the forum evolves and we will talk about that in future posts. But for now lets' talk about one reason why.
Most consumers consume data in small chunks that are easily digested. Take a look at Twitter, their platform forces one to formulate thoughts in 140 characters or less. Doing so gets to the heart of what consumers like; brevity and clarity.
Random thought: What if you could get your forum linked to Twitter so that you would by default be forced to pen your thoughts with brevity and clarity. Not only that, consumers who elected to "follow you" (a term used on the Twitter platform) would be updated each and every time the forum was updated. It would be a tool of active engagement. And, because the "tweets" (another Twitter term; used to describe a user update) are short and sweet they can quickly discern if they would like to participate with the information or move on. The point is they can participate on the fly and with brevity which is what you want from your evangelists. Some how in this you would have marry Twitter posts back to your forum. Or, does Twitter become your forum? I don't think so as it would be important for consumers to be able to search past posts and I am not sure if you can do that in Twitter.
More to come as I hear the rustling of my three and five year old. I have spent the last 6 days with my two beautiful children doing everything kid like and now we are off to get ready for daycare. At three and five they have the energy of hyena's and I thought I was non-stop. WOW! Wouldn't trade it for the world.
Have an amazing Monday.
Your loving Twitter more and more and the biggest fan of manic Mondays. M
*Ideas on Apartment forums adapted in part from the book Groundswell.
A Post by Eric
Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine wrote The Long Tail, The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.
Can we break from the typical Apartment Commodity by applying these theories? Most of the Long Tail aggregators, such as Netflix, Amazon and iTunes, completely dominate their categories. They are, in a sense, hits. But the Long Tail is about the shift from hits to niches. The Tail has a MUCH higher profit margin than the Head, and will allow you to charge higher rents and will increase your NOI significantly if you can pull it off. Those successful at this approach will get $200 to $300 more per month in rent than the Plain Jane across the street. Is your apartment community conducive to dominate the Gay and Lesbian Market, the Female Market, the Gen X Market, the Gen Y Market, the Baby Boomer Market, the Work Force Housing Market, the Pet Market, and on and on. Are you doing anything to attract and dominate any of these market slices? If you are, can you then create a Niche within a Niche, and further spread the gap between you, and anyone else, thus creating your own market as you Break from The Pack of Apartment Commodity.
How about this: presupposing we all know what widgets are at this point. If not we can do a post providing examples. Just let me know. But what if you created a widget that you could allow users to embed in their respective social media sites like Facebook and MySpace. Or their respective blogs, forums or the such that advertised a resident referral program.
The widget would produce your respective incentive program and would draw a prospect to your website where they could complete a transaction. It would also alert the embedder that contact has been made. So as to push him/her to push his/her friend to follow through with renting a home. His incentive is that he gets paid so our embedding alert message could include language that reminds him of the amount. Maybe it's a dwindling amount over time as to create a sense of urgency.
Just a thought on this beautiful summer (oh, it's spring). I forget it's 80+ at night during spring in Misery. Oh, how I dread the coming summer season. Love the sun, hate the humidity. M
Technorati Tags: apartment widgets, mike brewer
Mike has posted about this already, but I would like to hear feedback from the community, about specific marketing and product offerings specifically directed at the female market. This isn’t a new trend, but one that I do not think most if any apartment operators/developers are picking up on, there are more and more single females buying things every year, and for the first time ever single straight females outnumber single straight males. And they are staying single. To this point, why aren’t we marketing and designing, to the extent we can a product specifically for single females. I am not suggesting the property would be only single females, but if we design a flair toward that with colors, lighting, and certain features that are highly valued by single females, we will naturally draw upon that market, and thus create a certain following, that will by design create a target niche within a niche, and we will get more rent, at least for that slice of the market if we hit it right. So, the question from this babble is, how much latitude do we have to alter colors, lighting, and certain features? Your thoughts and feedback are appreciated
It looks like we may be getting our second move in from the Earth Day
event on Sunday.
We are nearing ten calls for more information.
CPL $250. Kind of high when you compare to other sources.
Its the brand recognition cost that is also important to consider. How
do put a price on that?
Stay Fluid...
Haven’t thought of anything yet, add this cool widget to measure your Walk Score for your property to your web site if you have an urban location; For further information on Walk Score: http://www.walkscore.com , it is a simple plug in add, and is important to some folks, and those that it is important too, will Love You for it!
What are You doing Today to make your Product, your Ads, your Service and every Point of Contact you have with Your Resident “Interesting” and “Stand Out” Balloons and Banners are not enough to break from Apartment Commodity. Not sure of how to be creative, Seth Godin recommended a couple of weeks ago to spend some time on You Tube and Photo Bucket, and tap into someone else’s creativity for some ideas, Try It, It Works, there is still some time left today!
When somebody is complaining about your product, they are saying, 'I
would love to love you but I cannot currently.' These people will
become your most passionate users if you listen to them and if you take
action."
--Marten Mickos,
SVP Sun Microsystems
Technorati Tags: apartment marketing, mike brewer
We spent 7 hours in the sun and both me and the marketing director have a super sunburn to show for it. I actually fell asleep on my couch around 7:45 last night and woke to my phone ringing at 3:45AM.
As for rentals, time will tell. Eric left a very good comment on one of the last posts I did from the festival, check it out below. The gist of his comment was measurement and really the true one is net rentals.
While I can say I agree with him on all points, I still think there is value to this sort of marketing. I however don't think that you go over the top on the booth piece be it decoration or placement in the event. That to say I would never recommend being a sponsor of the shows.
I do believe that you have to make a great first impression and there are things that we are going to change drastically for our future attempts. This was our first go round and we learned a few things.
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