Can you make it more social? 

What if you took Craigslist and made it just a little more social? What if you extended your leasing team by four fold overnight? What if you took the current tired resident referral model and tossed in a tool to assist those who would actually assist us in producing leads and leases?

Get the community involved

I have thought for a very long bit of time and even experimented with the idea of partnering with the people who live in our apartment communities to churn out marketing on our behalf. Our experiments have not been backed by a ton of passion and or adopted with cheery fanfare by the people that we invited to play along and nonetheless I think there might be an opportunity. I intend to continue to experiment.

How do you make Craigslist a little more social? 

The loose thought, in brief, is to organize four to six template Craigslist Apartment Marketing Packages. Photos, ad copy, headlines, pricing and the such would be included. A detailed white paper to include step-by-step instructions for posting and responding to would be residents. It would also include an introduction training provided by the Mills Marketing Team. The training would be supplemented by four to six ongoing training sessions over time.

WIIFM  

What’s in it for me? Or, for them? The carrot – a monetary incentive for every lease we secured, aka – the resident referral fee.

What do you think? 

Your -thinking Craigslist can be more social – multifamily maniac,

M

We squeezed one roof into the 2011 budget but now that it has come time to consider doing it; we have to get creative. Enter the idea. The property sits right in the path of outbound flights from the Saint Louis airport. That being the case;  the owner suggested approaching big box retailers and or anyone else that would have an interest in sponsoring, in a sense, the roof replacement.

I’m certain it’s not a novel idea but it was novel to me in the sense of the trade exchange element. It goes beyond the traditional banner on rooftops that front busy arteries all over america. The type we purchase to push our lifestyle, specials and or availability. If done well, it could take a huge chunk of capital expense right out of our budget.

Cool or Cheesy?

Photo credit to: Advertising is Good for You

I heard a story not so long ago about the power of a thank you card. Seems she had set out to find a new wallet for her husband; a gift to mark their fist anniversary as a married couple. With a little thought she picked Coach as her place to make a purchase.

Get Personal

The sales associate she happened across was more than eager to assist. He went about learning the exact nature of her purchase and took the time to match up the perfect wallet for the occasion. He picked off that the wallet was her gift for their first year of marriage. In doing so he also picked off a deep emotional moment that two people shared.

Take Action

By getting personal; he yield some insights for meaningful action. People are emotional. As such people are moved by emotion. If our actions are emotional in nature; suffice it to say that those emotions will be reciprocated back to us in like kind. In the case of the Coach associate; his action has yielded him a customer for life.

Gain Loyalty

How, you ask? He wrote a very kind; very personal note of congrats to the young lady. He included some very kind words regarding the wallet and the years of use he would garnish out of it. Loyalty for the price of a pen, some paper and a few minutes of time. Hand written and mailed the same day of the purchase. Sound familiar?

The young lady in this story told me she would never consider shopping at another retailer for leather related products. Not a novel concept in the apartment industry but one that I wholeheartedly believe is lost in the struggles of time, attention and willingness to extend oneself under the premise of fostering meaningful connection.

Whether you are B2B or B2C; the power of the written word is rarely for not. Take some time today and pen a few cards to people you have interacted with this week. And, come back and share some stories about what happened as a result.

Millsy Becomes a Real Boy

Our newly appointed Marketing Director & Communication Strategist, Melissa Preusser (we have an interview lined up – stay tuned to learn more about her) borrowed from the world of athletic mascots to come up with Millsy! Millsy is our Apartment Company Mascot. Millsy will accompany our media teams to any and all company and community functions, festivals, sporting events, partnership gathering and networking events. His chief aim? Give people a reason to talk about Mills. And, what better event could there be for his coming to life party than the annual St. Louis Mardi Gras Parade. Millsy becomes a real boy on Saturday March 5th 2011. We will be sharing a lot of the highlights and pics in future posts.

For now, I thought it would be fun to share some pics of Millsy in the early stages of coming to life…

Mills Apartments Charts Social Media Course

It’s official, Mills Apartments is slowing making it’s way into the world of social media. While the process of participation has been slow to evolve, we have not been completely idle. Over the past two years we have listened and interacted here and there, dipping our toe in on experimental basis only. We are now going from dipping our toe to a full swan dive by creating an overall marketing strategy that integrates social media into the mix.

The following are the areas we are choosing to focus our time and attention;

• New website [not something that we would have elected to do [nor see as an absolute necessity] except that we collectively did not like our current one]

• Prospect Portals

• Resident Portals

• Ten blogs, eight of which will serve the various neighborhoods and regions where we have a presence. The other two will be penned from our home office, one from the various team members that make up this family called Mills and the other by our President – Kirk Mills.
• One Twitter Account Click Here
• One Facebook Like page for each of our 47 [as of today] properties Park Clayton Apartments
• YouTube Channel

Now we have no illusions that we can pull this off with out the help of a professional and after a bit of a beauty contest we elected to work with Mike Whaling over at 30lines. He along with a few others [hopefully, soon to be announced] are building the lion’s share of the infrastructure. Up to this point, he has proven to be a very valuable partner and resource and as such we are very excited about the future.

The post today is really just a tease in the way getting our story out there in the crowded sea of multifamily social media starts. I have been given full permission to document the good, the bad and the ugly along the way in building this out. And, in doing so I would be remiss not to mention the many fine trailblazers that we have borrowed [wink wink] ideas from. Many of the things you will see in the coming months will echo the efforts of others and many will take on little tweaks and nuances. And, I will do my best to site the sources of inspiration and feel free to call me on the carpet if I miss anyone.

With all that being said, I wanted to share the first of a number of internal dialogs that relate to our get social initiative. This gem is from our Communication Strategist and Brand Manager – Melissa Presusser. It relates to our blog initiative and went out to a select group of managers who have been charged with beginning to create compelling, over the top and very cool content. While they will by no means be alone in this – we thought it right to have them highly involved in the process. We are certain that it will be a work in progress and we will learn a lot along the way.

As a premise, we are encouraging all of our bloggers’ to read the introduction of Brains on Fire. We are going to use their passion for ignition in hopes of putting a real dent in the city of STL.

With that – here we go!

YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED!!

Mills Properties will begin a blogging frenzy in the next few months with 9 blogs going at one time.  We have chosen all of you to help get this super important piece of our web presence started!!  You have all shown a very strong ability and passion for writing and using social media and we think you will be perfect to join our team!  This is an excellent, rockin opportunity for you to really build your skills and help make really great things happen – bigger than big!

Here is what will be required, if you choose to accept…

1. Accept our offer to be a Fabulous Mills Blogger
2. Purchase, with petty cash, the book Brains on Fire: Igniting Powerful, Sustainable, Word of Mouth Movements
   or pick it up – I believe it can also be purchased in store at Barnes & Noble or Borders
3. Read the introduction of the book mentioned above by October 26^th
4. 4. Attend the Mills Blogger Training Class on Tuesday, October 26^th at 9:00 at the corporate office (we should conclude at or around 12:00)
5. Get started with your crazy cool content to make things happen at Mills

We can’t wait to hear from you!  Please call me if you have questions!

Let us know what you think and a big thank you to all that have inspired us along the way…

Invite The Neighborhood

In the spirit of marketing apartments – Cinema on the Lawn was a project targeted at the neighborhood at large. The implied effect that we were after was to get the neighborhood together – stimulated by a cool experience that they would have reason to talk about. It worked as evidenced by the growing number of attendees. The last movie we presented was attended by over 100 people more than half of which did not live in our apartments. While I can not prove out a number as it relates to leases, I can say with confidence that we enhance the experience of living in the DeBaliviere Neighborhood and as such we were raved about.

Build Your Own

I caught this on my train ride back from Chicago on Sunday – it’s not all that hard to build your own outdoor theater.

What kind of things are you doing this summer to draw in the community at large?

Technorati Tags: @mbrewer, mbrewer, mikebrewer, mbrewergroup, experience marketing, outdoor apartment cinema, outdoor movies, frontyard features, debaliviere, park station, mills properties

The core of Social Media is not “eyeballs and ears” but rather “hearts and minds.” Go for quality, not quantity. – As tweeted by @NW_Mktg_Guy

I have read a few blog posts as of late that promote the thought of racing to certain thresholds of users on the various Social Media platforms, i.e. – 10k Facebook Likes. Despite FBs flip-flopping position on the 10k number as it relates to the Like page – I am baffled as to why that would be a strategic aim. Outside of understanding the would be advantages – if FB flops again – I would have to question the quality of such a forced end result. That is to suggest that if the number grows to 10k organically via rich experiences then hooray but if the number is achieved by coercion then – booray. Simply put – don’t race to 10k just because you can.

Quality vs. Quantity

Let me preface this section by saying that I’m the last person that should be writing a post taking sides on this subject. One could move right to my personal FB profile and question – why I friend everyone that comes across the recommendation page [it is not exactly everyone - only if there are multiple mutual connections between the networks]. The somewhat akward and funny answer is that I love defending myself from indefensible positions. That aside, the real answer is – despite the overlapping networks – I don’t know but I have been thinking about it for a couple of months now. I will admit that I am closer to deciding that quality is the better aim although I don’t have a premise for that position as of yet. And I would not suggest there is a right or a wrong answer.

All that being said, the tweet above really resonated with me concerning Like pages. If you take a strict interpretation of the word engagement – it really does boil down to the soft stuff. Like the quote suggest – heart’s and minds. In my head – that translates not to – Like your organization but rather Love your organization. I think there is a difference but that discussion is for another day.

What are your thoughts? Race for the thresholds despite quality – or, slowly grow to the threshold through remarkable experiences that people naturally invite their friends to be a part of? Or, do you have a completely alternate position on the subject?

Photo credit scs.ryerson.ca

Power in Mystery

After working through the logistics and contract negotiations we settled on a spot and let the construction begin. What happened next was pure entertainment – are you building a pool? Are you building a new building? Volleyball courts? – Wait, it’s too big to be a pool! Arg, what is it? All the common questions begin to filter through the wifi lounge, the community and into our leasing center. That is until we could not take it any more and we disclosed.That said, we learned a real time lesson as it relates to WOM.

Apartment Marketing Stimulants

Tell them but don’t tell them. We have a number of other amenities and improvements that we are doing to this property over the next one to three years with each one major in scope. Taking the lesson from the dog park mystery – we will leave the community to – guess it out – if you will. I can see some cool social media apartment amenity mysteries playing out over Facebook and other social platforms. In the spirit of – give them something to talk about – mystery takes a front seat. And, besides who doesn’t like a great guessing game or mystery? Who can resist talking about it with their friends, family and otherwise? Which is part of the point, right?

If you recall the Google commercial that ran during the Super Bowl you will have a really good sense for what this is. Google has created a way for you to mimic their Search On commercial. It’s really ingenious if you ask me. And, simple to do.

Here is a link to the site where you can build your own. And, here is the one I built for Mills Properties:

Using this chart as a catalyst, we are going to do a five part series titled: The Five E’s of Apartment Internet Marketing. The overarching premise will be playing to the want’s of would be apartment Facebook, Twitter and other social medium friends. We start the series with Exclusivity.

What is Exclusivity?

Exclusivity can be defined as the sole right to a specific business function. AT&T’s exclusive right to market the iPhone is likely the most paramount example of this. Beyond that there is a huge push by aggregators to secure exclusive rights to content. We have seen this with the likes of Harvard Business Review striking a deal with an aggregator and Steven Covey striking a deal for distribution on Amazon’s Kindle. These are mass examples of exclusivity but the concept can be applied to things as simple as white papers. In this case the exclusivity comes in the way of getting for giving or more specifically, give me your email address and I will give you the white paper. It’s exclusive in the sense that not everyone would be willing to give personal information to get.

Value Exchange

The overarching point is that exclusivity has a give and take scenario baked in. You give up Sprint to get the iPhone, you give up buying from B&N and buy a Kindle so you can read Covey, you give up personal information to get information. The goods, services, experience or information requires an action on the part of the consumer and guess what, it’s the overriding reason they friend brands. They want to learn about specials, sales, etc..

Consumer Expectations

Human beings have a few things in common – one being the innate need to feel important, wanted or needed. When we apply that fact to the concept of exclusivity we can clearly see that the perception of being a part of what could be considered an elite group is compelling. We own an iPhone so we can feel cool. We read the HBR so we can feel cool. We read the latest Covey book so we can feel cool. We found our apartment on Craigslist and it was a great deal so we feel cool. Consumers are willing to give up stuff and things to feel important, wanted or needed – all day long.

Offer it and they will come

As it applies to Apartment Internet Marketing in the context of social mediums – more times than not, if you offer it they will come. Now, before I go on, I am not suggesting that you can just put any old thing out there and expect participants to join in, you have to work it. You have to willing to commit to listening, joining in, trying, failing, retooling and trying again. Otherwise it’s all for naught. I am suggesting, however, that if you do things as simple as offering a rent concession to the resident that increases your fan page base the most, or something we eluded to awhile back with tryvertising, or simply setting up a kiosk in your lobby set with twitter and facebook and asking anyone that walks in the door to friend you – you will gain an audience. However, it does not stop here…

…in part two of this series we will talk about what to do with that audience: Education

In the mean time, feel free to continue the Exclusivity conversation by leaving us a comment below.

And, have a compelling day!