I have been reading a ton about Interest Graphs as of late. An interest graph is akin to a digital map that captures and demonstrates everything you like or frankly don’t like. Be it coffee, tea or me – it takes everything you like about your personal adventure through this world and packages it up into one nice comprehensive picture of you. Think Pinterest – the red-hot picture pinning site. In my estimation IG’s are a marketers wildest dream come true.

Apartment Marketing a Few Years Hence

Imagine with me for a moment – if you will. Tomorrow morning you walk into your office, pop open your email and you read:

Hi all,

Today we are embarking on a new marketing initiative. As such, we are completely revamping the information you commingle to make up your demographic set. But, unlike many of our other initiatives, for this one you don’t need to do a thing.  In fact, this thing is so brilliant you are going to have a tough time keeping up with the new-found demand we intend to create.

You see, we have crafted a quasi-quant algorithm that constructs your apartment communities Interest Graph. That is to suggest that your community has a personality (and, a friend making ability) and we have found a way to define it based on the premise of how moving it is. Then – get this – once we have defined that personality, we are going to align it with people with like kind personalities or Interest Graphs.

Confused? That’s okay, it will all make sense at some point -

Stay tuned,

Your Marketing Team

Fish Where the Fish Are 2.0 

As the internet becomes more and more fragmented with special interest groups (not to be mistaken with those who lobby politically), the more specific we can get with where we have our conversations. And, we can be more precise about what we say and don’t say. Today, we know we have to have a website, a blog and we have to get connected on Facebook. Tomorrow, we will still need those things but now we will be able to find and converse with exactly who we are looking for in the exact place where they don’t mind sharing and talking. Because the conversation will center around the very things they love and cherish as represented by their interests. So long as we are patient and exercise all the simple lessons Dale Carnegie taught us – we will open the flood gates. That is don’t be a stalker.

I see a day when we know exactly who it is that we want to rent our apartments, who will actually rent them, when they will actually rent, and how much rent they are willing to pay. All by simply defining and promoting our communities Interest Graph and coupling them up with people who have like kind interests. In my head, it’s akin to creating personas of the people who you want your marketing messages to speak to but much more amplified and much deeper, richer and more compelling. Much more intimate. It will bring together a like hearted and like-minded apartment community that will attract like kind people. And, that my friends will likely be the lead into the beginning of singularity.

Your Apartment Interest Graph Marketing Junkie (at least this week),

M

Pic Credit: Robert Scoble

This is a fascinating topic in that it really boils down to search
engine sites racing to organize web content around a set of standards -
standards that would ultimately give meaning to web pages. Meaning so
precise that any search term you typed in would yield the exact person,
place, thing or in our case apartment that you were looking for.
Imagine searching for a $612 second floor one bedroom apartment facing
Forest Park in Central West End of St. Louis and boom you get it. Add
the words; near someone I know and boom you find one right next to one
of your Facebook friends. Google’s Wave is for all intents and purposes
a way to organize conversations in such a way that they have a more
precise meaning to the end user. How might something like this be
useful in our space?

Using Wave we could generate a message on the topic of a recently
vacated apartment home and the need for a new resident. We could then
send it out to our permission based user set [read: resident
evangelists]. Maybe we tie an incentive to it or maybe we don’t. The
point is the evangelist would then go to work finding their next
neighbor all the while content is being organized. Each time that
happens Wave gets smarter and each time the end user gets a richer
experience in yielding exactly what they search for. And, over time the
scenario above becomes more realistic. It all makes my spin. You think
social media is fun? The Semantic web will bring a whole new meaning to
apartment marketing. And, just when you think you can’t take anymore
the Web in things will be in full force.

And, with that I must hit the publish
button as it is 2:33AM and I have a big day planned with my kids.

Have a famous weekend.

M

Related Story:

Will Google Wave Eliminate the Need for PR as Media Relations?

apartment marketing, semantic web