I read somewhere that if you are blogging or doing social media without the intent of selling more stuff, you are a hobbyist. I call bunk on that thought. 

I’ve been blogging for nearly seven years now. And, I can tell you I don’t do it to sell more things. Moreover, I can tell you I don’t do it for a hobby. The work ethic alone in terms of keeping it up makes it much more than a hobby. I do it to be enchanted, to be enlightened, to be better at what I do.

That is not to suggest that there are some diary writers out there that are cataloging their life for no other purpose but to just do it.

I look at it like this – blogging has been a gateway to some very amazing relationships, educational opportunities and otherwise. For me, it’s value comes not in the way of consulting gigs, widget sales or other offerings but rather in the relationships I get to partake in. Now one could argue that all that leads to sales. Maybe so. But it’s not the premise for every blog and neither is every blog a hobby. Even some of the corporate types.

I would even go out on a limb to say that those who don’t set the premise as a sales oriented one but rather one of – exposure to some cool people I can learn from – end up selling more stuff.

Thoughts?

Question: Do we need to hire, train and promote subject matter experts in order to reach the ever segmenting audience?

Pic: Courtesy of Everything Technology Blogging

It’s that simple

Every message must provide value. And, the most important key might not be what you think.

In my head, the three most important words in real estate are not location, location, location but rather people, people, people. You can have the most amazing asset fetching top p/s/f rates and lose it in an instant if people lose the sense that they are part of something bigger than self. If they lose site of the human nature of business. If they lose desire, hope and willingness to serve. People are a message. Dare I say that people are THE message!

Or, could it be deeper and/or more fundamental?

Friendslist offers a cleaner interface to start, but that’s nothing new. What it does is connect buyers and sellers, or people who are looking for jobs and people who are hiring, through the people they know. Yes, Oodle does this to some extent on Facebook Marketplace, but Friendslist takes a slightly different approach.

No offense FR. But, please know whether it was you, AF, AG or any other provider, I would feel the same. The move gave me every cause to expedite the reallocation of near $550,000 of FR specific marketing spend over the last 18 months. Not a complete departure but a semi-massive one.  Stay tuned…

Image: Apple.com

The jury is still out in my mind as it relates to the use of QR codes. I wrote about them three or four years ago and at the time I thought they were cool but today I have a very different opinion. Back then there was no real mass use commercial or otherwise and in the same respect there was a neat kind of novelty about them. It was cool that I could make my own but really confusing in that that I had no way to read it after I made it. That was before that proliferation of smart phones and the apps that make them so powerful. For now I classify QR codes under the “just because you can, does not mean you should” category.

Waste of Time

For example, I am reading The NOW Revolution by Bear and Naslund and it is full of QR codes. I give them high points for novelty. I give them high points in quantity. And, if it mattered, I give them high points in placement as it relates to aesthetics. They really packed a ton of information into 200 pages or less. But, I would never, in a million years, take the time to pull out my phone, take a picture and wait for the page to load. It’s too much work. Don’t make me pay [in the way of my time and in my money] twice for information.

Think Twice

As a result of The Now Revolution, I will never buy another book without flipping through it more thoroughly. If I see QR codes; I see that money more well spent in my bank account.

QR codes in Apartment Magazines

QR codes are pasted all over the pages of ForRent Magazine and others like it. I wonder, outside or AEs presenting a WOW moment, if people actually use them in a meaningful way. I hear the echos of “value add” but I think “what a waste of space.” Tell me what the value is and reduce my bill accordingly and keep the crazy things off my page.

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…

Rather, I am curious to hear from our readers; What is/are your biggest struggle with it? What are your biggest successes? What would you tell someone who is thinking about starting a like page?

I appreciate any discussion we get going here – even the brief ones.

Scott Stratten from the very popular UnMarketing Blog cut the idea of sharing down to its core recently -

UnMarketing » Blog Archive » Word of Mouth Has Changed, Sort Of

Look at what gets shared on Facebook, or retweeted on Twitter. Funny stuff, brilliant knowledge-filled posts, sad things, stuff that angers you.

Repeat after me: People. Spread. Emotion.

Apartment Facebook Like Page: Rules for Share

It’s kind of like Steve Leonard’s rule for customer service : Rule number one: The customer is always right. Rule number two: If the customer is wrong, see rule number one! I am adopting Scott’s mantra as it relates to sharing content on your Apartment Facebook Like Page or your Apartment Twitter Status updates: And, to distill it into a set of rules [I hate rules but for the sake of keeping] Rule number one: People. Spread. Emotion. Rule number two: If there is no spread, see rule number one!

Apartment Blogging: Fear

I agree to some extent with Eric that there is a dearth of examples with apartment blogging in the Apartment Space as I think the offerings are growing everyday. For example – Mills Properties – is on the verge of launching seven regional blogs in addition to revamping the Mills employee-centric blog. In addition, JC Hart, Trillium, Paragon, Village Green and PCMG have ventured down the path of blogging and from my perspective are doing a good job of it. I applaud the fact that these firms have taken the endeavor on as an in-house marketing function.

With that, I feel it necessary to make the point that I am not an advocate of ILSs that offer blogging as a part of their advertising package. And, time should be of no excuse. I would rather hear the fear stuff like; I am afraid of what others might think of my choice of topic, my grammar, my spelling or what if I can’t think of anything to write about. Not that those things are not important but – time as an excuse – save it. This is something you make time for at the expense of other things.

Apartment Non-Blogging

To the topic at hand – the following post was offered up on the Conversation Agent Blog a couple weeks ago. In it Valeria Moltoni suggests alternatives to blogging that could and are effective in building your digital footprint. If you are not into creating original and or mashed up blog content – this read is for you. The premise is that participation is an equally compelling form of content creation. She offers some real practical applications using LinkedIn, Twitter and others. So – if you just can’t bring yourself to do it and you elect not to farm it out to a third party, try this method.

Enjoy and let us know your thoughts in the comments below -

Conversation Agent: Blogging at Work if You Don’t Have a Blog

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. Participation is content because it is what will activate your content in the context of the conversation. Remember when you worried about nobody coming to your blog? It’s the same with content in other places – you’ve got to interact to activate it.

It looks like @earlybird is positioning itself as a socially acceptable way to broadcast your current promotion. Brian Solis puts it this way in On Twitter, The Early Bird Gets the Worm

If you can imaging the possibilities for @EarlyBird, it goes beyond just one-off deals and specials through a generic account [push marketing], it can be themed into opt-in channels for almost any area of interest, food, music, entertainment, events, etc. [relevancy] emphasis mine.

As it relates to apartment marketing, I can see the value in an opt-in channel for apartments as a good thing -

What do you think?