Volume 1: Edition 2011
APTSOCIAL In this Issue: ASC tackles the question on the future of ILS advertising: pg 2 Social Media Best Practices: pg 3 Mark Juleen discusses online ratings strategy: pg 3 Carmen Benitez gives insight on the importance of deploying the right companywide social media program: pg 4 Special ASC Guest, Jonathan Saar helps to decode social media training in a special Training Factor Blog: pg 5 Social Media Funnies: pg 6 Next Month’s Topics: pg 7
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Welcome and Thank You An introduction to the ASC By Carmen Benitez, President / Managing Director Fetch Plus and Founding Member of ASC
There comes a time when you realize that sometimes a change, or better yet, an enhancement to approaches in apartment industry marketing is needed. This hit me about nine months ago after spending a great bit of time getting myself personally reacquainted with many great apartment industry leaders. The one thing I realized from those conversations is that many people exist in the great open space of the internet with interesting ideas, philosophies, case studies and best practices to make our industry a better one. So, I thought I would send a very special thank you to those that have contributed in helping me decide that it was time to form the Apartment Social Council, a team of volunteers from within the industry that work tirelessly to better their communities’ social and digital experiences. This includes Sarah Greenough, SVP and CMO of Princeton Properties, who continues to amaze me with her thoughtful approach towards the introduction of SEO and SEM marketing techniques that play a role even in social search. Also joining us is the very well-regarded Mark Juleen of JC
Hart and Resident Connection who keeps you on your toes with a perspective that is focused on lateral thinking (think left-field approach). You are sure to learn a great bit from him. Sarah Scarborough Graham also joins the ASC as a Founding Member. As the Director of Marketing for The Dolben Company, Inc., she brings a solid case-study perspective on the logistics of rolling out a social and digital program and gives great detail on how to deploy. Eric Brown, probably one of the most recognized voices in the apartment social space joins us with a not to miss approach on the importance of using social media to drive traffic and leases. Ed Javier, VP of Sales ContactAtOnce.com delivers a technology perspective towards increasing conversions through the digital space and is a great resource. Brian Owen, an old friend and work colleague who happens to have led the marketing communications for one of the nation’s most innovative property management companies, as well as oversee the national sales programs for a major trade publication and owner of Mind Racing Media
gives simply a concise and to the point approach for delivering a solid and easily executable social media program. And then me. Well, I’ve had the great fortune of overseeing the marketing and leasing efforts of tens of thousands of units and spearheaded a massive digital outreach program on the national scale for a one of the top twenty US property mgt companies. Plus, I am now in the position to leverage that skill set that I’ve gained by owning my own technology company that launched a social media toolkit that is currently being used by some of the top national property management companies as well as global companies in all parts of the world. I hope that our insight into digital and social marketing will bring you that much closer to reaching your residents and prospects in a way that matters to you and them. This newsletter was created for you. Thank you for being a part of it. Happy reading,
APTSOCIAL Volume 1: Edition 2011
Your demographics play a major point on choosing your ILS. Also, it is critical to not just review your ILS month to month, but to review it on a rolling basis. You will find interesting trends. Sara Scarborough Graham, The Dolben Company, Inc.
ASC Video Chat update: The ILS Debate The impact of social and ways to drive more from your ILS channels
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Internet Listing Sites (ILSs) have come under certain scrutiny over the last two years, especially given the shift in marketing channels that now include social media. Over and over heard from people in the industry, be it those that have to manage the budgets of an apartment community to those that claim expert status, is that ILSs are becoming irrelevant and the value just isn’t there. Members of the Apartment Social Council decided to tackle this question head on during its initial Apartment Social Video Chat and agreed that just is not the case. Some interesting points raised came from the members that include the following best tips: Sarah Greenough highlighted the need to realize that apartment marketing should be considered multi-layered, multi-channel marketing. She states in our video chat, “multichannels have changed significantly with social media, hyper local directories and even mobile. Marketers are responsible for where we spend money and how we attract people to our site.” For Sarah, her metrics are proving that combining the ILS with the social space and being good social citizens is driving a shift to referrals as its top source. In addition, on a broad stroke, she explains that she spends roughly 10% of her apartment community ad spend through ILS advertising.
Sara Scarborough Graham furthers these thoughts and adds great best practice reminders that include making sure to not just look at your ILS traffic lead reports on a monthly basis, but on a rolling basis. In addition she finds it important to setup company-centric flexible contracts with vendors to give you the power to make changes as you see fit. She also hit on a major point about looking at the ILS from its user base and that some demographics tend to use one ILS more often than another. This also correlated with looking at your apartment class and turning on / off ILSs that tend to drive traffic based on that factor. Mark Juleen reminded us of the importance of technology tools that included Rent Sentinel and Call Source as key components to leveraging the return from your ad dollars spent on ILS advertising. Being armed with tools such as these helps increase conversion. And finally, Ed Javier gave fun insights by reminding us that HitWise still reports strong traffic to ILS, so don’t discredit them. Now for our readers, what are some of your best practices and secrets to marketing on the ILS. Go to www.Facebook.com/ApartmentSocialCouncil to let us know!
APTSOCIAL Volume 1: Edition 2011
Social Media Team Training Tips and tricks to get teams adopting
Interesting ways to use technology to digitally outreach • QR code your business cards and referral cards and set up a weekly delivery program to residents, businesses and organizations in the area.
By Carmen Benitez
We’ve heard far too often that teams struggle to get social media right. Everything from little engagement equals little return to just not sure the impact team’s could have on a community’s marketing/leasing program. You are not alone. Social media training can be daunting from the property manager trying to get acclimated from having to put on, “yet another hat” to the corporate marketing VP who has to determine “how the heck do we pull this off ?!” Here are some fool-proof tips provided by Apartment Social Council Members and Jonathan Saar, Guest ASC Video Chat and VP of Training at The Training Factor, a training company dedicated to the multifamily industry. Eric Brown, Founder of Urbane Way, a digital marketing company and owner of Urbane Apts, a Michiganbased property management company finds that it is best to bring it back to your core business. At the end of the day, he states, “if your social media training isn’t producing leases, then it is just a hobby”. Mark Juleen, VP of Marketing at J.C. Hart Company though sees social media training more from first recognizing that we are using social media fundamentally to be discovered in search, or what he calls, “search optimization” and when designing a training program behind search optimization, it is important to be doing it in a way that teams already deploy in their daily function. In the second edition of ASC Video Chat he states,
• Use RentMineOnline, a digital referral program run through Facebook • Set up monthly photo and video competitions on your Facebook pages through platforms like FetchFans.com or Wildfire. • Add a social CRM to your Facebook page like Hearsay Social to scrape “moving/ relocation” keywords and proactively outreach through Twitter and Facebook.
“We’ve taken the approach of training social media the way we’ve always done outreach in the past. Keep it very local to the community. You’d visit your local bank, well that same community can create a social community by visiting with that local bank through social media.” Carmen Benitez, President / Managing Director of Fetch Plus recommends to build a pilot program first amongst key groups within the company at both the community and corporate office level to understand the training side needed to do a general roll-out. Carmen states, “it’s important to the company and community brand by launching a pilot and test a variety of key components to build the right social media program for a general companywide release. Do yourself and your teams a favor by testing a complete program for 3 months with 10% of your portfolio before releasing to the
rest of your teams. This gives the communities a chance to see how the company’s brand offerings get discussed to the customer base. Plus it helps to train teams on the company’s voice, which should be resonated in spirit through each of the communities.” In addition, Sarah Graham found that for her at Dolben it was a must to first design a social media program that could easily fit into the mission at Dolben. that a true social media policy gets hashed out internally first through the executive team prior to making a release to the communities. For Sarah Greenough, though this wasn’t the case at Princeton Properties. In fact, Sarah says it well when she said, “I’d rather state expectations rather than policy here at Princeton Properties”. For her she found this to be a way to alleviate the pressure of going social.
Insight from Mark Juleen
Well, I bring up the topic again because one of my marketing heroes, Seth Godin, touched on the topic today on his blog. He made an interesting point that made me think more about how others react to online reviews. His main point is to commit one way or the other. I think it’s great advice and something every company should really review for themselves.
What’s Your Online Ratings Strategy By Mark Juleen
www.ResidentConnection.com
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Because it's not about being more like everyone else ... it's about being more like you.
For those of you that have followed me for awhile you know that I take the position to respond to all online reviews and to encourage them as well. Just type in “reviews” up in the little search bar at the top of www.markjuleen.com and you’ll see plenty of posts on the topic, including a presentation I did for the AIM conference in 2010.
“If you want people to speak up, be clear and mean it. If you don’t, don’t pretend.” – Seth Godin
APTSOCIAL Volume 1: Edition 2011
Social Media Deployment Don’t fall into the decentralized trap By Carmen Benitez
Facebook Statistics: Now 800 Million users logging into Facebook each month. 72,000 likes happen every minute of every day on business pages. One like is equal to 20 website visits. One of every eight minutes is spent on Facebook. Facebook is the world’s largest photo platform.
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Did you know that five types of social media programs exist? Altimeter Research, an international consulting group found that top global brands were running one of these five methods. They categorized them as the decentralized, centralized, hub and spoke, dandelion (multiple hub and spoke) and holistic social business programs. Interestingly, the type of social media program used correlated with the maturity of the business in the social media space. Additionally, the research found only 11% of the 140 companies that reported were using a decentralized program. A decentralized program calls for a fragmented free-for-all social media program. Coincidentally, this happens to be the social media program most often found being deployed within the apartment industry. The likely reason is that property management companies are still new to social media and face a few issues that they believe may prevent them for taking the plunge to produce the brand story they’ve built through their physical leasing center and company website onto the social networks. One is the myth that technology hasn’t caught up for such a vast deployment of branded community pages on the social media space. Second is that they manage both fee-based and ownership-based communities. And finally, they are still testing the waters on cost. To put it lightly, all of these points can be solved if approached correctly. And the impact to the business is a shift towards more effective marketing, leasing and retention programs. So, you ask, how then do you launch an effective social media program? It’s actually much easier then you think, but you have to first understand the considerations needed to deploy the right program.
“Most property management companies fall into launching a fragmented, decentralized program that creates a negative brand experience for its communities. Internal/ external tools exist to stop the need to launch such a program.” Step one: decide which social media business program you want to launch. Do you want to stay centralized or move directly into a multiple hub and spoke program? To get to this answer, go to step two. Step two: look at internal and external resources. Meaning, do you want your teams involved and if so, how much? For the external resources look at tools and applications. This includes social design tools like FetchFans.com that builds branded interactive pages that can be managed at the property level to social monitoring tools like my favorite, Hearsay Social, a great social CRM. Now that you’ve sorted this, go on to... Step three: build the program around your current marketing/resident retention program and train teams on how to use tools to be vocal through the social space on those programs. Finally, step four: deploy based off what you’ve learned from steps 1-3. Use an email platform and notify your core audience: current residents, prospects, employees and vendor/ partners. Use Facebook for apartment to resident/ prospects outreach, and Twitter/LinkedIn for apartment to vendor/partner outreach. And repeat over and over and over...! Test this first at 20% of your communities before committing others to it to learn the successes and areas that need to be tweaked. Let us know your own best practices as well! www.Facebook.com/ApartmentSocialCouncil
No one department managers or coordinates: efforts bubble from the edges of the company. This can create a backlash at your community and company’s brand. NOT RECOMMENDED
The company brand and procedures are centered from a core built program that communities adopt. Leasing, marketing, maintenance, operations, and executive teams share in that voice at the community, regional and core level RECOMMENDED.
APTSOCIAL Volume 1 Edition: 2011
You definitely do not want to just toss someone a job title and let them have it. They need social media training. It’s a community effort. It takes time and consistency. It also takes courage to try things. Jonathan Saar, The Training Factor
Is Social Media Training Like Riding a Bicycle? A Clip from The Training Factor’s J. Saar
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We can all remember vividly the first time we rode our bikes without the training wheels on and without Mom or Dad holding on to the back of the seat for us. Remember the emotions that came with it? Do words like happiness, excitement, elation come to mind? Of course! At first we looked at this two wheeled machine and were scared out of our mind. Skinned elbows and knees may have hampered your desire to try again. But once we got it the world was ours! Last week’s #AptChat was a bit of an inspiration for this post today. Oodles of property management companies are jumping in feet first into social media and its applications towards marketing, public relations and resident retention. With that have come the growing pains. As my friend Mr. Juleen always says: “There is no cookie cutter approach” and he would be quite correct. There are some key fundamentals that will enhance and speed up the process though. Yes this heading was an actual comment I received from one of my students. I am still to this day not too sure what they meant by that. It sounded to me that this individual had
an account and that was enough and needed no training. This is something that has to be overcome first. Knowing how to Tweet or post a status update does not mean you know how to effectively use social media tool to meet company or apartment community goals. It’s tantamount to having a bicycle with training wheels on and one of the obnoxious squeeze horns on the handlebar. All the pedestrians see and hear that and run for cover. Reviewing with your team how numerous other brands from both inside and outside the brand are using these tools effectively will help them to think outside of their own personal experience. To read more of the story, please visit: http:// thetrainingfactor.com/blog/2011/10/is-social-mediatraining-like-riding-a-bike/ Jonathan is tuned in, please make sure to comment!
APTSOCIAL Volume 1: Edition 2011
Things heard on the social street Fun updates
Jonathan Saar Thanks mike Tyson for my dental appointment today
Brian Owen Good thing I had Vegemite on toast this morning!
Lisa Trosien Go, Pack, Go. That's all I have to say today. That, and that Aaron Rodgers is kinda cute. And so is Clay Matthews. But that's really all I have to say. I think.
Kate Good I love this time of year when it's time to close the apartment community pool and dogs get the last swim! Swim Rover Swim!!
Sara Scarborough Graham Q: What self-respecting woman eats raisins and a mini-bagel for lunch? A: The mom of a preschooler. Lunch of champions? Yep.
Sarah Greenough Too awesome! I joined a gang when I was 11.....;) Friday at 8:24am
Eric Brown Take time to smell the coffee, Carmen Benitez I've decided to lie in bed until it is absolutely necessary to get up to get ready to catch my flight. Lucky I'm packed. And lucky I know how to get up shower and dress in seven minutes flat.
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Mike Whaling Out for a morning run with 17,000 of my closest friends.
APTSOCIAL Volume 1: Edition 2011
Next Month What’s in store In our next issue, we will be tackling the Facebook question... what to do now with major changes to user experience and how that impacts your efforts to reach, recruit and engage for increased conversion and retention. Plus, we will hone in on the importance of developing the right social media PR plan for moments of crisis (yes, they happen and netizens or citizen journalists love to create stories that quickly skew and amplify). We also will be adding a job listings bank to our newsletter, so if you have listings, please send them to carmen@fetchplus.com. We look forward to you joining us on Facebook and YouTube. We will also be introducing our Twitter feed in the next month, so be on the lookout. Your ideas and comments matter. Please feel free to send them direct to carmen@fetchplus.com or through the Apartment Social Council page at www.Facebook.com/ ApartmentSocialCouncil
Steve Jobs (1955-2011)
“Your time is
limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to
become. Everything else is secondary.”
APTSOCIAL A monthly publication produced by Fetch Plus Limited on behalf of Apartment Social Council. All Rights Reserved. ©2011 Special Thanks to Mark Juleen, Carmen Benitez and special guest Jonathan Saar for contribution. ASC is proud supporter of equal housing and equal employment opportunities. www.Facebook.com/ApartmentSocialCouncil