online reputation

Recently, I started working at a new property that has a terrible online reputation.
The apartmentratings are so bad that we lose not only leases, but traffic from them.
Yesterday, I had a response to a craigslist ad that told me that after reading reviews online that I should be ashamed to post ads.
I believe in this property, the staff and the units.
What is the best way to change an online reputation? I've been encouraging happy residents to use our ipad in the office to leave a review, but often times, those people are in a rush and can't spare the extra moments to help out.
Our Property Manager sometimes posts a reply to reviews, but I'm looking for a way to encourage new and positive reviews and a way to explain to prospects that we are working hard for change.
Any help and/or suggestions will be much appreciated!

At my previous employer, we had many issues of unhappy clients leaving bad reviews on our various Yelp and online pages.

Our client relations manager would contact those who left bad reviews, (if we had the contact info), and remedy the situation. We then asked that they please take time to edit their previous review. 9 times out of 10 they did, with a positive change.

Another way we encouraged positive reviews was to send out emails to clients after their "purchase" was made for follow up, and to link our various review pages. We mentioned in this email that we had a quarterly drawing for all clients who did a review, and would give away a free gift to whomever was chosen. This actually made our action on review pages increase significantly. People like free stuff!
Additionally, you could make a pamphlet or printout that has the QR codes for your review pages/info and place this in the welcome packet for your applications at the Property.

Hope this helps!

I don't think there is a way to immediately overcome the negative reviews. I think this is when a consistent approach will prove to get the most results. I think someone whether that is the Manager or a Regional or whoever, should respond to all the negative reviews in a positive manner.

I love the suggestions offered by "Assistant" with the exception of rewarding for "good reviews."

The other thing I will mention that has worked for me is to bring in the best team possible - maintenance resolves all the maintenance issues, office and leasing take care of phones and getting results on issues. Start taking ownership of the property and walk the walk. Another tip I agree with is to let your Residents know when things are being taken care of. There is nothing wrong with including little notes in common areas, like a laundry room, that says it was Professional Cleaned that day, or that refill bags were installed in all the Pet Waste Stations today, or that the furnace filters were changed. After all, we are a service industry.

Eventually, when you have a team in place that does care, and offers excellent customer service to everyone, including vendors and Guests, not only your Residents, your reputation will change. Finally, if your community has a bad rep with the police department, follow their suggestions for cleaning up the unwanted issues and your property's reputation will change immediately because the City officials will take notice!

The best time is after 30 days of occupancy, give a new resident a call to follow up. Ask them to write a review. If they say they will, send them an instruction sheet where to go, etc.

Just a few positive reviews are keeping my traffic coming in.

Just trying to provide a solution here

(Sorry Brent - but she asked).....

One of my clients is www.ApartmentGrade.com .

ApartmentGrade posts ratings on apartment communities based on current resident surveys. If you are a SatisFacts or CEL Associates client, and your overall community rating is 3.5 Stars or greater, you can post your community at no cost to ApartmentGrade.com.

If you do not work with these companies, but would like to list your community at no cost to Apartment Grade, for a limited time, ApartmentGrade.com is offering to send a free 7 question survey to your residents to "grade" your community. If the community gets 3.5 Stars or more, it will be posted to ApartmentGrade as well at no cost.

Solution:
If your community does well in the survey -- and is posted on ApartmentGrade.com -- use the listing as a reply when others post false statements on the apt. "hate" sites. Heck even use it on your ILS listings, website, etc. Great comeback.

The only person who can judge a community needs to be your current residents -- and that's the ratings we list.

Thanks,
Leigh Curry
www.curryconduit.com

Apartment Guide recently launched a Certified Ratings and Reviews service that is free to all clients who advertise with them. They partnered with Kingsley and Associates to administer the survey to "Certified Residents." This is very different from an open review forum such as apartmentratings.com and research shows that results are better. Contact your rep with Apartment Guide forces information.

Great question. I am going to tip-toe my response as my attempt to explain options is impossible to cover without noting product options out there. I apologize if any of this is taken as a sales message - just trying to share there are easy ways to dramatically impact what prospects see on ApartmentRatings.com. I'm sure the folks from our Education and Consulting team will jump into the conversation to share their thoughts too.

As you might know, in June of 2012 SatisFacts was acquired by Internet Brands, who also owns ApartmentRatings.com. One of their drivers in buying us was that they recognized many property pages did not paint a very accurate picture of a community. As a result, by IB acquiring us, we have then been able to offer what is called the Verified Resident Program. When selected by a client, the AR survey is added to the end of our customer service oriented surveys (after a move in, after work orders completed, months before the lease expiration date). Residents then have the option to respond to the AR survey, with their posting being noted as by "Verified Resident." The goal of the program was to gain a cross section of reviews so that the 29 million shoppers visiting the site could make a rental decision based on better info.

I would not be doing justice to not now share that of the thousands of properties that have signed up for this program with us and the impact has been huge. Recommend scores typically increase by over 40% in the first 90 days. This is due to us reaching out to residents at critical moments in time, when they are most willing to provide the feedback (after giving customer service feedback regarding the move in, work order and the like). Properties typically see the volume of postings increase by several hundred percent each month (however this is not like some other services that email all residents at once and the post tens or hundreds of reviews at once - which of course sends a red flag to any shopper - especially since most other services let clients delete negative reviews - which of course is a major red flag to any shopper - converting authentic reviews like on AR...to just a big ad that people see through). So the VRP really helps big time!

The other part of the equation is contracting for ApartmentRatings.com's Manager Center as this permits you to proactively and professionally respond to every posting (including getting notified any time a posting is made). Whether a good or bad posting...it is critically important for those reading the property page to see a specific, professional and caring response - everyone understands mistakes happen but people look to see how you respond/react and MC gives you the chance to really impress with your professionalism.

I hope this helps.

My property was aquired back in June and I recently took over managment. We are almost finished with a major exterior renovation and the property looks fabulous. However, many of the long term residents are not happy the managemnet has changed and basically could care less about the renovation. I know, crazy, huh? Anyway, there is a group of residents who have organized and seem bent on complaining about everything.....the noise from construction, their old "staff" is gone, they don't like the new rules, can't understand why we just don't waive their late fees (apparently a common practice with the previous management, provided they liked you, I could go on and on. But these residents have taken it to a new level. They are literally posting "hate" and "false" claims on apartment ratings.com as well as personally attacking me. In my 20 plus years of property managemnet I have never experienced anything quite like this. Now here's the rub. My regional's boss will not pay the $300 for the manager account so that I can address these posts. In the meantime my lovely property suffers and I suffer personally and professionally by these slanderous posts. Any ideas on how to overcome these negative posts under my special circumstances? PS...I've talked to the residents who are very happy here and asked them to post some positive reviews but no has done so as of yet. This is why I don't care for ratings sites like apartmentratings.com. They do not verify the information and anyone with a vendetta can go there and post any lie they choose.