Who do you want as your fans?

One of the first things you should do before your roll out your apartment community’s social marketing sites such as Facebook, Twitter, your blog etc. is decide who you are targeting for your online community. The content of your social sites depends on your target.

I see 3 main target categories:

1) Residents – if your focus is your current residents you can focus on apartment community such as onsite activities, maintenance alerts, community polls, etc.

2) Rental Prospects- I know many apartment managers want social media to bring them new leads. If this is your goal you might want to create a site like a Facebook page focused on prospects. Content here could be rent specials and open houses. Many communities don’t want to advertise their concessions to current residents if they can avoid it, and hopefully many prospects will someday be residents. Keep this in mind if you target this group.

3) Anyone – The more fans the better. Some communities are running campaigns to get residents to invite their friends to fan the community page. Are these the type of fans you want. Will they care about your community-centric posts? Perhaps it doesn’t matter this is PR and you are spreading the word.

What do you think?

This is true Jackie- On our communities facebook page we have not only invited residents, but also friends and family to join in. My personal friends have actually been the best word of mouth for me!! I asked all of them to jump on my community page and they all did within 1 day! Once they were friends of the community page I started seeing their friends jump on as well. This is creating more and more of a buzz each day. I also invite prospects who come through our door to become a fan. This way they can follow up on current specials as well as see what resident activities we provide at our community.

Great Post.

-Christine Millier
Community Manager
The Laramar Group

Good topic- one that will echo throughout 2010 again. At the moment there have been few that have come forward with stats that their FB page has brought leads. Maybe some perhaps. Overall it has been a work in progress resident retention tool. Fans are good yes- but interactions.. now that is the magic potion. Content is key. Building your community is key. Monitor and measure the fan base. Look for ways to reach the audience..that will be the determination of your success.

What's most important here regardless of who you decide to target is that you do it as a fan page and not a friend profile. One of the keys, as Jonathan indicated, is monitoring and measuring. With a fan page you get analytic tools to track that engagement. With a profile you do not. Very important!

I would hope you have HONEST residents that would 'Fan' your page...

What I mean by that, is that they make comments or posts about REAL problems; and when they are solved, the outcomes.

I would target two groups: 1) current residents, and 2) locals who can potentially influence prospective renters. Too often, it seems that targeting prospects directly through the same channel creates too much noise -- it's a turn-off to the groups in #1 and #2 I just mentioned.

I like the idea of segmenting the marketing messages to separate prospects from current residents. This is tough to do on Facebook or a blog. Facebook rules even say that status updates on Pages must be sent to everyone who is a fan, so there's zero opportunity to segment there unless you create multiple Pages.

@Christine: What kind of success have you seen with your page so far? Have you seen an increase in traffic since you've been able to build buzz through your community's Page?

I've been meaning to jump into this conversation for a while - great topic Jackie! I was actually expecting some response on your third suggestion, in that some people say that inviting industry folks to be fans is a bad idea. But I'm with you that the more the merrier! Perception of success is incredibly important when trying to develop a community - If a prospective fan sees the page with only 17 fans, they are less likely to assume being a fan is worthwhile. So if you can get the ball rolling, it will impact future fans "fanning" your fan page!

I also really like Mike's comment about locals - I would include local businesses too, with arrangements that you cross-suggest each other's fan page.

Here is an example fan page I ran across today, with a whopping 568 Fans! Not sure how many of those are actual residents/prospects, but it gives the impression of a great community. (And plus, they are actually getting a lot of participation, too!)

I have had some trouble with some of our sites, because many of the apartment advertisers keep fanning us. We advertise with them, but they advertise to our residents and the prospects many other apartments too. Anyone else have this problem? they keep popping up and I keep blocking them.

An interesting question and conversation, however I have not seen the answer to the question I always ask as I sort through seemingly endless fan requests or referrals (and that is not an "ego" thing - at least half the invites are people/places I've never heard of) - "What's in it for me to be your fan?"

If I know and respect you or your company, I'm happy to be a fan - I will probably have fanned you before you can invite me. But as a local business, potential prospect, or typical resident, why do I want my name on your page? All too often, (and this is true on Linkedin as well), I get a generic email with no personalization and no "WIIFM". The more personal the request, the more likely I am to pay attention; and I think that is the case for most people.

When inviting a local business, maybe a quick sentence on median income/buying power of my residents or average length of stay; for a prospect, mention several benefits as told to you by your residents or even a short quote from a happy resident; and for your residents, a statement about how supporting your fan page will most likely result in them having better neighbors (well, it could happen . . . !)

Thanks all for the good ideas! Doug

Suzanne - Are you saying that the apartment listing sites/guides/etc are fanning your page and then using that to get to your residents?

Doug - You are definitely right that people are swimming in information and connections these days, so they are becoming more and more focused on the WIFM aspect!

Brent, that is exactly what I am saying!

It brings up another issue too, not specific to fan pages, but domain names:

1. We just demanded a that major national REIT take down a paid advertisement they had using one of our property's domain name - their competitor. They used our site name and
linked to their property! (they took it down)

2. An apartment listing site just did the same thing, took one of our domain names, PAID for an ad above our google organic search where we come up first, links from our domain name to their apartment listing service - for us and our competitors.

Is this stuff happening to any other owners/managers?

The basic premise of an ILS is that 1) They can reach prospects where you can't, and 2) They can convert prospects (i.e., get them to give information, set an appointment, call the office) better than a community can. When everything was print-based, this was not a problem, as their distribution was better than any given apartment community. But with the Internet, and especially search engines, these two elements suddenly become fuzzy, which means they straddle the line between you being their customer and their competitor. The ILS's probably won't like this, but if I were you, I would require that they not advertise on my property name (and derivations of) if I'm going to have an account with them, IF I rank high on my property name. If I don't rank high, they are still bringing value, but in your case, that ILS is essentially sniping your "free" prospects.

I agree completely!

Brent, have you seen any management companies successful prohibit ILSs from advertising against the names of their properties and other brand-specific keywords?

I think the premise of an ILS is changing fairly significantly based on consumer search habits (I think ILSs need to embrace the idea that they're targeted search engines, rather than "listing sites.") ... but that's a conversation for a different thread!

I think Brent's position has some merit, but at the risk of sounding presumptuous, are you certain that your site experience is going drive more interest in your property than the corresponding experience (competitor listings and all) offered by the ILS in question Suzanne? If the ultimate goal of your search presence is to drive more measurable prospect interest in your property, is it a forgone conclusion that your site will be more successful at this then the corresponding ILS page for that property (or even a targeted set of search results that includes your property)?

If you're willing to acknowledge that ILS's spend a hefty portion of their collective resources, dollars and brainpower to optimize each element of their site experience to successfully make that renter/property connection, I don't think the suggestion that the experiences delivered by ILS's are potentially more efficient is far fetched.

In fact, I think you'll find that from a conversion standpoint, most ILS sites are going to be awfully competitive with property/mgmt co sites in efficiently turning searchers into leads. I know this is going to sound counter-intuitive to many, but the most overlooked fact in this debate is, frankly, how much better the ILS's are in conversion optimization than most property/mgmt co sites. It's our business, and if we weren't much better at it, our value as an ad medium surely would be diminished.

I acknowledge that my response is going to be viewed as having an agenda, and that's fine. I also realize that there are other good reasons to drive searchers to your property's site (brand messaging, content for non-prospects, etc.). My point is simply that viewing your ILS as a competitor in search isn't so clear cut.

TG

Mike - I have not seen this, but it just makes sense to me. And I really don't think I'm riling up a hornet's nest here - this is obvious to many of the more Internet savvy PM companies out there, so I think it's best for the ILS's to have a plan now to address it rather than wait for the frustration to build up.

Tim - I think you are exactly right, and it was my original #2 reason why ILS's bring value. So when I'm making my decision whether I would want an ILS to advertise on my name, I would first assess how high my community is on the search engine list in the first place AND whether my site is really optimized to convert traffic when I get it. Both are necessary.

Tim, with all due respect, if my url is showing up on the top of an organic search FOR MY PROPERTY NAME I will fare better having someone enter my site than an ILS site in a paid ad above me that lists all my competitors.

My point is I don't appreciate it when that paid ILS uses my domain name, without permission, and indicates it's the "official site" for my property. My url is most certainly the official site.

As an Owner, I can tell you I look at the numbers and I don't discount the value of ILS, we use many and derive great benefits. This works best when people are doing a general search. But not so good for me when they are searching for my property by name.

With respect to your skill in optimization - that's great. However I know my properties very personally in a way you don't. I think we do a pretty good job of marketing them, and by visiting my sites and linking through to facebook and twitter links and blogs, we are just beginning to get stronger. So visiting our property sites is going to be a totally different experience than visting my listing on an ILS. My listing which may look as good as my competitors on an ILS.

There's room for us both to do our jobs well, but it's unfair for competitors (the national REIT I mentioned) and ILS to take my domain name, place it above mine, and to call it the "official site" and link through to theirs. It's just not right. And that was my initial point.