Poll Results: Apartment Community Blog

On our last poll we asked, "Does Your Apartment Community Have a Blog?" The overwhelming response (87.5%) said they did not have an apartment community blog. And of that, most had no intention of starting one (62.5%) compared to those that had interest (25%). Although I firmly believe that a blog can be a great way to engage your residents, market to prospective residents, and improve your Internet presence on search engines, I suppose not every community is well-suited for a blog. However, 62.5% with no intentions of starting a blog is a bit disappointing!!

I still think these two blogs regarding ideas for apartment blogs and reasons to start an apartment blog would help greatly! (I apologize for citing my own blog!)

Just a snippet to help maybe change some people's minds about starting a blog. Each of our communities have their own blog. One of our teams recently posted to their community blog some furniture a resident had for sale. A prospective resident saw the listing when visiting the community website and the blog, bought the furniture, rented a garage to keep it in, and is moving in in 2 weeks. It's all about "community" folks!

So I'm really looking into social media (since we currently don't use it at all for any of our properties!!). I would love to get everybody on Facebook, Myspace and community blogging. These are things that I'm already a part of, so it makes sense to me and is certainly something I would be interested in at a community. I also keep reading about how important it is to get into social media.

However, several of our properties are lower income and run by older Managers. It doesn't make sense to use all of these tools if they don't fit the demographic of your property (maybe why so many people don't intend to start engaging in social media?)

On another note, at the properties that would use it but have Managers who are a little older...I can't be too confident that they would know what to blog about or how to respond to certain comments, post photos, etc. How would you approach this situation?

Crystal, you bring up some valid concerns and points. I was having a conversation with Mike Whaling of 30 Lines Monday night about possibly consolidating our community blogs. While I'm not sure if this would be a benefit to us as our teams continue to take more and more advantage of them, maybe this is a good concept for you to start with.

What I'm suggesting is just starting 1 blog, 1 facebook page, and 1 MySpace page for your management company. There are actually a couple great reasons for this.

1. You or someone else that is Web 2.0 savvy can be the most interactive with them and you won't have to rely on each team. This could actually allow you to have more frequent updates and more posts. Your friend/follower base would grow more quickly as well.
2. This helps strengthen the brand name for your management company. Too many management companies don't take advantage of their strong brand name and focus on selling individual communities. Combine your efforts and make an impact with your brand.

This could be a great way to get started, and if you want to expand later on you can. Best of luck!

Great response, Mark. I think that is a great way to ease into blogging, especially for communities that are in close proximity. As for some of your concerns, Crystal, I would suggest actually surveying your property to find out what they actually do online. Why not customize your marketing/retention plan to what their actual interests/habits are?

Also, check out this post on the income levels of MySpace and Facebook Users . In the text, it notes that 11.6% of MySpace users make less than $25,000/year, which is actually 8.8 million people. It doesn't say how many low-income people use Facebook, but the commonly held belief is that it is less than MySpace, so you might want to focus on MySpace.

Lastly, when it comes to older managers, keep in mind that the bulk of blogging is just writing, which isn't limited to younger managers. So if you take Mark's advice and have somebody in charge of your blogs, you can still get older managers to email blog posts to your "social media manager", who can actually put them up on the blog. Then you can get your managers used to the concept before having to deal with the technology.