Post those Pictures and Create Community

While at the Small Business Marketing Unleashed Conference in Columbus OH, one thing we heard over and over by some of the top bloggers and small business marketers was the effective use of a YouTube site and flickr sites, for photos and videos, but also to start creating Community.

Over the last three years Urbane Apartments have ceased traditional marketing efforts in exchange for a MySpace site, a facebook site, YouTube and flickr sites. We also use twitter regularly. To further integrate we started a Social Network site on Ning.com, the Urbane Lobby

What really give all of these various Social Media sites punch are pictures and videos. It has never been easier. Most folks have a digital camera these days, and with the advent of the Flip, videos are a breeze. All this takes is some time and effort. A savvy property manager could easily make his/her property stand out from their own portfolio (and perhaps foster a promotion or raise) and the competitors by embracing some of these concepts. Don’t think you have the time or talent for photos and videos, tap into the talent base of some residents at your community that would help promote and foster an on line community.

After all, isn’t that what apartment living is about, community?

Eric Brown

Eric’s background is rooted in the rental and real estate industries. He founded metro Detroit’s Urbane Apartments in 2003, after serving as senior vice president for a major Midwest apartment developer. He established a proven track record of effectively repositioning existing rental properties in a way that added value for investors while enhancing the resident experience. He also established Urbane Media, a social media marketing and PR laboratory, where innovative marketing ideas are tested. Eric has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine and Business Week Magazine. You can connect with Urbane_Media on Twitter. Eric also writes regular articles for the following publications;  Multi Housing News Social Media Examiner Search Engine Guide

More Posts

Follow Me:

• Lead a Tribe I have been fortunate enough to be involved in a Social Web Site, Trilibes.com launched and led by Seth Godin, who is coining a name for Social Networks as Tribes. It was by invitation only, and has been an interesting and learning experience at watching and participating at how easy......
• Content Marketing Urbane Lab Project #111809 It is a pretty exciting time, and our Urbane Laboratory continues to expand. Not only are there some really cool projects and developments going on with NCI and the whole Community Sherpa platform, our scale and reach of resources continue to expand.We have reached a plateau at the Urbane Lab,......
• Flickr: The Forgotten Social Media Platform Todays Guest Post is from Karissa Van Hooser  an Interactive Marketing Intern at Walker Sands Communications. We too at The Urbane Way believe in the power of Flickr, and agree that it is typically forgotten. To put Karissa's post into perspective for Apartment Marketers, we have inserted Flickr Statistics for one of......
• Social news sites, mainstream media shift power to the people Most of us know the heavy-hitters in the social news sites world: Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious. These sites help attract attention and often provide traffic and links to web content, giving content creators access to a much bigger audience. If you’re a newbie to the social news sites game,......
• Video Marketing for Apartments: Entertain the Prospect We are fooling around with Video Marketing here at the Urbane Lab. Our latest series of videos, which are intended to poke fun at the "Beige Box" down the street are starting to gain some traction. Three of the five videos have been up on our web site for about ten......

• Internet Marketing To Diversify Website Uniques The Click ConspiracyWant more traffic? Try some article marketing. Increase visitors and secure great content for your website. The idea is to create content and publish it to article directories with a link back to your website included in the footer. When a user likes what you've written the primary......
• The Primary 3 Secrets To Thoroughly Knowing An Affiliate Program Just who is an Online Marketer?   An affiliate marketer is someone who markets the goods and service of any business proprietor for a commission of the product made from gross sales. This individual signs up with the web master's affiliate program and is given an online affiliate link which......
• How to Leverage the Power of Web 2.0 to Get Highly Targeted Traffic. Web 2.0 is the latest buzzword in Internet marketing. Not surprising at all, considering what a goldmine it is in terms of all the benefits an Internet marketer can draw from it. Basically, web 2.0 is a platform that allows people to connect, interact with the website and with each......
• Spread your Company's Marketing Message through Corporate Blogging Creating a marketing message is a lot like building a house of cards: The building process can take a long, painstaking amount of time, however it can take mere moments to send everything tumbling. Sometimes all it takes is a single piece of thoughtless communication to completely contradict your......
• An Individual Have The Power To Contribute Fresh Content As Frequently As You Like. It Is Possible To Develop Marketing Emails, Capture Internet Pages, Opt-in Documents And Downloads. The final outcome in my opinion was I needed to alter my state of mind from comfortable to moving away from my comfort and ease zones and into different territories. Contacting people I couldnt know for advice and suggestions. Give better options, different things, ideas, tricks or strategies. Affiliate marketer......

This entry was posted on October 5, 2008 at 5:52 pm and is filed under Social Media Marketing, Urbane Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.