We have talked before about the multiple benefits of blogging. However, for the most part apartment operators and management companies aren’t getting it right. At the Urbane Life Blog we have tried lots of different approaches, but the general theme of the blog is this,
“The Urbane Life wanders through and around life in Royal Oak, southeastern Michigan’s hotspot for new urban living. You might find blathering about the coolest new organizational tool found at IKEA, info on the latest trends in small space decorating, or the hottest new artist, restaurant, or boutique in the area. Please join the fray by adding comments and suggestions. This blog is designed to be a space for respectful, free-thinking, new and progressive ideas about urban apartment/loft life in the Royal Oak, Michigan, area. Have fun, live cool. Brought to you by the good folks at Urbane Apartments.”
It Is Not About You
News Flash, It Isn’t About You or Your Company. Create and design your blog around something of interest to your Residents and audience. They don’t give a hoot about you or your company. A blog IS NOT an advertisement.
Content is King
If you start a blog, you need to keep at it, which can well become a chore. There are lots of folks out there that can and will help. Mack Collier is an excellent resource. Just follow his blog for some great tips. A blog can really be just an extension of the old community letter, but with focus on The Community. What’s going on, what new businesses just popped up, and so on.
We have increased our blog content form a few posts a week to a post each day. At first I struggled with how to create that quantity of content. The Urbane Bloggers are paid, so also it wasn’t economical to invest that much of our overall marketing budget in the blog.
How To Keep Up
I picked up a great tip from the book by Jeff Jarvis; What Would Google Do, in that he suggests to use other people’s content that may be attune to your audience, and to use the appropriate links back, as well as properly credit the source. We have sized up the Urbane Life Blog to include three posts a week from our bloggers, two video posts a month from our bloggers and the balance of the content, I re-post from local sources for Tuesday, Thursday and the weekends. I merely keep my eye out for local interesting stories, bookmark them and then re-post them. I spend a couple of hours a week managing our blog.
So, get started today, create a following, create something interesting that cause folks to talk about you and your community. If you need some help, give us a call, we will provide you more value than you expect.
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
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