You need to have a consistent content strategy that aligns with your brand
Perhaps the biggest challenge in effecting branded media is consistency. A key ingredient is relative, consistent content. Most apartment marketing is propaganda:. here are our apartment features, our sparkling pool, our great main ID sign, please rent from us. And, oh, tell all of your friends too! Propaganda-driven marketing is boring and has minimal leverage.
Make your content interesting, like a great movie or novel. content rules, but only … only if it is the right kind of content: customer-focused, authentic, compelling, entertaining, and surprising provides value. We have taken the neighborhood approach, highlighting new businesses, old business, and generally the best of the best as well as local events as our main content source for our blog. Our friends over at Mills Apartments have taken a similar approach with their content plan. And while I have really pushed that angle for apartment communities as blog content, I also think that anything about apartment living is also advantageous. We did an experiment with a blog titled MyApartmentPad.com that only had content relative to apartment living that did very well. Albeit we were churning out over 80 articles per month, we achieved over 10,000 site visits per month within a 90 day period. We haven’t posted to that blog in three years, but we still get 3,500 site visits a month. The point being, there is an audience interested in rental living.
Everyone is a publisher today. Never before in history has that existed. Only a select few ever had a platform to publish. Now anyone with a smart phone can record a video, post a blog article or do a podcast. Your apartment community can now publish content that will create fans and followers, but you need to rise above the noise.
In business, people love to complicate things with their own lexicons, so the content tends to irritate rather than illuminate. The goal is to engage rather than repel. The inherent tension in apartment marketing is that folks want to talk about themselves, or their apartment features, meanwhile, the prospect only wants to know what you can do for them. Consider the prospects’ thoughts, feelings and needs
Great storytelling is a fundamental requirement of content marketing as you build your own branded media. Be all things hyperlocal, know everything that is going on, and become the go to source for hip and cool happenings
The notion of interrupting prospects to broadcast your message just doesn’t work anymore.
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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E – thank you for the mention.
I think it really boils down to the difference between being a pro vs. being an amateur. More simply put – having pig-headed discipline to put out the work when you would rather be playing.
Hats off to you and your team for the hard work and effort.
Hope your weekend rocked.
M