Going Offline - Business Cards

Living on line has enabled us to learn more about the private lives of our friends and colleagues. However, we are still going to conferences and handing out business cards.

While traveling in Barcelona in November, I ordered business cards so they would be ready for my return to the states in December. I used a service called MOO and now I want to share the milk with everyone!

Here are my reasons for loving these cards!

1) Easy and quick to order high quality

2) I can put my own pictures on the front or back of the card or use one of their templates.

3) Packaging is impressive. Moo provided a box to store some of the cards. Inside the box are tabs titled "Mine" & "Theirs." After my presentation, I passed around the box so people can take my cards. When the box was returned, everyone in the room had placed their card in the box.

MOO - Another great example of how Good Design results in Good Business.

Want to meet your neighbors? - Throw a Party!

Do you live in a building with lots of people and don't know any of them?

Is the lobby the only place where you see anyone?

If these questions describe your building then follow these instructions...

1) Order some invitations. The Stationery Studio is the perfect place to custom order invites so you don't have to spend the night handwriting each one.

2) Place the invites under everyone's door.

3) Clean up your place and go buy some hors d'oeuvres. (Don't go crazy and buy everything. Your neighbors will bring drinks or baked goodies. It would just be strange if everyone came empty handed.)

4) Select music and you are set

At the end of the night, your neighbors will thank you for organizing and will offer ideas of how the building should have more community events.

Last week was my third annual holiday party. There are 33 units in the building and about half my neighbors came. It's the one time a year that everyone living in this 6 story building comes together. My neighbors brought cake, brownies, shortbread, wine, and chocolate.

We have all learned that social networks like facebook have become places for people to share information. Throwing a party is a great way to improve your physical apartment community and know who your neighbors are...especially when you need milk (it will save you a trip to the supermarket).

A Great Video Production Tool

I have always been a proponent of using well designed property videos to market an apartment community. The best thing about video is that you can communicate the personality of a community through a video. With graphics, high quality photos and music it is entirely possible to get someone excited about touring your community.

I discovered Animoto this week that makes this all completely possible and cost effective. On the website, all you need to do is upload photos, select a theme and select music and the website will produce a video for you within 5 - 10 minutes depending on your connection speed.

Once the video is produced, you can then distribute it on your social media sites and visually promote the property. Once its uploaded to your social media sites, you can then use the analytics in those programs to measure its usage.

This is another tool that will help lower your marketing costs and improve your search engine optimization.

Facebook Changes

Facebook announced its face lift tonight on 60 minutes. While you may be excited to try out the new features, keep in mind that facebook creates applications that use your personal information. Facebook says they don't sell personal information, but third party applications use that information. Application developers are not permitted to share that information, but they have access to it and thats one more organization that has access. Personal information is valuable and hackers will always try to steal it. Remember to always check your privacy settings.

Life's Remote Control - the future of mobile phones

Formerly known as the mobile phone, our lives will be managed by a handheld remote control in the near future. The remote control will have phone capability, but speaking on the phone has become an inefficient form of communication and will continue to be used less year after year.

The remote control will do everything it does today plus an infinite amount of things in the future. In the next five years, you should anticipate the remote control to do the following:

1) Automatically make reservations for you at a restaurant based on few inputs such as picking the type of cuisine, distance from home or office and price range.

2) Automatically receive alerts that your favorite designer pants are on sale, in your size, and can be delivered to you tomorrow with one click.

3) You have a friend's birthday party in three hours and have no idea what to get them. All the stores close in 2 hours. Well no problem, your phone can search your friends social media pages and recommend a gift based on their interests. In addition, your phone will tell you exactly where to buy that gift before the stores close.

4) Here is my favorite one, although its likely at least 20 years away. Everyone will be able to have a microchip surgically inserted into their body. This chip will communicate with your remote control and tell you exactly the status of your body such as

a) you are low on calcium - drink some milk

b) your blood pressure is high

c) you are dehydrated - drink water

This device will report on every biological function. Your doctor can also read this chip and prescribe you medication without you visiting the office.

5) oh yeah, as for apartment community social media - prospects will automatically have listings sent to their remote control if they have stated that they are looking for an apartment. Property management software will automatically identify people looking for an apartment and send them information. Marketing will be technology based and it will listen and read conversations happening on line. Once there is a mention of apartments, there will be a coupon sent or invitation sent to the prospect to look at an apartment.

Just about everything in your life will be managed by your personal remote control. Please send me your ideas on some things you'd like operated by a click of a button!

Facebook Valued at $23 Billion

I read that headline in today's New York Times! Elevation Partners, a venture capital firm, just gave the social networking company of $23 billion valuation in its latest secondary market purchase of 2.4 million shares. That's more than triple what Facebook appeared to be worth a year ago. It now has almost 500 million users, nearly twice as many as it had last summer.

As a finance guy, this incredibly huge valuation tells me that the apartment industry needs to quickly understand how to use facebook to market apartments.

Today I see Facebook as a gateway to the property website. But, seeing how much time people spend on Facebook, I've got to believe that a Facebook page is just as important as a property website. I think the content that is on a property website should be replicated on the property Facebook page. Prospects should be able to look at floor plans and see the amenities right there. The two important things about website design is one, being found, and then engaging the user once they find your site. We should all be taking the time to figure out how to use facebook to engage a prospect searching for an apartment.

We are still in the infancy of social media...Let's break from the pack and push the Facebook envelope. Maybe you'll need to use some additional programming languages to get what you need, but this where prospects are going to find out about your property.

Property Managers need to know about Search Engine Optimization

I started learning how to use social media to market apartment communities in January 2009. Facebook was the most popular site in the beginning of 2009 and remains the industry leader. After spending time learning about social media and watching the number of users grow on Facebook, I knew apartment marketing strategies needed to adapt to the new social medium.

Its been about a year and a half, and apartment marketing has significantly changed. The most important thing to me is search engine optimization (SEO). Every marketing decision we make today must answer the question, "How will this improve my page rank?"

As property owners, we are beginning to ask property managers to include internet marketing statistics as part of their monthly reporting. I want to know what was done to improve page rank and what efforts are being done to create viral marketing messages. Property managers that have that have a proven social media strategy are the ones that are going to succeed in this industry.