Yeah, I know you’ve heard it all … that Social Media  Marketing slices and dices, is the answer to world peace, and will make your teeth up to three shades whiter with only one use.  But from the sea of hype that we’ve been sailing—filled with assertions about what social media is and isn’t and what it can and can’t do—are beginning to arise some proven truths. Having had the opportunity to put many, many new media opportunities through their paces, we’ve zeroed in on six truths we’ve discovered from personal experience—not in any specific order, but intended serve as food for thought as you decide how to apply social media in your marketing strategies, and prepare for what comes next!

1.  Social Media Isn’t Singular

We really have heard it all … “Show me the ROI.”  “Facebook isn’t a marketing channel.”  “Social media is for conversation, not conversion.”  Fact is, social media isn’t any one thing, and therefore doesn’t fit neatly into any one box.

Follow me here… back when the Internet was new, it took us a while in the multifamily industry to grasp what email  and websites could do; but eventually we came to realize that it was more than a fancy replacement for paper … that it supported a number of functions including customer service, communications, community, entertainment, advertising, engagement, marketing, PR, and more—and all to varying degrees depending on a company’s brand, marketing approach, culture, and (most importantly) how our customers prefer to engage with our brand.

Very much like email, social media is becoming the “Swiss Army Knife” not just of marketing, but also of customer service and retention, product development, internal communications, innovation and idea development, and so much more.  And yet, so many people still insist on trying to fit “it” into their existing marketing structure as though it is and does only one thing.

It’s not a one-trick pony, so don’t treat it like one.

2.  Customer Service Is the New Marketing

This isn’t new news to any of us in the apartment business; but in a world gone social and with increasing consumer demand for transparency, serving your customers remarkably well has become more important than ever before.

Communicating with speed and honesty to issues—and that goes for the flipside, too: enabling your customers and community to communicate to you—has become Priority One in your ability to acquire new customers.  People “talk” … they always have, and now that social media has enabled them to do it pretty much 24/7 and to whole groups of friends at once, they do it more effectively than ever before.  We also know that it’s human nature for them to share bad experiences more readily than good ones.  Ten years ago, a resident told a friend, and maybe that friend told somebody, and perhaps even that friend told somebody else.  Today a resident clicks a few keys on Facebook and tells a hundred people at once; and if that’s as far as it goes, you can thank your lucky stars. And I’m not even going to go into depth about how long a bad rating can hang around to haunt your reputation once it’s been posted to a community ratings site.

In this new social paradigm, your front line and marketing departments need to learn to work hand in hand to avoid bad customer experiences and make it easier and more likely for customers to share great ones!  In the old paradigm, onsite and marketing might have been separated by any number of tortuous lines and boxes on the old org chart; but in the new world, they must be aligned to facilitate the flow of communication between them, and create great experiences for customers as a result.

3.  Your Marketing Department Just Got a Whole Lot Bigger

Because it now includes your customers.  Way back in 1964, Marshall McLuhan told us that the medium is the message, and that’s still true today in that our various social media platforms lend undeniable character to what we convey there.  But what’s different now is that the messages have become vastly more personalized.  A great print ad is a powerful thing, but it will never possess the ability to persuade another human being the way that another human being can. And your social community is entirely made up of them.

Now that said, it’s important to realize that marketing is still marketing; and the game has maybe not changed as drastically for us in that our business has always been about creating and ensuring a great customer experience.  What has changed, though is that instead of working with mostly headlines and taglines and deadlines and other linear processes, you’re now working in the totally three-dimensional, round-the-clock online world where many people communicate to many people all at the same time.  Instead of identifying and managing great creative, your job description now includes identifying, enabling, and encouraging (due diligence) influential fans of your business (channel selection) to convince people that you’re their best possible choice (execution).  The job is still the same, but the medium has changed the game.

4.  It’s ALL Mobile Marketing

We’re all on the go, and most of us are consuming large quantities of our information via a mobile device of some kind or other; and the more that becomes a commonality, the less specialized that communications channel becomes.  It’s on the fast track to become the dominant way that we interact with other individuals and with brands and pretty much the whole world at large.  More customers are going to be interacting with you on the small screen, so if you’re not already focusing some of your marketing efforts on optimizing that experience, it’s time to.  Try to think of “mobile marketing” as less about being a channel and more about reaching people when and where they are (and are willing) to interact with your brand. That’s more and more likely to be via the small screen in their hand.

Oh, one more thing… while you might be tempted to dismiss the iPad as just another slick new tech toy, think again.  There’s a big gap to be filled between laptops and handhelds, and the iPad is just one of many devices rushing to fill that void. With more “tablet” sized devices on the horizon, you can expect more costumers to be found there, as well.

5.  Enter The Chief Marketing Nerd

As more companies come to terms with the fact that technology and marketing have merged, they’ll begin to see the justified need to hire senior level management (Chief Marketing Technology Officers or Social Media Marketing Officers, or some other titular combination that’s equal parts Creative and Geek) to oversee the tech-related facets of the marketing process and help marketing and IT work together as a seamless team.  The few and foresightful professionals out there who have reinforced their marketing expertise with technical know-how will be—should already be—in hot demand.  As even more new channels emerge and the pace of change gains even more momentum, companies that don’t invest in tech-savvy marketing expertise are going to be quickly outmaneuvered by the competition.

6.  Email is Still a Killer App

And finally, social media and mobile delivery may be hogging the spotlight, but don’t forget about your old faithful marketing steady: email.  Maybe it isn’t as hot as it used to be, but it continues to be a tremendously reliable way to deliver a message, engage people with your brand, convey value, and save you time and money … but there’s one important thing you do need to know.  A slight shift is happening as consumers begin using email less often for their personal communications than Tweeting, posting, messaging, or texting—the key word there being personal.  Permission-based email is still today’s consumer’s preferred channel for interacting with companies and brands; but now that more consumers are receiving it on the go, it’s more important than ever to deliver the right message at the right time.

If you’d like to really put your finger on the pulse of today’s marketing, we’d like to recommend three great Reality Check sessions at Brainstorming 2010.  If you’re new to social media, join the inimitable Toni Blake for The Amazing Race to Social Media: Create and Manage a Successful Online Presence and hear Toni’s multifamily plan for "Beginner's Success" in social media. You can join  Chairty Hisle when she presents Social Media Strategies That Work, and to learn even more about the new marketing, join Chantelle Flannery of Firebelly Marketing for America's Next Top Multifamily Marketer and learn four key elements that will make your marketing plan a Super Model of success including: defining and expressing your unique selling proposition; perfect pricing; choosing your vehicles wisely; delivery that doesn’t leave a doubt; and much more!

If you have added the Social Media Optimization Summits to your Brainstoming registration you might like to consider attending our full blown, two and four hour workshops.

Companies spend millions each year asking agencies and marketers to brand their companies in order to reach more prospects. But, how often do these same companies look carefully at the brand that is already built for them by their loyal, current customers? Like it or not, your "fan base" already has built your brand and holds your company's reputation in the palms of their hands through an aggregate of blog posts, review sites, videos, and social media platforms stating what they love and hate about your brand. In the event that this is prominently positive, how do you get everyone to collectively support your brand as a community of evangelists for your company? The answer is to start loving your devotees, and to give them what they want, a place to network, talk, share advice and continue to preach about your brand. In end, this is what large corporations pay the big bucks
for- reverse marketing by and for your already loyal customers, and it's something you can do yourself.

Take for example a small company in a predicament. Company founders had built a tremendous brand and had a huge following, however, the brand was fragmented and un-controlled online. For years the owners had been known for their passion and love of their business, but they had struggled to produce a web site that would support their loyal fans as well as perpetuate a brand that would speak to new prospective customers.

Their problems sat with an incomplete vision of their online audience & potential reach. Their website spoke to current brand enthusiasts, however could not provide enough of forum for their fans to express their devotion.
As such, YouTube videos, blogs, un-official Facebook fanpages, etc., were appearing across the web and were, in many cases, pulling away from the core values and mission of their business.  Additionally, unless a prospect knew to search for their specific company name or slogan they would not find any official webpages in search results.

How do you build and "feed" a community of loyal customers to continue to build your brand from the inside out as well as open the market and build brand awareness to new, valuable prospects?

Sometimes you need to go big or go home! So in an effort to establish your online brand, sometimes you have to decided to redesign your web site, rewrite all the content for SEO (search engine optimization) and start aggressively utilizing social media to congregate followers! It can be a big job with a big payoff.

Tip #1: Love Your Domain Name & Show the Search Engines You Care: Select a Domain Name For Findability - It Matters!

What is your current domain name?   Does it reflect who you are and what you
do?  Does it reflect how your customers are trying to find you?  Does it include any of your key words for SEO?

Tip # 2: Build New Web Site Look and Feel Consistent with Mission

Does your old site lacked focus with too much going on? The example company included over 60 "options" immediately of what the user could do- so essentially the clear action for a user to take was "do everything … now."
Also, their home page would be used as a clearinghouse for products on sale, giving them the image of being the Wal-Mart of their industry. People who came to the home page who needed help with a specific subject would have to search over several pages to find the answer. A very confusing messaging overall and not consistent with their message.

Their new site has cleared out the clutter and cuts to the chase. Four primary conversion opportunities are presented on EVERY page of the web site. Additionally, their background is consistent with their other product lines on the home page and every interior page. The goals is to present a cohesive user experience that appeals to both the long time devotee, as well as the first time visitor looking for guidance.

Tip #3: Setup Social Media for huge community of followers waiting for your lead.

Have you established a social media presence? Large communities of devoted followers are building their own Facebook pages and are looking for someone like your company who already has a presence. Establish "THE" credible, official place on social media sites your followers can trust.

Taking the dive and reinventing yourself or your business is scary, but even more scary is the inability to adapt and change over time. The Internet is a very fast paced environment and you must stay in touch with mistakes you may have made in your branding and be willing to make it right. Ultimately, you'll see big payoffs and great findabilty for being bold and taking a stand for who you are as a company.

About the Author:
Heather Lutze has spent the last 10 years as CEO of The Findability Group, formerly Lutze Consulting, - a Search Engine Marketing firm that works with companies to attain maximum Internet exposure. A nationally recognized speaker, she is the author of, "The FindAbility Formula: The Simple and Non-Technical Approach To Search Engine Marketing" (Wiley and Sons).
Heather is a lead speaker for Pay Per Click Summit, and previously spent two years speaking for Yahoo! Search Marketing. For more information, visit www.FindabilityGroup.com.

By; Eric Brown from The Urbane Way, an Innovative Apartment Marketing Laboratory

A White Paper Series on How to Break From the Pack of Apartment Commodity

Google Needle, Google Juice, Google Page Rankings

What does all of this noise really mean, and moreover, what does it have to do with Renting More Apartments? At the Urbane Lab, we have put a lot of effort and resources into figuring out how to get our apartment listings to rank high on a Google search.  High, as in Page One, Number One!

Consider this from Channel Advisor, their newest White Paper, How Consumers Shop Online, has some really terrific data. Here are some highlights:

1. Eighty one percent of consumers begin their product searches with Google and 11 percent begin with Yahoo. This represents an increase of five percentage points for Google, with a six percent decrease for Yahoo usage. (This should convince you how important it is for your site to be listed on Google Local, as well as appear high in the Google search engine results.)
2. Peer ratings/reviews hold more influence over shoppers’ buying decisions than they did one year ago. (As we know, ratings sites like Yelp and AptRatings are carrying more and more weight in prospective renters’ decisions.)
3. Consumers are spending approximately the same amount of time online but are spending less money. They are searching the internet for deals that yield higher savings and offer extra value. (Make sure your advertisements indicate your *value* proposition to your prospective renters.)

Who Is Paying Attention
Are apartment executives paying any attention to the manor in which folks shop on line? 81% is a staggering number. Conservative Financial Folks and Fair Housing Folks mostly run the multifamily business. We LOVE numbers and percentages in our business, but are we really paying any attention to THESE Numbers?

Testing Is Easy
Testing has never been easier, you don't need any fancy report or outside agency or consultant to find out, Just simply Google Your Company Name. Just Google (Your City) Apartments. Do you see your company when you do that; it only takes a few seconds to try it.

If you are like most property management firms, you may have had a few entries when you Googled your company name, and you didn’t show up at all when you Googled (Your City) Apartments. Now what? Well for starters, get involved, and start placing an importance on Marketing and Branding On Line, and extending your Digital Footprint, and don’t assume your troops are doing it right or very well.

Experience, Not Theory
This isn't theory; it is what we did at Urbane Apartments.  Our Google Page Ranking is Number One to Number Three on Page One Google of a Google Search consistently when the search is Apartments (your city) And according to the recent white paper by Rent.com Apartment (Your City) is one of the most used search terms for folks looking for an apartment. Further, if you Google Urbane Apartments, we own the first half dozen pages. If your search results weren’t so stellar when you searched for your company name, read on, we are here to help.

What Is The Value of Clicking Your Web Site First
If you push your Apartment Community Web Site to a Page One Google Ranking, does that provide more value than your prospect getting lost ILS Land, meaning Will the prospect click that community before going into the maze of ILS Listings? And, what value is that to the Apartment Community?

I have put most of our marketing chips on that square, thinking that if the prospect clicked on the Urbane Apartment Web Site before getting tangled up in the ILS Maze our opportunity for conversion increased dramatically.

Based on Results, that theory is working well. Our Traffic, Tours and Rentals continue to climb. We posted our 400th post at the Urbane Life Blog recently, pretty cool, but what does that mean? Well, for starters, we have increased our Digital Foot Print by Four Hundred Times for the Urbane Brand.

But it is more than (400) posts, in addition, Google has indexed our pages (749) times, and we have been linked to (649) times?

Does Anyone Care?
Apparently Prospects and Renters care, as The Proof is in the Numbers;

* Web Site Traffic UP 108%
* Physical Traffic/Tours UP 54%
* Rentals UP 69%

But How To Do It
Most property management companies have web sites for each of their apartment communities. However, they stop there, with static, never changing web presence. When is the last time you changed, edited or added new content to your web site? Has it been days, months or years?

Anything less than days, and you are missing huge marketing benefits. Google responds favorably to new, fresh, relevant content. Not changing, editing or adding to your web site content puts Google to sleep.

Admittedly, unless you have a Content Management System, changing content on your web site is a challenge, even with products such as Adobe Contribute. But, with a blog you can change content easily. Is a blog the same thing as your apartment community web site, well no, BUT it can and will help your apartment community web site with some Google Juice, by creating links and rich keyword tags.

Where To Start
As with most things, On Line Marketing really isn’t all that complicated, however if you know and apply a few “basics” you will get an enhanced result, and start to Move The Google Needle.

I have purchased four or five apartment web sites from marketing studios, and there is generally disconnect between them all. For example;
·    Not One Marketing Studio ever asked me about what I thought our Keywords are.
·    Not One Marketing Studio ever asked me about what I thought the Title Tag descriptions should be.
·    Not One Marketing Studio ever asked me what I thought the Meta tags should be
Would I have known what they were talking about, no, however, had they taken the time to go through the sheer importance of those three items we would have had a much different result. The best thing that ever happened was when our Marketing Studio Fired me as a Client, we then began to learn and apply the required principles to Move the Google Needle.

Google Real Estate
So if the Entrance to our physical apartment community is such an important and valuable piece of real estate, what is the most important piece of Google Real Estate for your On Line Community and Apartment Community Web Site. Perhaps you haven't thought about that, but you should. And, it is pretty silly to not take advantage of it.

Title Tags
Direct from Corey Perlman's  eBootCamp
Your Title Tags are a Search Engine's first impression of your web site. Make It a Good One. If you are like a lot of folks, you may well not even know about Title Tags. A Title Tag is the headline of a web site. It appears at the top of your browser on every web page you visit. If you use Internet Explorer, it resides in the upper right hand corner. And I bet you've never even noticed it before.

When search engines evaluate your web site, they use your title tags. They simply take the headline from your web site and place it directly on their engine as the link to your web site.

Your Title Tag Makes Up 50% of Your Google Real Estate
Based on that, isn't it a pretty important conversation to have as to exactly what your Title Tags should be? In our experience, we had several web sites built and revised and no one even ever mentioned Title Tags.
When we changed our Title Tags to be more in alignment with our Keywords, our Ranking on Google soared to Page One, Number One.

Five to Ten Words
You get between five to ten words per Title Tag. Your marketing group must be involved in the process and take advantage of this Most Valuable Google Real Estate

Low Hanging Fruit
Here are a few tips from the Urbane Lab on how to create or improve your web site. If you're creating your first apartment website, or just looking for a refresher course on how to get started, follow these Top 10 Tips for creating, maintaining, and improving your website.

Simple navigation is essential to effective website design.
Is your Web site navigation easy for users to understand? If not, a simple update to your site's navigation design can help users better access your site's content and information. But remember, too many navigation items can be challenging for users to follow. It is often better to group common pages together into a sub-navigation model.

Don't overrun your pages with text.
It is important to limit the number of words on a Web page as pages with 10,000+ words tend to overwhelm the reader. Instead, analyze your existing content and create a structure that best organizes the information.

Keep your keywords in mind.
Identify three to five keywords phrases relevant to your business and incorporate them into your website content . This helps search engines identify your website when consumers are searching for relevant content. Ensure your keywords are focused on your type of business, target audience, and local niche (if applicable).

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a great way to increase your site's exposure.
Continuous review of the keywords and descriptions used on each page of your website is essential when optimizing your website for better placement in major search engines. Proper page titles are also of major importance and are frequently overlooked. Meaningful page titles allow for better indexing by search engines and quicker content review by visitors.

Images really are worth a thousand words – when used correctly.
Decrease page load times by optimizing images for use on your site. Shaving off a few 100kbs from your images will save visitors' bandwidth and speed up your image load times. Adding text descriptions (known as "alt tags") to your images will also help search engines index your site.

Analyze your Web traffic.
Dissect the source of your Web traffic using Web analytics tools such as Google Analytics. This free utility features a variety of built-in reports and allows you to customize your own reports by filtering on a variety of variables. Use the information gleaned from your results to strategize future website improvements.

Ensure your website is XHTML/CSS 2.0 compliant.
Designing or redesigning your website to be Web 2.0 compliant will ensure it is viewable across all Web browser platforms. The Web design industry has come a long way in the last decade and the Internet's most successful websites stay on the cutting-edge of design. Web 2.0 standards separate your website's content from its layout, making it easier for search engines to index your site's content.

Use a blog to open the lines of communication.
A blog is a Web journal designed to help you or your business communicate with your visitors. Easily share your latest news, opinions, products and services, and so much more. As search engines index blogs more frequently than other sites, maximize the power of your blog by providing interesting and thought-generating information; asking your readers for comments, questions, and opinions; and comment on readers' feedback.

Keep in contact with your prospects and residents with an email newsletter.
Provide your readers and customers with an expert e-mail newsletter that offers interesting, timely, and entertaining information relevant to their interests. Newsletters that feature tips and advice are especially helpful. Giving your consumers the ability to register for your newsletter via your website provides an effective way of obtaining valuable contact and marketing information that can lead to future sales.

User-friendly sites ensure maximum use and profit.
Design your site to help visitors find key information. It is important to clearly identify ways for customers to contact you for more information, share ideas, obtain customer support, and buy products. If your site offers direct sales, you should feature an easy to use commerce system that makes it simple for customers to purchase your products and services.

Join Eric at the Optimization Summits where he is leading a full day workshop on Moving the Google Needle.

Moving the Google Needle-Workshop Leader Eric Brown Wednesday-Four, Two Hour Workshops

This workshop reveals the secrets behind Search Engine Optimization. You’ll learn how search engines work; how and why a site ranks highly (or doesn’t); how to target your site’s design and content for more traffic and higher search rankings; the ins and outs of SEO including keywords, meta tags, internal linking, external linking, and more. You’ll walk away with the knowledge you need to optimize your site’s search ranking now! What does all of this Social Media noise really mean, and moreover, what does it have to do with driving your income? At the Urbane Lab, we have put a lot of effort and resources into figuring out how to get our listings to rank high on a Google search.  High, as in Page One, Number One!

Happy Friday, everyone!  To end our week with a little food for thought, I wanted to share a quick exchange that’s kicking up this morning on Twitter about our upcoming Dallas Optimization Summits because it opened the door to a conversation that I want to have with every single one of you!

The conversation started while we were tweeting on another subject entirely @Multifamilypro, and one of our followers chimed in with “A Disruptive Post about what conferences that claim to be apartment internet marketing are verses what you are offering” followed by “One is about Socializing, Yours is About Doing, backed with Internet Marketing folks, NOT Apartment Mktg Consultants.”

My immediate response?  ROCK ON! That’s exactly what I’ve so wanted to say for so many weeks now!  Yes, we’ve created a ROCK STAR event about social media, and it’s absolutely NOT about socializing.  It’s about DOING!   One of our Optimization Summits Workshop Leaders said it the best:  “2009 was about learning social media. 2010 will be about figuring out how to use it well.” Jason Falls .  Now that we know what social media can do for us, it’s time for our industry to get a huge kick in the proverbial butt, get the skills we need, and get moving!  We have a lot of guiding principles around here, but one of our favorites is that a little revolution now and then is a necessary thing.  Revolutions aren’t about sitting back on the sidelines.  They’re about putting ideas into ACTION.

Folks, there are other industry events that address technology, and we all know that our business can be a small world when it comes to bringing together the talent.  After all, our industry is rife with incredible, amazing talent… we are fortunate in never having to look that far. But that’s terribly UNFORTUNATE, too, because too much of that causes us to turn in on ourselves while huge changes are happening in the world outside.  We need to go outside of the comfortable boundaries of our community (to use an apt metaphor) and get kicked in the seat of our collective pants by the huge world of incredible know-how that’s available outside this home we call multifamily.  I invented the Optimization Summits with the mission for us to learn how to DO, and to learn from the very top social marketing experts not in our industry, but in the United States.

If you don’t know about the Optimization Summits yet, please visit www.OptimizationSummits.com and learn more; but first, you need to know that we’re totally blown away by the people who have agreed to present this event for us. Unless you spend a lot of time reading around outside our industry like I do, you might not know that these guys are Rock Stars in the social marketing world at large, but they absolutely are, and I’m devoting the next couple of weeks to helping you get to know them through our own blogs and other social networking efforts so you’ll come to know what others already agree will be THE breakthrough learning and DOING opportunity of 2010!  Thanks for your time, and for keeping the conversation going!!!

Tami

“If You want to improve your marketing and Operations this is THE Multifamily Event you need to attend in 2010. I think you are going to get more out of this event than any other!” – Jamie Gorski, Sr. VP of Corporate Marketing, The Bozzuto Group