5 Takeaways from AIM

Conference highlights

By Jessica Fiur on Apr 27, 2012 in News

This year’s Apartment Internet Marketing (AIM) conference, which concluded today in Phoenix, definitely put the “social” in social media by the sharing of information between hundreds of multifamily executives.

Conference panelists included people across the gamut of the industry, including speakers from Yelp, apartmentratings.com, Google and many others. And we can’t leave out the stuffed monkey, named Bongo, who helped demonstrate what was probably the most important message conveyed here about launching a social marketing campaign: “Keep it simple (stupid).”

Here are five other take-aways from AIM 2012.

Make social media easy (and fun!) for your residents or prospects. If you want engagement on your sites, you have to make it easy for people to participate. Have lots of calls to action. And make the campaign something that they would actually participate in, such as entertaining videos, funny pictures, and giveaways. People are suckers for free stuff (case in point: all the cool AIM swag I have safely squirreled away in my luggage.)

Go topless (AKA: get their attention). One speaker mentioned the new Mini Cooper campaign, which was set up as a peep show because the new car (a convertible) was “going topless.” That definitely got everyone’s attention, and is sure to stick with people. When you’re starting a new campaign, make sure you are original and you grab people’s attention. If not, your campaign is in danger of disappearing in the white noise of the million other apartment community campaigns out there.

Ratings and reviews are a good thing. Even if they’re bad. Everyone rates everything online. Hotels, restaurants, apartment communities… Make sure you’re monitoring all the talk about your property. And respond! Residents want to know they have a voice, and that you’re listening. Just know when it is more appropriate to move the conversation offline.

Everyone is mobile. Where are you reading this blog? Chances are, it’s on a smartphone or tablet. (And I wrote this blog post on an iPad. Thanks, Dad, for letting me borrow it. Hope you’re not expecting it back.) Many people now check out the Internet via mobile devices. Keep this in mind when designing your site. And, as one speaker said, don’t design a mobile-accessible site, design a mobile site!

The times, they are a changin’. We all know that MySpace has gone the way of the dodo bird, and Facebook is a world-wide phenomenon. But don’t forget to keep looking forward. Do you use QR codes in your marketing campaigns? Have you set up a Pinterest account for your community? And what about local deals? Do you have promotions on Yelp and Foursquare? The only way to be successful in today’s market is to keep up with the new technologies and popular online services.

Jessica Fiur is News Editor at Multi-Housing News.