On our previous post, there were a few loose ends to tie before hitting publish on your blog post. Once those important details are complete, you are ready to share your content with the world via social media! Why Use Social Media to Share Content? Without social media marketing and SEM services, the only way a person will find your content is by going directly to your website. Before you worked in the industry, how often did you visit an apartment’s blog? Precisely. By sharing the posts on social media, your content reaches more readers. Your social media followers will see the post appear on their news feeds. Social sharing draws attention to the blog post. Their engagement—likes, comments, and shares—will broaden the posts’ reach to their friends. Your efforts will be magnified even more when the platform’s algorithm robots pick up on users’ engagement. The platform may choose to share your content with an even broader audience. With more attention on your blog, you’re bringing more attention to your property! Social media marketing is easy, free marketing. Pick 2-3 Social Media Platforms Where should you share content? Select a few social media platforms that suit your brand. The prominent demographic of your community will determine which platforms are best for you. For example, Facebook is common for most organizations due to its broad user base–1 billion active users– and customizable features. Additionally, properties with young professionals may benefit from an Instagram account, whose 600 million users are mostly young adults ages 18-29. If you have a student property with an even younger demographic, 18-24 years of age, Snapchat may also be a beneficial platform to explore. Once you’ve honed-in on your platforms, learn the native marketing language for each. This allows you to...
Blogging 101: Part 4
3 To-Dos Before Publishing
Once you add great media to your blog post, you’re almost ready to hit publish! There are three tidbits that will help readers find your blog post and bring greater return on your investment. Add Categories and Tags Categories and tags are primarily used to organize your content and make it easier for readers to find what they’re looking for. These keywords are also used to help search engines identify what your content is about. This makes it easier for your blog post to appear appropriately in search queries. Let’s continue with the nursery safety blog example from our previous posts. In that instance, category may be “apartment safety” and tags may include “childproofing your apartment,” “baby proofing your apartment” or “nursery.” SEO Plugin If you are working on a blogging platform that permits plugins like WordPress, an SEO plugin may be a worthwhile investment. It goes beyond the functionalities of Categories and Tags to help search engines “crawl” through your content. (That’s a nerd term for quickly scanning the content to identify its purpose and help it appear appropriately during internet searches.) The SEO plugin may ask you to identify keywords. Long-tail keywords are best here. “How to create a safe nursery” will be more beneficial than just “nursery,” for example. The plugin may also request a description. This is a brief summary of your blog post that may appear as an excerpt under your link and blog post title in a query listing. Keep the description to 2-3 sentences. Social Media Plugin Depending on the flexibility of your platform, you may also be able to add a social media plugin. The best of these plugins allow you to create custom posts for social media. You can add hashtags and use the format...
Blogging 101: Part 3
Creating Great Images
Once you’ve chosen a blogging platform and written content, the next step in creating an engaging blog post is to include great media. Media includes visuals such as photographs, infographics, illustrations, and videos. For today’s post, we will focus on photography. Most modern smartphones are adequate to take a great image for blog posts and social media use. (If a staff member is competent with a DSLR camera and lighting tools, even better!) The tips below will give your images a professional touch. Select a Subject The subject of your blog post image will be influenced by the content of your post. Let’s say that you were writing about nursery safety as proposed in our prior post. Perhaps you choose to take a photograph of the nursery in your model unit. This subject is ideal because it’s relevant to the topic. Secondly, it’s a great choice because it is a custom photo taken on your property rather than a stock photo. Such an image showcases your product and what you have to offer residents and prospects. Identify Location and Lighting The best location for your image necessitates excellent lighting. It doesn’t matter how cool the location is if the lighting makes your image look murky or blurry. Indirect natural light is best. Directly natural light (i.e. sunshine at noon) can cast harsh shadows on your subject, especially faces. When shooting an image indoors, also pay attention to the way that the lighting casts shadows on your subject. In addition to great lighting, minimal background clutter is another key to a great location. Trash cans, signs, and unkempt landscaping can distract viewers from the subject. Includes Life Forms—Always! When it comes to your property blog, pictures with living creatures—humans, pets, or wildlife—are always more interesting...
Blogging 101
Picking the Perfect Platform
You hear it all the time: to improve your organic ranking with Google, you need frequent, fresh content for your website. Blogging is a common best practice for keeping new content on your site while connecting with your residents. But how do you start a great blog? First, you need to select your blogging platform. There are several options available, varying in price points and features to fit your needs. WordPress WordPress has been the leader in the blog industry for years. It’s the most popular choice because it allows for the most flexibility. There are about 10,000 supported themes for WordPress and each one offers a degree of customization. That means that your blog can compliment your brand and stand apart from the crowd. With nearly 30,000 available plugins and hundreds of widgets, you can enhance your site in a multitude of ways. User-facing add-ons permit event calendars, image galleries, social media streams, merchandise sales, and all sorts of interactive goodies. There are also more technical plugins that impact the functionality of your site. While there are a lot of options, WordPress doesn’t need to be overwhelming. WordPress is as simple or as complex as you want it to be. Pick a theme. Write a post. Publish. Done. You can choose from WordPress.com or the self-hosted, open source WordPress.org. The latter allows greater customization and control while the former is a simple starting point for beginners. Wix Wix is the new kid on the block that has tons of personality and a growing fan base. This simple platform makes it easy for newbies to get started. Choose from a dozen, predetermined templates with a simple drag-and-drop user interface. These fresh themes give your site a clean, modern look that’s popular with top name...
Skip These Social Media Missteps
Set up for success
You’ve created profiles and set aside ample time to update your social media, but you’re still not getting the traffic and following that you desire. What’s a social media novice to do? Social media has so many moving parts, so many variables, that it may seem impossible to get a grip on what to change when what you’re doing isn’t working. We’re here to help you troubleshoot a few common errors that can sabotage your social media efforts. You never developed a strategy. We skip strategies because they’re tough. They require evaluation and tweaking and reevaluation. It’s a lot easier to just start posting aimlessly and hope for engagement! Unfortunately, that can also be a huge waste of time and effort. Worse, you won’t know where you’re going wrong if you don’t get the engagement that you seek. Take the time to develop a strategy by answering the following questions: Who is my audience? Which platforms does my audience use the most? When are they most likely to check their social media? What message(s) do I want to send about my brand? These questions are just the tip of the iceberg, but they’re a great starting point. You forgot to work smarter, not harder… Posting can be exhausting, which may be why you don’t post as often as you should. Save time by finding a post scheduler for your platforms of choice, such as Buffer or Tailwind. You’ll stay on your Followers’ radars when you share consistently, and they’ll expect to hear from you and share your great content. (Note: when scheduling, you won’t want to share the exact same thing the exact same way on every platform. Native marketing is essential to success!) …or you never learned about smart posting. Scheduling posts is more than loading up the queue with reposts and links. Anyone who takes a look at your wall will notice that the human element missing. That will be a turnoff. Be sure to integrate timely, personalized posts into your schedule. You may also be too me-minded. If all of your posts are about your brand and your products, you’re proving the limit of your worth. Branch out by sharing industry-relevant resources, responding to your followers, and initiating contact with your audience. You only share your content once. What a waste! You need to share your unique content more than once. Let’s say that you’re sharing a blog post. Silver Egg Media recommends: You publish a post directly to the blog Notify your Followers on Twitter using the exact blog post title Tweet about the post again, this time with a relevant variation on the title Tweet about it the next day with an excerpt from the post Tweet the next week with yet another variation on the title The next month with, you guessed it, a different title, or excerpt And then post again a month later This gives your content a shot at reaching out to a broader audience without spamming your Followers with replicas of the same post back-to-back. You forgot to engage. Don’t just post, post, post like a narcissistic maniac. Be sure to respond, inquire, and interact with your audience. Social media requires being sociable (in cyberspace, anyway) so get out there and mingle. You never found your voice. Do your posts feel dry, or like anyone else in your industry could’ve created them? Do you get a bit bored scrolling through your own wall? That’s likely because you took a distant, third-party voice rather than using your own unique voice and style to promote your brand. Did you recently get out of a social media rut? Share which tips and insights worked for...
Commercial Content
Colliers' Blog
Content marketing in the commercial real estate realm makes sense, from a PR perspective. Why not showcase the expertise of investment, development or brokerage leadership with smart writing about trends and business practices? For many companies, it’s a nice idea that might encounter many logistical hurdles a long the way. So a relatively new blog from Colliers International, Colliers Insights, pulls off a rather impressive feat – providing insightful, visual and shareable content relevant to commercial real estate. With a soft launch in October 2014, Colliers Insights is a relatively new project for the company’s marketing team, and one that made intuitive sense. Christine Schultz, global vice president of marketing and research, shared the scoop. CPE: Can you tell me why Colliers sees content marketing as important to its real estate goals? Schultz: The blog has really been a natural extension of how our Colliers advisors want to share insights and moving that into the digital realm. Websites can be very formal, with hard to find information in a quick, easy fashion. The blog provides a casual entry point for digital users to engage with our thought-leading content. CPE: How would you describe the overall experience you are trying to provide for readers? Schultz: We want it to be fun for the audience and share content in an engaging way. It’s really important for us to offer the blog as an authentic experience and to give users a sense of what it’s like to work with Colliers and to feel the magic of our culture for those interested in joining Colliers. CPE: One thing the blog does especially well is its presentation of thought leadership by Colliers executives around the nation and even globally. How do you compel their participation? Schultz: I have been...
