As the snow thaws and daylight lingers through the evening, your residents will be itching for fun ways to get outdoors and spend time with loved ones. Catch their attention with your community events! This guide will offer quick and simple steps for launching your events towards success. Before the Event After you’ve planned the event, you’ve got to get the word out. Use Yardi RentCafe to create a blog post about the event. In the post, provide helpful details such as: Date, time and location Admission costs, include an early bird discount to create urgency and motivate the sale Number of non-resident guests that may accompany residents Relevant age restrictions Parking provisions Recommend attire or dress code Details about any items that guests should bring Don’t forget to give the event plenty of personality! Do this through the tone of your text and the Featured Image that you select on the blog post. Once the blog post is complete, use RentCafe to connect Facebook and promote your event. You may choose to pin the post to the top of your newsfeed so that all new and returning visitors will see it. Next, create at least one new visual per week that you can use to promote the event on social media (in addition to your blog post). Fresh visuals are important because they may capture the attention of residents who did not respond to the Featured Image on the blog post. The visuals can be videos, illustrations, or pictures with text. In the latter, limit the text to 20-30 percent of the total image surface area. If an image is too wordy, it will be ignored. Distribute these images on your preferred social media platform(s) each week to spread the word of your...

Congratulations: your attention span is now shorter than that of a goldfish…by one whole second. Recent studies show the average human attention span is now 8 seconds.  That means social marketers and digital advertisers have to hook you with compelling content within moments.  How much does that bait cost?  Advertisers spent an estimated $8.5 billion on social ads alone in 2014, all to keep your brain entertained long enough to get to the punchline.  And succeed they did. Our Social Media Team kept a keen eye out for those creative and unusual marketing campaigns with solid storytelling and strong social presence. Here are a few of our favorite digital campaigns from the last year. Mini Cooper  Mini USA – Multiple Social Channels Mini Cooper has created a world of engagement, and it’s truly an experience all of its own.  The iconic import has grasped attention and stolen the hearts of many motorists across the country, and to that end, they have established their own mini-nation: Mini USA. Beyond the exclusivity of an owner’s only club, the camaraderie and fellowship between Mini drivers curves closer to extended family.  And what better way to spend time with your family than to be “couped” up with them on the greatest of American familial pastimes?  “Mini Takes the States” is a clash of Mini Cooper clans cruising on a 5,000 mile road trip from [#MTTS]San Francisco to [#MTTS]Boston.  Motorists can post to social networks during pit stops with a set of branded hashtags, photos and videos.  Along with crossing the continental US, Mini’s social presence spans across platforms: Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, Instagram and Twitter. Need some Mini maintenance? For continued care of your car, the company’s website features a downloadable PDF of your owner’s manuals, a roadside assistance...

If you haven’t looked into Instgram now is the perfect time to reconsider. Instagram has launched its standalone companion, Hyperlapse, to appeal to the Vine crowd without…well, the Vine crowd. Hyperlapse offers mobile video production that’s quick, simple, and eye catching. In other words, it’s just what you need to take your content marketing to the next level. Hyperlapse helps mobile users create silent videos that are 15 seconds in length or fewer. This is more than double the video length available on Vine, allowing you to offer a fuller presentation of your content while maintaining your audience’s short attention span. Effortlessly create seamless video tours of a unit or longer videos showing what the surrounding community has to offer. It’s also a good tool for sharing clips from community events. Anyone can create a good video with Hyperlapse thanks to the ultra-simple process: record up to 45 minutes of video, alter speed as needed, save, and share. Your staff won’t need a media degree or innate tech-savviness to operate the app. Hyperlapse is just that straightforward. While simplicity is an excellent feature, it’s the quality of Hyperlapse videos that will really make your content stand out. Built-in image stabilization (via the phone’s gyroscopes) gives the videos a smooth, professional finish rather than looking like bumpy scenes from The Remaining. This app can potentially save you money. Create awesome videos with fewer calls to your professional videographer. Prospective users will be glad to know that you don’t have to create a new presence on the app. It’s a pain to build and maintain a following on a new social media platform, especially when we don’t know which apps will be hot or not in the next six months. Hyperlapse cuts the drama by allowing you to...