“Should we have a property blog?”
I get that question a lot. In a future post, I think I’ll have to go through some of the reasons why the answer is absolutely YES.
If you have a property blog, or if you’ve thought about writing one, but don’t think you have enough ideas to write about, here are 30 ideas to get you started:
- How to get the most from our property management team.
- Recommend an improvement to our community.
- What kinds of community events would interest you most?
- Exciting updates or changes coming in future months.
- How to decorate a small space. (Reference products from IKEA or a post from Apartment Therapy.)
- Upcoming events, coupons and offers for the next two weeks.
- A little bit about us.
- Best kept secrets in our neighborhood.
- Best place to get a beer, find home accessories, watch the fireworks
- Photos from this month’s community meetup.
- Video: A day in the life of our service technicians. (You could also post this on your Careers page.)
- Our residents rock!
- We support these causes, and here’s why.
- Tips to lower your utility bills. (You could interview someone from the local utility company.)
- Have you seen our community garden, dog park, fitness room, whatever.
- How we handle your disputes or complaints.
- Anything that builds on a recent piece in your resident newsletter. (Use this both ways — promote recent blog posts in your newsletter.)
- How to handle a difficult neighbor.
- Can you recommend a better process for this?
- We’re sorry, and here’s how we’ll handle things next time.
- Report from our resident community review board.
- We hate to see you go, but if you have to leave, here are some tips when preparing for move-out. (Too much?)
- Friend us on Facebook (or Myspace, or Twitter, or Pandora, or… You get the point.)
- Interview a local politician with a Flip Video, or let a community leader write a guest post.
- Why we like something about a competitor’s community better, and how we’ll catch up.
- Local business profile — Get to know the corner (insert business here).
- Our favorite local websites or blogs.
- Resident guest posts: How you think we could improve.
- We asked for your favorite recipes. The responses were delicious!
- A quick tour of the resident web portal. (No portal yet? Try one of these options.)
You tell me … Which ones would you write about? Which ones go too far? Can you see how customers might react to reading these? I wrote almost every one of these with the resident or prospective renter as the intended audience. Is there any other audience for which a property blog should be written? How would these ideas change if your intended reader belonged to a different group?
Do you have other topics that have worked well for you? Do you have an example of a great property blog? Show off by posting your blog’s address in the comments!
