“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:

1. How to get the most from our property management team.
2. Recommend an improvement to our community.
3. What kinds of community events would interest you most?
4. Exciting updates or changes coming in future months.
5. How to decorate a small space. (Reference products from IKEA or a post from Apartment Therapy.)
6. Upcoming events, coupons and offers for the next two weeks.
7. A little bit about us.
8. Best kept secrets in our neighborhood.
9. Best place to get a beer, find home accessories, watch the fireworks
10. Photos from this month’s community meetup.
11. Video: A day in the life of our service technicians. (You could also post this on your Careers page.)
12. Our residents rock!
13. We support these causes, and here’s why.
14. Tips to lower your utility bills. (You could interview someone from the local utility company.)
15. Have you seen our community garden, dog park, fitness room, whatever.
16. How we handle your disputes or complaints.
17. Anything that builds on a recent piece in your resident newsletter. (Use this both ways — promote recent blog posts in your newsletter.)
18. How to handle a difficult neighbor.
19. Can you recommend a better process for this?
20. We’re sorry, and here’s how we’ll handle things next time.
21. Report from our resident community review board.
22. We hate to see you go, but if you have to leave, here are some tips when preparing for move-out. (Too much?)
23. Friend us on Facebook (or Myspace, or Twitter, or Pandora, or… You get the point.)
24. Interview a local politician with a Flip Video, or let a community leader write a guest post.
25. Why we like something about a competitor’s community better, and how we’ll catch up.
26. Local business profile — Get to know the corner (insert business here).
27. Our favorite local websites or blogs.
28. Resident guest posts: How you think we could improve.
29. We asked for your favorite recipes. The responses were delicious!
30. 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!