“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!
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This is quite impressive, I am pleased to read this post, keep posts like this coming, you totally rock!
http://gardening.the-mnm.info
You've pretty much summed it all up, from dealing with pesky neighbors to professional improvement. As an addition, writing about how to get over inevitable “worth it consequences” like hungover cures and the likes are interesting subjects, yet pretty useful too.
I want only the answer not a story written there
You’ve pretty much summed it all up, from dealing with pesky neighbors to professional improvement. As an addition, writing about how to get over inevitable “worth it consequences” like hungover cures and the likes are interesting subjects, yet pretty useful too.
Nice tips thanks for sharing them..
Nice tips thanks for sharing them..
Nice tips thanks for sharing them..
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Many of these are items that we could also post on our property’s Facebook page. If we can encourage interaction and discussion there with the same topics, is a blog necessary? Would it make more sense to drive our residents to Facebook and focus on building up there?
These ideas could absolutely work on a property’s Facebook Page, but I always like to keep as much of the content and conversation on my own website as possible, for a number of reasons (think SEO and conversions). Facebook is a great door-opener, but in most cases, the goal should be to drive that person back to your website.
A blog isn’t necessary (but it’s strongly encouraged), and I know for a fact that not every business can manage a blog effectively. That said, I like to think of Facebook and other social media sites more like distribution points. Write a blog post about one of these topics, then share the link to your Facebook Page. (Tools like NetworkedBlogs will do this for you automatically.) That way, your audience sees it and can interact with it on Facebook, but you’re also pointing them back to your site.
Remember, you don’t have complete control over your content on Facebook … they could delete your business Page tomorrow, and there’s nothing that you could do about it. Build up your network on Facebook, Twitter and other sites that make sense, but find ways to get those folks back to your website, signed up for your email list and active in other channels that you own and control.
Thanks for the comment, DM … great questions!
Really Great post we have now read a lot of your posts and been telling all our friends related to your blog.
This is was a wonderful post. Thanks.
Nice and thanks for that.
I want only the answer not a story written there