Pretty often we’re asked how we decide what content to produce for our marketing efforts. There’s a part of our strategy that is, of course, focussed on just getting traffic to the site and making sure that there is timely and fresh content available. The other side of the strategy is creating useful evergreen content that will continue to drive traffic to our site months after we’ve created it. I’m enamored with Periscope and Snapchat, but I still believe the best bang for our marketing dollar comes from producing lasting, quality, useful content. I took the strategy we used for successful lease-ups at WC Smith and created the content marketing package we produce at Apartminty. It focuses on the following:
- Locally focused blog content
- Local business
- Partnerships and cobranding ops
- Strong visual assets-creating the right asset for the right channel—you need to be wherever your customer is…but you need to show up appropriately. You shouldn’t wear a tux to the campground.
- Multi channel sharing /distribution/of content
Locally focused blog content is admittedly my favorite piece to the puzzle–mainly because it is a fun part of the strategy and a catalyst to the other steps. You have to know your target prospect and their interests, but once you do, you can start to cater content to their interests. We write a content calendar for the year, taking into account our planned marketing campaigns, community events, national holidays, local businesses, and prospective renter’s interests. If a community event pops up that we want to highlight, we always have the flexibility of adding it in, but this calendar allows us to plan out our marketing campaigns months in advance. This is where the marketing team and community site team stop working in silos and operate together to push out a cohesive message to prospects on all channels. {From emails to social posts to leasing presentations the message stays consistent}
The local partnerships fall in lock-step with the blog. Sometimes partnerships are hard to come by, especially if it is difficult to come up with an ‘in kind’ exchange. That’s okay! Just identify the businesses that are active on social media and look to just share and promote each other’s content. I never mind if we are promoting a business more than they are promoting us. Give, give, give, give, give and when you need it, it will come back to you! Plus, let’s be honest, highlighting a local business is just about the easiest evergreen content to create!
Once you have the content calendar, it’s time to start creating awesome visuals. I will fully admit that my business partner Maddie is a bajillion times better at this than I am! BUT there are some great tools out there for the design challenged! My go-to is Canva. They have some tutorials that really take you through the steps of creating a strong, eye catching piece of content to accompany your blog. Why bother? Because a great visual asset will allow you to share the blog you just created on multiple channels…Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook all say that posts with pictures perform better. {You have no idea how long I sat trying to come up with a synonym for better that started with a P}
**A word of caution** Make sure you size your visual appropriately for the channel it will appear on! Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest all have different specifications. We created this handy infographic for your reference.
Lastly, promoting your content via all the channels that your customer is hanging out on is not exactly what I recommend. I say get in front of them on the two or three channels where you can have the most impact and where the message will be best received. We can be everywhere, but we need to match the message to the delivery channel…not everything fits everywhere.
Want help creating your content or content strategy? Partner with Apartminty! We love this stuff!