Social Networking: A Little Dab(ble) Won't Do Ya

I thought Angela made a great point in yesterday’s post “Debunking Social Networking Myths – Myspace” in which she stated that in order to have a successful social networking campaign “it must be an ongoing effort, updated often, and maintained to get the response that will pay off.”

I was in a meeting with a client last week who builds and manages luxury apartment communities in Indiana and Ohio. He had just returned from the Apartment Internet Marketing (AIM) conference in Scottsdale, AZ where many of the people he encountered were skeptical of the practical applications of social networking and social media marketing.

“Most had dabbled with it, saw no results and gave up, but they don’t have a full-time ‘Chad’ taking care of that for them,” he laughed.

I use a 3 phase approach to social networking - decorate, populate, conversate. I’ll expand on those in a later post. We’re currently in the “populate” phase. Once the pages were designed and branded, we were provided with the names and email addresses of every resident from every apartment community and have been spending hours upon hours finding and adding them on both Myspace and Facebook.

This particular client has been a joy to work with as he is one that really “gets it.” We’ve extended all of his brick and mortar communities online via Myspace and Facebook and he’s been both pleased and surprised with the results thus far.

But those results have taken time. Results will improve further as we spend even more time in the “conversate” phase – that one never really ends. It is true – a little dab(ble) won’t do ya. Creating a presence on social networking sites is free, but creating a lasting impression takes time – and that, as we all know, is never really free.

- Chad Richards

Comments

[Kelsey Mitchell]

Truer words were never spoken. Thanks for the post Chad. And what a neat idea for apartment communities to be reaching out to their residents online!