Building Your Online Corporate Mullet

Building Your Online Corporate Mullet
Ideas you can implement tomorrow at work
Mark Juleen, J.C. Hart Apartment Communities
Duncan Alney, Firebelly Marketing
Twitter: #corpmullet
www.corporatemullet.com

REQUIRED: Social Media Understanding

Do you know these guys?

Do you know these guys?
Seth Godin
Malcolm Gladwell
Tom Peters

How about these guys?

How about these guys?
Chris Brogan
Guy Kawasaki
Gary Vaynerchuk

It’s tough out there
Almost 10% unemployment
Financial institutions collapsing
Automakers on the brink
Consumer confidence down

TheOpportunity
Dare to care about your customers
Build relationships
Trust should be your goal

We’ll start with the Mullet

Famous Mullets
Billy Ray
Cyrus
Don
Johnson
John
Stamos
Phil
Collins
Bono

The Mullet
It’s famous
It’s recognizable
It’s evolved
It’s different
It’s brave
It shows belongingness

The Corporate Mullet
It’s a mindset: Dare to embrace a socialized business model online
Formality is shrinking: Social is the norm
Make business social: social is the party in the back
Be a part of the conversations
Make your brand relevant and open

How to build your Corporate Mullet
Socialize your website
Engage with your customers
Monitor your competitors
Identify & activate your evangelists
Encourage interactions

Non-Apartment Industry Examples

Examples

Zappos
CEO on Twitter
Funny, helpful, trustworthy personality
A lot of employees “tweeting
$1 million in Twitter-related sales
Also on Facebook and blogs
www.zappos.com

Starbucks
www.MyStarbucksIdea.com
Consumer feedback
Submit, vote, review in action
Asking for involvement
Making it happen publicly

Blendtec
Will it Blend? video series
7 million views of iPhone
YouTube sensation
5 fold increase in sales
Clever, low cost
www.youtube.com/blendtec

Yats
Small restaurant group with 4 Indy locations
CEO leads and believes in social media
Very active Facebook profile, group and page
Mobile ramp up with promotions
Twitter presence
Evening out sales through the week
Growing sales at weak location
www.yatscajuncreole.com

Applying the Corporate Mullet to the apartment industry

Why does it apply?
200,000,000 people online
People business
People do business with people
Go where the people are

“A real estate transaction is a social transaction”
- Pete Flint, CEO of Trulia.com

What is the fear?
Conservative finance
Fair Housing Law

Social media is really no different than …
Outreach
Resident events and parties
Telephone or Email

Case Studies

http://www.homeisjchart.com

J.C. Hart objectives
Increase exposure and traffic to company website
Increase online content and improve search results
Community-building to help retain existing residents
Reduce marketing expenses

J.C. Hart strategies
Optimize online content for keywords and search
Replace paper community newsletters with blogs
Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, & Flickr accounts
optimized for brand and keywords
Establish a YouTube channel and launch a
resident video contest for user-generated
content and testimonials

J.C. Hart results
Traffic to website up nearly 75% compared to June 2008
Social media sites deliver traffic to main website
YouTube channel received over 10,000 views in 8 weeks
Eliminated Print/Guide Marketing Avg. Saving $35/unit
Physical Traffic/Showings up 4.15% YTD ‘08 vs. ’09
In 6 months from page 53 to page 2 on Google for “Indianapolis Apartments”

Video contest a hit with residents and received good publicity

YouTubeWinnershttp://www.youtube.com/homeisjcharthttp://livethelife.homeisjchart.com

http://www.urbaneapts.com

Urbane Objectives
One recognizable brand
Use no traditional paid advertising
Break away from “Apartment Commodity”

Urbane Strategy
Engage with customers and residents
Company website, Blogs, and free tools likeCraigslist, Ning, Facebook, etc.
Socialize with the local community
Have marketing create income

Urbane results
12,000 website visitors a month for 360 units
- ½ main website, other ½ to Blog and Ningsite
Google page 1 for “Apartments Royal Oak”
Traffic growing 35% month over month
VIP Program generating monthly income
Still no traditional paid ads

Others using social media tools
Bell Partners
Campus Living Villages
UDR

If you’re trying to build a brand online what might that look like?
J.C. Hart Apartments
Urbane Apartments
UDR Apartments

Ideas you can implement tomorrow
Get your brand name on all major social media assets.
Set up Google Alerts for your brands and competitors brands
Know what people are saying about you online, and participate in the conversation.

Ongoing strategy
Hire professional help
Don’t write policies
Train people in best practices, learn from mistakes
Monitor and measure efforts
Kaizen everything

The Benefits
Conversations
Top of mind awareness
Google Juice
The online friend Multiplier
Measurable Results
Reduce marketing budgets

Summary

Building your Corporate Mullet is a way of doing business. It’s not about social media. It’s about socializing your brand online and offline!
Develop a strategy and best practices, not policies, to use online tools (just like email and telephone)
Reach outside your industry for inspiration
Remember the online “multiplier”
Being all “business” is not remarkable. You need to collaborate with “the party” in the back.

Want More?
www.multifamilyinsiders.com

Mark Juleen
Duncan Alney
J.C. Hart, Marketing Director
mark@homeisjchart.com
www.theapartmentnerd.com
Twitter: @mbj
Firebelly Marketing, President
duncan@firebellymarketing.com
www.firebellymarketing.com
Twitter: @firebelly