This post was originally written by Kerry Sugrue, former Social Media Specialist at Apartments.com.
Top of the mornin’ to ya! With St. Patrick’s Day right around the corner, this is a great time to create a fun atmosphere in your apartment community and engage with your residents. As they say, everyone’s Irish on St. Paddy’s Day, so here are some ideas for activities, surprises, and Facebook posts that you can use this year in your community: Read More
This post was originally written by Ken Shafer, past SEO Manager for Apartments.com.
Following their announcement about social search, Google rolled-out an update to their algorithm aimed at cleaning out some of the clutter in their search results:
“Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what’s going on. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.” Read More
This post was originally written by Ken Shafer, past SEO Manager for Apartments.com.
Still doubting the importance of social media signals in search results? After Google’s latest announcement you should probably reconsider. Their statement saying “But relevance isn’t just about pages—it’s also about relationships” is a wake-up call to all site owners that it’s time to pull our collective heads out of the sand and get to work cultivating a social network and encouraging interactions with your content.
The nuts and bolts Read More
As a part of its national What Renters Want series, each year Apartments.com conducts its popular Moving Outlook survey, and the results for 2011 are in! Over 1,800 of our website visitors responded, giving us a look into their 2011 moving plans including reasons they are moving, when they plan to move and which tools they value most during their apartment search. Some of our key findings are outlined below, but please take a look at our full results and press release for more detailed information.
This post was originally written by Kerry Sugrue, former Social Media Specialist at Apartments.com.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that, according to credit agency Experian, the lowest credit scores belong to those 18 to 29 years of age. In fact, a recent National Multi Housing Council (NMHC) survey found this age demographic also happens to account for the largest segment of renters in the United States. In the past, renting an apartment had little to no effect on a person’s credit score, but thanks to Experian’s recent acquisition of RentBureau, you can help residents increase their credit scores by reporting timely rent payments! Read More
Check out this video clip of The Ellen DeGeneres Show to see how Apartments.com is lending a helping hand to a local Thousand Oaks, CA family in need.
In this heartwarming segment, the Munoz family shares their story of a personal, family tragedy, which has left them struggling to make ends meet. The family said it is their dream to get back on their feet and have a place of their own. Honored to have this opportunity to help make their dreams come true, Apartments.com gifted the Munoz family with $15,000 toward free rent for a year. Read More
This post was originally written by Brandon Hollembeak, Product Manager – Advertising Products & Services
It’s been nine months since we started experimenting with giving renters the ability to chat live with Apartments.com platinum listing customers, and four months since we launched it fully, and it’s proven to be a great next step in advancing the rental industry! As of February 1, we have over 1,200 properties signed up to receive Live Chat, and continuing to grow at a very rapid pace every week. Read More
This post was originally written by Ken Shafer, past SEO Manager for Apartments.com.
If you haven’t already heard about this site, let me introduce you to Quora. What’s it all about? Well, I’ll let their “about us” page do the talking:
“…One way you can think of it is as a cache for the research that people do looking things up on the web and asking other people. Eventually, when you see a link to a question page on Quora, your feeling should be: “Oh, great! That’s going to have all the information I want about that.” It’s also a place where new stuff–that no one has written about yet–can get pulled onto the web.” Read More
Big news out of Google yesterday, via Ken Shafer, that the search giant is discontinuing real estate and rental searches on Google Maps, citing low adoption, technical constraints and “the proliferation of excellent property-search tools on real estate websites” (hopefully they’re referring to all the fine ILSs out there). I suspect low monetization might also be playing a part, but that’s pure speculation. What’s not is that Google has no compunction killing underperforming products. Remember Wave? Froogle?
Google and its map-based real estate and apartment search was a hot topic at last year’s AIM conference, and Google will continue to be a player in real estate and apartment search. But clearly they’re retrenching, perhaps focusing resources on their Places product. Either way, I suspect whatever is up their sleeve will be discussed heavily this year at AIM, other conferences and the multifamily blogosphere. Read More
Yesterday, I paid for my coffee with my iPhone.
So you’re thinking, whoop-de-doo for you. I didn’t even think much of it myself. I simply downloaded the latest Starbucks app, coupled it to a gift card I had registered earlier online, and, voila, the $14 left on that gift card was now at my disposal on my phone. The barista scanned the QR-like barcode directly from my phone, which debited the balance on my card. What convenience — other than no longer having to carry a slim gift card in my pocket — did this advance grant me? I can check my balance anytime, which is nice, but, otherwise, not much.
So why is this a bigger deal than even I thought? Read More
Equal Housing Opportunity
