Stay connected with your tenants: effective communication using Web 2.0 tools and technology
Facebook. Web 2.0. Twitter. buzz. Text. Blog. AM. Social bookmarking. Label. Youtube. Consider this list of words for a second and ask yourself, “Are they nouns, verbs, adjectives, or a combination of all three? Do you know what more than half of these words mean?” If your answers to any of these questions are a bit confusing or unsure, your next step should be to find out what these terms mean, what role they play in the lives of your current and potential tenants, and how they can help you as a landlord.
The 21st century is upon us, as are the technological changes that are currently shaping a generation of students, families, and workers, as well as the worlds of education and business. Many places we go these days provide some form of technological support, such as Internet cafes, coffee shops that provide wireless networks, and businesses, schools, and college campuses that are bubbles of wireless signals and Internet-ready workstations. As you head to work or walk down a busy city street, students and adults alike are ‘online’ to text on their phones, instant message on their iPhones, check email on their Blackberry or social media on their laptops (or any of these devices for that matter). The bottom line is that technology has helped us evolve the way we communicate, socialize and do business.
What does all this have to do with owning and running a real estate business? It has everything to do with being able to communicate and connect with your audience, whether they are current or potential renters. My partners and I have been managing rental properties for almost six years, and the difference in the way we advertise and work with our tenants has changed dramatically, especially my role as a landlord. When we started, almost all of my communication with our tenants was through phone calls, the occasional email, or face-to-face meetings. At the time, this seemed to work. As our properties multiplied (as did our tenants), efficient and effective communication became difficult. Playing phone tag became commonplace, and trying to find common times when both tenants and landlord were free to meet regularly was next to impossible. After some time discussing, both with my partners and with the tenants, the purposes of all these contacts, we began to design plans for more efficient and effective communication. I have found that some tenants hate email and rarely check it (this was a huge eye-opener for me and something I took for granted), however they text all the time so they like to get their info that way. way. Other tenants were constantly on email and had their IM or Skype account on their computers at all times and preferred to hear from me via ‘IM’ or video chat. While there were still some who always preferred a phone call and the occasional face-to-face meeting. As I began to realize this, I realized that the important thing in all of this was finding a method that worked and what I might not have found to be effective (i.e. my assumption was that texting was too impersonal a method to provide spectacular service), it actually worked better for some.
While the options seem endless and overwhelming, the key is not to try to use them all all the time or just one of them all the time. What has worked for me is finding a few that fit certain purposes for contacting tenants and matching them with tenant preferences. For example, I would use a text message to remind a group of tenants about their upcoming monthly tour, but meet face-to-face with the same group to discuss something as important as re-leasing. At the end of the day, what’s important to realize is that technology isn’t so much changing “what” we do (we still need to communicate with our tenants), but rather “how” we do these things.
