30 Lines

12/23/2024

Today is a great day to check that your holiday office hours are updated.

Lots of folks are on different schedules this week. Make it easy for residents and prospects to know when they’ll be able to reach you.

**Clients**: Send your hours to your Account Manager or our Support team, and we’ll handle everything for you.

Happy Holidays!

09/18/2024

What’s the best way to engage your audience on social? Make them part of the tour!

We love this creative post by our friends at The Grafton that breaks the fourth wall. Nicely done, team!

We talked with their Property Manager, Shelbie — The Grafton is a bustling new lease-up, but she carves out time each week for the whole team to get involved with their content creation. She uses social media as a way for the team to decompress and have fun, and they create some great content as a result.

Give them a follow on IG at . Awesome job, team!

09/17/2024

One of the hazards of being in business in 2024: Endless cold calls and emails from “helpful” firms who ran some report that shows that “there’s some issue with your website preventing it from ranking in Google.”

They run a free “performance” audit, point out all the “deficiencies,” and promise to help you “get to page one of Google.”

Sound familiar? We probably get 2-5 of these every day.

Well, besides being spammy, they’re also just *wrong.*

And Google is finally publicly calling them out, openly questioning the validity of suggestions made by automated “SEO audit report” tools. Many of the recommendations have little to no impact on SEO.

If anyone would know, it’s the folks who write the rules.

These audit tools and the companies hawking them often identify outdated practices that haven’t been relevant for two, five, sometimes twenty years! Those factors don’t impact how Google ranks websites today (and some never did) because Google has long moved beyond singular signals.

*Anyone* who’s pitching you on SEO — including us — has no idea what your current SEO strategy is or how much traffic you might be getting from organic searches (or from Google Business, which is just as important for a local business).

Google doesn’t teach us how to do SEO — they only share the general outlines of what they expect. They highlight the best practices for optimizing a site so that their search engine can understand your page and easily index your content. They share ways to make your site more useful for your visitors.

Some people will try to make it more complex and technical than it needs to be, which is often the case with “audit” reports like this.

At its core, SEO is simple: Be the best answer to the customer’s questions.

That said, SEO is getting more fragmented. Being the best answer is more important than ever, particularly in an industry like multifamily that isn’t as brand-focused. And the #1 opportunity to increase your reach is almost always filling the content gaps that help to answer more of those customer questions.

It’s up to us as marketers to understand what our customers are asking and how to be the best answer to those searches.

No automated website report is going to tell you that.

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Ready to drive more qualified traffic through organic searches? Connect with our team at 30 Lines — we’ll help you take a deep dive to understand how to create the right kind of websites and content that today’s customer expects. Let’s talk!

Google questions the validity of specific SEO audit suggestions made by automated tools

04/16/2024

Zero-click results. AI chatbots. Google’s search generative experience. Visual search through social media.

They’ve all changed the way that consumers gather information and learn about your brand.

All of these tools and algorithms rely on content to determine what answers to generate for that next customer.

SEO is evolving quickly. And content that tells your story and moves the customer closer to making a purchase is more important than ever.

Want to help more customers discover and buy from you? Be the best answer. Create the content that’s the clear answer to their questions.

04/01/2024

Prospects aren't looking at your community in a vacuum. They're comparing you. They're weighing their options.

Acknowledging that is an opportunity. It's a chance to clearly make your case for why you're the right place to call home.

A perfect example: "Here's how we stack up against the competition."

This exact post went live pre-pandemic ... and it still ranks incredibly well for in-market shoppers. We regularly see it driving conversions for this property.

One piece of content that has been educating customers and driving leads *for nearly five years.*

In B2B and software selling, you'll often see direct product comparisons and "battle card" tables with lots of green checks and red Xs to show off how feature sets balance out.

This kind of content works, because it helps the customer narrow their options and decide whether it's worth taking action.

Yet it's one that we don't see nearly enough in multifamily.

As you think about content for your customers, remember they're not looking at your brand alone.

They're comparing you to countless other choices.

Lean into that. Acknowledge it. Talk to your prospect with the respect they deserve and help them make an educated decision. And above all, show them *why* you're the obvious choice.

Maybe you're thinking about creating content to "rank" in AI chatbots or traditional search engines.

Or maybe you're just focused on helping your customers find the answers to their questions. (Hint: Solving for the latter will automatically help you show up more often in both generative AI and search.)

Either way, put yourself in the mind of the customer.

Think about how to be as helpful as possible at every step of the process ... especially early on when they're overwhelmed with choices.

Of all the apartments in Louisville, Kentucky, you want to live in the best rated. Check out Venterra's Bradford Mills, a top-ranked community.

01/08/2024

New laws are changing the requirements for apartment marketers to disclose the true cost of your homes. It's a massive opportunity to build trust with prospective renters.

Here's how to make disclosures easy ... and how to use price transparency to educate your customer, while also highlighting the value you bring to the table.

You've been there before. You’re online, excited about purchasing a concert ticket or book a vacation rental.

10/16/2023

When the rocket scientists at NASA set out to redesign their website, they evaluated over 100 different website platforms. After over a year of evaluation, they landed on WordPress – *the same solution* we use to power our game-changing RentPress multifamily websites.

Why did they choose WordPress?

* Incredible access to resources for support, new features, and increased flexibility

* A mature ecosystem of add-ons (plugins) that help with SEO, accessibility, website performance, and more

* Ease of use for internal users at every level of experience.

Maybe you've heard myths like "WordPress is just for blogs" or "it's not secure." NASA put in 18 months of due diligence and found these myths simply weren't true.

Would you rather build your marketing websites on the system your accounting software gives you ... or would you prefer to go with the same solution chosen by rocket scientists (along with 40% of the rest of the Internet)?

Multifamily leaders like BH, Venterra, RPM Living, Fetch Package, Highmark Residential, WC Smith, and many more all know what NASA knows – WordPress is simply one of the best ways to build a website, period.

NASA has removed the beta label from the new nasa.gov website, which was launched on WordPress, replacing Drupal as the CMS. After a lengthy process, which required 18 months of active web developm…

03/17/2023

Do you want to learn more about how to successfully market your property before the busy leasing season?

We sat down with Peter Lohmann and Russell Lowery at The Owner Occupied podcast to discuss all things digital marketing. We get into successfully marketing a property, the use of social media, the power of branding, and the capabilities of automation software, such as RentPress. Take a look:

by Sadie YoungMar 14, 2023Apartment Marketing, Blog, RentPress, Social Media

03/03/2023

Do you know what your SEO spend is doing for you? Search Engine Optimization doesn’t have to be a mystery. Find out exactly what you’re paying for in our latest blog: https://bit.ly/3ZkK51O

03/01/2023

🎶 ABC ... it's here for multifamily 🎶 (sung in your best Jackson 5 voice)

Apple recently launched Business Connect (ABC) – think of it as their answer to Google Business Profiles.

ABC has big implications for multifamily and local SEO. Our team breaks it down and shares what you need to know about this new program (and how to recruit help if you need it).

Learn more about Apple’s new tool - Apple Business Connect - and how to implement it.

02/27/2023

"Attribution is a mirage, it's not real."

Our own Mike Whaling sits down with Hyro to talk multifamily marketing – both myths and reality. One of our favorite topics right now: building a seamless, personalized online ==> offline experience.

Hit the play button now for a quick, fun conversation. Thanks for having us, Hyro

08/31/2022

Website designers and agencies should be able to focus on designing beautiful online experiences that showcase the best your community has to offer.

They *shouldn't* have to worry about also figuring out integrations with pricing feeds, CRMs, and everything else in your expanding tech stack.

That's why we built RentPress – it's the full digital marketing platform that takes care of the multifamily tech, so your website partner can focus on building beautiful websites. Oh, and you'll have new SEO and marketing capabilities that are simply unrivaled in the market today, too.

Shopping for new websites for your properties or your corporate portfolio? Share RentPress with your web design partner ... you'll both be happy you did.

Build your apartment website with RentPress – the easiest way to build a fully-featured marketing website for your community.