Content is King...and your prospects can help create it!

Andrew Davis recently dazzled the Housing Leadership Summit in Chicago, according to Builder, saying homebuilders need to focus on developing "real strategies" for Social Media.  Too many people, he argued, are focused on the technology as compared to the message.  Today's hot product becomes tomorrow's CompuServe or AltaVista.  And, the message shouldn't just be about your product..it needs to convey value from the consumer's perspective.



Content creation: Who could ask for more than: Love this Open Kitchen?

 Davis hit upon a couple of points we've blogged about: implementing easy-to-use technology that's at  people's fingertips such as an iPhone for sending photos or video from a home the home shopper toured.  That's bringing technology to a point of contact.

Davis also suggests, "the real trick is to get customers to use SM to talk about product to friends and family."

So, it's not content for content's sake or technology because it's cool... it's making what you have interactive, engaging, and informative enough that your users/viewers/home shoppers will want to chat/Tweet/post about it from their perspective...and that creates its own desirable content!

We like to say that an interactive touchscreen system in a sales/leasing/information center will be all of those things -- interactive, engaging, informative.  And, there are lots of innovative ways to drive content creation from such a system: give home shoppers a "mark-up" feature so they can write on the screen or put Facebook into the app and let your prospects post "I'm looking at a new home here at XYZ; my kids really love the park around the corner; the soccer fields are brand new and fabulous!"  Who wouldn't want that marketing piece?

We've talked about "helicopter friends;" Davis mentions "prosumers" who like to distribute information about products.  The name doesn't matter...these tech-savvy folks are creating your content and driving others to your door!