An Open Source Pitch
Last week The Good had the fortune of being invited to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a charity event in conjunction with Street of Dreams Portland. This meant that we got to visit million dollar plus condos in Portland’s Pearl District while enjoying the luxury of an open bar at each stop. Don’t worry, it wasn’t all fun and games, as it was 100+ degrees outside that day and we were dressed in full black tie attire.
But while we were pretending to live a life of luxury that included an outdoor hot tub fifteen floors above downtown, we couldn’t help but think about how these new buildings are being marketed online. See, the whole reason Street of Dreams moved downtown this year was because there are several hundred unsold condos in the Pearl District. While this issue can be somewhat attributed to the economy, something tells me that is not the only reason. After all, there are still people buying homes and a lot of them are first-time home buyers who are perfect for a downtown condo setting, but they just don’t know it yet.
How would I know this? Simple: I’m one of those first-time home buyers. I recently bought a condo in a building featured on the tour (though sadly nowhere near the luxury of a penthouse unit). Although I’ve lived in the Pearl District since I moved to Portland five years ago, I consistently hear misconceptions of the neighborhood and the buildings within.
What needs to happen is an online conversation. With the support of the building’s development company, the (new) residents within these buildings should be having a conversation with those who are, or even better those who would have never of thought they would be, interested in buying a condo in downtown Portland. This is a fairly easy task – if only those selling the buildings would be open to the idea of social media.
The concept is quite simple, actually: get the new residents blogging about their daily lives in the Pearl on a building’s website. Not only will they tout the features of the newly built buildings, but also the LEED-certified, car-less and convenient lifestyle that comes with living downtown. And they will do it in their own words, not some realtor’s sales copy. It removes the barrier between the building’s current residents and potential buyers. This type of campaign would differentiate a building from its competition by actively engaging potential consumers rather than passively advertising to them.
To take the idea even further, a whole platform could be built around this concept by allowing residents to post to Facebook, Twitter and other social media destinations at the same time from one location.
In order to incentivize residents to post to the blog on a frequent basis, developers could make simple concessions such as reduction in HOA fees or the like. It doesn’t need to cost a lot of money, and the little money that is spent will make evangelists out of current residents which is a very high return on the investment.
Not only is the community/conversation aspect of the site a good idea, but the SEO effect would be pretty massive and almost immediate. A search for “Pearl District Condos” on Google (as seen here) returns only one of the four buildings on the Street of Dreams tour and that building is no higher than sixth on the list. That seems pretty ripe for the picking by all the other buildings with very little effort or cost.
Once the building is completely sold the website continues to live as a building resource for residents – a place for them to gather online to discuss building topics, post notices, etc.
So, we’re offering this concept up as an open source pitch, if you will. Take the idea and run with it. Make it your own, or don’t. Just start the conversation already.
