.png?width=52&height=40&name=am-branding-logo%20(1).png "am-branding-logo (1)"){kind=small}
Blogging is easily one of the best ways to get started with content marketing.
All it takes is an idea, and time to sit down and write.
Unfortunately, the idea stage is where a lot of multifamily marketing teams get stuck.
The inability to come up with new topics on a consistent basis stops many multifamily apartment communities from even getting started with blogging. The ones that do start eventually slow down or stop after a few months because they’ve run out of ideas.
Today, we’re going to show you seven types of blog posts that will give you a steady stream of content, cure your writer’s block, and best of all, attract people actively looking for apartments in your area!
You might want to bookmark this post so you can come back to it when you need blog topic ideas.
Who doesn’t love a good list article (listicle)? They’re fairly easy to write, people love to read them and they generate most social media shares. Here’s a look at the most socially shared posts on the largest blog in the world, The Huffington Post, over the past 12 months. Notice how three of the top five are all lists!
This specific type of listicle is great because it helps with your local SEO, and targets people within your immediate area. And best of all, you could come up with a seemingly endless number of blog posts.
You can also focus on services that someone new to the area would search for, like the moving company example above, or a list of the best companies to work for in the area.
Although listicles are a bit easier to write than other types of posts, that doesn’t mean each one you write will be a home run. In order to make a great listicle, keep these tips in mind:
After you’ve finished your post, reach out to all of the businesses you mention and let them know they made the list and ask them to share it with their audience. Some of the businesses will do a blog post and link to your article (giving you a great backlink!). Others will at least share it on social media. Either way, you’re getting more exposure for your content and your company.
This is another great post that’s going to help optimize your site for local searches, and target people interested in moving to your city.
Searcher intent is an important part of inbound marketing and SEO, yet so many multifamily companies ignore it when it comes to blogging. The key to this particular post is the phrase “living in [your city]”. This phrase has a great search volume for most cities, especially larger ones.
If you’re able to have the top ranking article for that phrase in your city, you’ll be able to get targeted leads.
Those are just the broader terms. With proper keyword research and optimization, you’ll also be able to target related phrases within the same article.
This post should follow the format of an “ultimate guide” style article. The key to a good ultimate guide post is to make it extremely detailed, informative and leave no stone unturned. You want your article to be the go-to resource for people wondering what it’s like to live in your city or neighborhood.
Start by doing a google search for “living in [your city]” and make a list of the articles ranking on the first page. Take note of what they’re doing particularly well, and also what they’re missing. Then create something even better.
Some topics you’ll want to explain within your post are:
After you’ve published the post, the next step is to promote it. We’ll go more in depth on content promotion in another post, but two of the first steps you should take will are:
A bonus with this article is it creates opportunities for spin-offs. For instance, you could do an entire article about the cost of living in the area, and link to it from your ultimate guide post.
Since these posts require a good amount of time, you can consider hiring an experienced blogging team to do it for you (like us).
Create a weekly or monthly post that lets locals know about events going on in the area. People are always looking for things to do throughout the week, especially on the weekend. Make your blog the top resource to find out what’s coming up this week in your city.
The challenge with these posts is they take a good deal of research (to find events) and you have to create them on a consistent basis in order to keep people coming back. If you post once, and don’t do another one for five months, it won’t be as effective.
In order to help make it easier, use Google Calendar or another app to keep track of local events as you hear about them. When it’s time to write your post, all you have to do is check your calendar! Be careful though. You don’t want to go too off-track and turn your multifamily blog into a local news site.
You can also use this post to send out a weekly newsletter to current renters. Also, if you’re hosting any events, you should include those too!
Have you ever been embarrassed to ask a question that seems “dumb” to you? So instead, you head to Google to find the answer. This is the exact situation a lot of people find themselves in when they’re about to move to a new area.
These how to posts are great for targeting long tail keywords that aren’t as competitive since they’re searched less.
For example, the phrase “how to hail a cab in Chicago” has an average search volume of 30, and the phrase “how to ride the metro in dc” has 50. But both are very targeted and easier to rank for. You could also write about how to get to different landmarks or where to park if you’re in a city/downtown area.
Think of some of the different challenges someone new to your area might face, then offer them a solution in a blog post.
This is the best way to have an endless stream of blog posts. These articles won’t always be locally focused like the other types of content we’ve gone over so far, but they’ll give you an excellent opportunity to earn backlinks, which improves your SEO.
The topics you write about could include:
Think of all the questions and challenges renters have, and create blog posts for them. This is the exact formula real estate listing company Trulia has been using to pull in prospects, and they’re having tremendous success.
The blog has brought Trulia over 11,500 backlinks.
And over 200,000 social media shares in just the past year, averaging nearly 300 shares per post.
The reason these posts are so popular is because they help people, while still being entertaining and engaging. The two posts on Trulia’s blog with the most social media shares are about how to choose paint colors for small rooms and how to clean anything in your house!
This blog post will focus on landmarks around your area. There’s more than likely a few historic or famous buildings, statues and other highlights in your city that you could write about. Create a series of blog posts explaining the history and significance of different destinations.
People visiting from out of town or thinking of moving to the area will do research to learn the history and culture of the area. Here’s the search volume for some points of interest in Detroit.
A lot of this traffic will be tourists, but some will be potential leads. Also, mentioning nearby points of interest shows Google and other search engines that your company is relevant for local searches, which is vital for SEO.
An infographic is one of the best types of content you can create for content marketing. For one, they’re rare in the multifamily industry, so it’ll give your blog a great chance to stand out. Also, infographics are 30X more likely to be read than text articles.
Here are some ideas for infographics:
There are endless possibilities. If you’re not great with photoshop, there are free options like Canva or Piktochart that make it easy to create professional-looking infographics.
Hopefully that gave you the cure you needed for your writer’s block. Start putting these seven proven blogging formulas to use to attract new renters, improve your SEO and taken your content marketing to the next level.
