Oh Craig, you & your $#@% List!

It seems that no matter where I turn, the topic of Craigslist (CL) is rearing its head. Questions are forever flying - "Do you post apartments for rent?", "How many times a day do you post?", "Do you use auto-posting software or tracking software?", "Why is it working so well for leads?". The conversations seem endless. CL has become quite a Juggernaut. There seems to be a segment of the apartment rental market that exclusively uses Craigslist to find their new home rather than using ILS's or Management corporate websites sites.

Why do apartment hunters seem to be flocking to CL over ILS's? They appear to be afraid to be "sold" on a place to live. An assumption is being made that the large management companies will dish out a bill of goods (usually on "pay sites") that might or might not be true. Individuals want to find out the "real deal", and currently CL is associated with a more grass roots, "reject the man" way of searching for products - housing included. Many apartment hunters feel they have a better chance of getting a great deal on CL. I think ultimately what the CL model teaches us is that the consumer wants to have a more intimate and specific conversation when looking for housing. This apartment searcher doesn't want to be sold on the overall apartment community and the varying floorplans. They want to talk about THEIR floor plan specifically and how the community will work for THEIR way of life.

In addition to Craigslist, the evolution of sites such as RentWiki really confirm the need for community feed back and more intimate details on specific locations and apartment homes. Now that the large Management companies are super aware of CL success in generating leads, they are posting apartment ads at a rapid rate. Management companies (myself included) are flooding the grass roots directory with our corporate advertisements. We seem to be collectively breaking the toy that is Craigslist! We are slowing morphing CL into an apartment listing site, similar to any of the ILS site we pay to participate on. At the end of the day, it seem like the general public needs to find our information in many arenas. We need to have a great Craigslist ad, informative community website, robust ILS ads and an approachable corporate website. Phew, that is a lot of work!! As always, we need to keep our eyes on the horizon for the next best thing because I'm certain it is coming soon.

Overworked or Impatient

I recently watched a news brief highlighting certain behavioral patterns among the French culture. This survey stated that on average, the French (in France, not here) tend to sleep 9 hours a night and dine for a minimum of 2 hours a day. This adds up to 11 hours a day of "me" time. I can't remember the last time I slept 9 hours in a row....I'm lucky to have a combined total of 9 hours in a two day time period. As for relaxing enough to sit and have two hour meals.....the French must not have to eat at their desk while multitasking. Most internal documents received from colleagues now-a-days have some sort of coffee ring or food spill on the edge highlighting the fact that I am not alone in the "eat as you work" crowd. I feel envious of the French - I too want to sleep a full night and dine with friends for hours. How do we get there? What would it take for our society to shift gears so dramatically and prioritize this "me" time over "corporate" time? Are we an overworked society or do we not truly understand the addage of "work smart, not hard" and the French have it figured out? Or are the French just lazy........LOL.......

Is Social Networking making us anti-social?

Don't think I don't realize the irony of the medium I chose to discuss this topic....I am fully entrenched in the social networking world. I have accounts on Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter and now Blogger. All these ways to communicate are available without ever leaving the comforts of my recliner.

Firstly I believe Social Networking rocks! These sites allow us to communicate with the entire country, even the entire world. We now have access to people and information that we normally would never have the opportunity to be exposed to or have a dialog with. We have the ability to fire off statements, comments and conjecture anytime of day, to anyone from our computer, laptop, cell phone or PDA. Real time ranting! We also have the ability to stay hidden behind our computer screen and comment back to incoming information only when we feel so inspired. If incoming data is not palatable, we simply delete or ignore it. This is where I think the slippery slope to anti-social behavior begins.......

Communication is made of up word choice and sentence structure as well as facial expressions, body language and intonation. The latter three items are often lost in the social networking medium. Communication requires that all parties have an area of communicative commonality. There are auditory means, such as speaking, singing and sometimes tone of voice, and nonverbal, physical means, such as body language, sign language, paralanguage, touch, eye contact, by using writing. There are three major parts in human face to face communication which are body language, voice tonality, and words.

According to research regarding communication (Mehrabian and Ferris. "Inference of Attitude from Nonverbal Communication in Two Channels". ):
55% of impact is determined by body language--postures, gestures, and eye contact,
38% by the tone of voice, and
7% by the content or the words used in the communication process.

Given the fact that such a small % of communication sits with the actual words used, the social networking model is potentially missing many elements of effective communication. Although using the social networking sites can be time saving and enlightening, we need to make every effort to continue creating real face-to-face conversations in our lives otherwise our social skills will begin to deteriorate. Joking with someone I met recently at a seminar, we exchanged twitter account information so we could become "besties" online and never have to see each other again. A joke for sure, but the reality of this statement is scary......