Social Media 101 for The Self Storage Operator: An Introduction

I talk with a lot Self Storage Owners and Operators, either through e-mails or over the phone. Some have been in the business for decades, others have only been operators for only a couple of years , and without fail, most of the conversations I have with Owner/Operators lead to sales and marketing i.e., How Do I Fill More Units? How Do I Increase Profitability and How Can I Do This By Utilizing Social Media?

For most Owner/Operators, their biggest struggle isn’t making their facility better, but how to generate word of mouth and expand their core of customers.

But  generating great word of mouth can be a huge pain in the butt.

At one time, creating great word of mouth was a bit easier, as long as you had strong curb appeal and an add in the yellow pages you were typically guaranteed a 65% occupancy rate or better. All of this, of course, changed with widespread use of the Internet. Yes, curb appeal and strong customer service were still your bread and butter, but more and more, customers were turning to the Internet to find a facility and people weren’t paying attention to the yellow pages or flyer campaigns or even discounted rentals. They were going to Internet search engines and, yes, they were turning to social media sites such as Facebook and Linkedin.

Of course, owners and operators in turn charged to the Internet, making sure that they had websites that were just as attractive as their facilities and they were creating accounts on the top three social media sites: Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin.

The major issue is, now that these facilities were on the major social networking sites, what to do with them? How do you generate new customers and income from these sites?

Most owners and operators were stumped. Sure, they were networking with other owners and operators all across the country, but they weren't attracting new customers and more often than not, facility owners and managers would become frustrated with social media and lack of lead conversion and they would allow their accounts to lay fallow or they would simply cancel them and solely depending on their facilities website to generate traffic.Which is fine, but in my opinion, most owners and operators are missing a huge area of opportunity.

I'll be the first to admit that I've only been in the self storage industry for five months now, but in those five months, I've spent 97% of my days learning the online behaviors of owners and operators and what I've learned is that most facility operators are utilizing social media incorrectly.

So as a way to help owners and operators create successful social media campaigns, I've decided to launch a series of weekly blog posts covering the DOs and DON'Ts of Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin for self storage owners and operators, as well as cover other forms of Social Media that may give you an edge over the competition.

Also, through the course of these posts, I would like to encourage you to ask questions through the comments section of the blog or you can contact me directly via e-mail at: krawson@minico.com

I hope you enjoy the posts and I'll see you next week with my first post on the DOs and DON'Ts of Facebook.