By Brian Barwig

The storage industry as a whole has been slow to adapt to changes in the way consumers research, analyze and reserve storage units. Nearly five years ago when StorageFinders.com first entered the industry many owners and operators didnt know about search-engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, Facebook, Twitter or blogging. Now SEO and PPC are well-known acronyms and social media and blogging are the norm. The Internet and the social-media explosion were slowly integrated into the industry. More owners are taking advantage of the ease and effectiveness of online marketing tactics.

Many self-storage companies are now using social-media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, and blogging on a regular basis, but why? Are your tweets and status updates really that important? If youre not a big company, an expert in the industry or someone who consistently posts relevant, high-quality articles how are you going to be found, followed and, more important, taken seriously? This blog is not meant to demean social media but is intended to provoke thought about the intention of the popular medium and its relevancy to the storage industry.

Why Tweet?

Thousands of storage companies have embraced Twitter and Facebook in recent years, but for what purpose? Social media is notoriously difficult to track in terms of conversions and return on investment, so how do you know if youre getting anything out of your campaign? Is there a method behind the madness of those constant 140 character Twitter posts and Facebook status updates or are companies simply doing it because social is the newest craze?

How often do you sit at your computer or look at your phone to check another companys updates and tweets or even update your own information. If you dont check other updates much, do you think others are checking yours? If you arent consistently updating your own information how do you expect to become respected and trusted in the industry?

The reality of the social situation is storage owners are busy running their businesses. If your company is not a large operation its unlikely you have an employee dedicated to social media. Do you have enough time to sit around looking through the constant influx of tweets and status updates you missed? Youre probably missing some good stuff or maybe not.

We all know the people and companies who use social media similar to spam advertising or post pointless updates. Do we really need to know youre going to lunch or that you rode your bike to work today because its sunny outside? People tend to get annoyed, pay little attention to those updates and may be skimming over other good information while trying to get past all the other stuff.

Good Examples

There are companies in the industry who do excellent work with social media. Self-storage operators Storage West and Extra Space Storage and online directory Sparefoot.com are three companies which come to mind immediately. Storage West does great work within the community where their facilities are located and have become the expert for all things happening in those communities. Cochrane Road Self Storage also does a great job on Twitter, getting companies and people involved in storage conversations. Extra Space has a great blog and consistently posts articles related to all things storage.

These companies are essentially using social media as a form of branding and are not worried, at the onset, of attracting more customers. But by being an authority on storage, theyll attract customers in the long run.

Do you really know your audience? Who are you tweeting and updating for? Is it for customers, other owners, the community? Have you reached out to them? This doesnt mean tweeting at them. This means actually reaching out and asking them what you can improve or asking others what you can do to get them to rent again. Social shouldnt be about tweeting 50% off the next months rent!! 20 times a day. It should be about generating revenue through solid marketing and great customer service as business has always been. Social media should be another facet of marketing and customer service because social media by itself will not help you.

The self-storage social-media experience should be used to connect with your peers in the storage industry, learn from them and share ideas together. The great thing about social media is all of this can happen in real time. Its important to be able to engage with relevant people in the industry or consumers in your city who are tweeting that they need storage now. Storage owners should attempt to use the tools available to engage in meaningful conversations instead of spewing spammy messages to others.

One example is the Twitter conversation (#StorChat) hosted by Kenny Pratt and Sparefoot. This is a unique way to make social media work for self-storage and is initiated by two leaders in the storage industry. Time will tell if it catches on and becomes a hit. Again, storage professionals are the ones who can help make it happen.

Aside from the everybodys doing it attitude, is there a real reason and relevancy to social media in the storage industry?

Brian Barwig is a marketing executive with StorageFinders.com, which provides location and contact information for self-storage facilities nationwide. SelfStorageFinders.com generates exposure for its facility clients by offering visibility on major search engines. For more information, e-mail [email protected] ; visit www.selfstoragefinders.com.

Just a couple of years ago, smartphone and Web-capable mobile devices generated quite the "wow" factor. Only a slim portion of the generation population owned them, and therefore businesses didn't see the need for mobile-specific products and marketing to reach their customers. But times have changed. According to Nielsen, 40 percent of cell phone users in the United States now carry smartphones, and as soon as next year, smartphones may cross the 50 percent line and overtake standard cell phones. The question for many self-storage operators and managers is, "Does this mean that next year more than half of my customers will be using smartphones? And if so, do I need to start reaching them through their smartphones with a mobile application dedicated my facility? Would tenants prefer to pay rent, ask questions and rent units this way?"

The topic is being discussed right now on Self-Storage Talk, the industry's largest online community and the official forum of Inside Self-Storage, in the thread "Would Your Tenants Use a Mobile App?" So far, there's no consensus as to whether it's a good idea to develop a customer-facing mobile app. That's not surprising, considering no two facilities have the same tenant and potential customer base. Some facilities cater to an tech-savvy, often affluent or young-professional base, while others reach a less-affluent, many times older demographic, which is less likely to be toting around smartphones. Another issue is whether any consumer, tech-savvy and mobile-friendly or not, would bother to carry out self-storage transactions on a mobile app. Self-storage is a very utilitarian expense, not generally leisureful, and many consumers aren't concerned with how they make their payments and conduct business, as long as it's convenient and doesn't trouble them too much. They're probably not too concerned with fancy bells and whistles. On the other hand, you could make the opposite argument with the same premise: Self-storage customers are most interested in convenience and ease of transaction; therefore, if a mobile app would allow them to take care of their business more quickly, why wouldn't you offer it to try to attract them?

SST member Barnett and facility colleagues are mulling paying for a customer app. Members w.walker and Michaeld have posed mobile alternatives, perhaps less expensive. W.walker is going to start printing quick-response codes on signs outside the facility so that a tenant could come to the facility, scan the QR code onto a smartphone with the built-in camera, and automatically be directed to a webpage where they can apy their bill or coduct other business. Michaeld adds that instead of focusing on a mobile app, facilities should be sure to have a "mobile-friendly" regular website or a mobile version of their website. This is important because consumers trying to access the facility website on a smartphone browser, such as Safari, will want to read a website that displays correctly and is formatted to fit a small screen. Developing and coding a mobile-friendly website or a mobile version of a website is quite a bit less expensive than paying a mobile app developer. (Appmuse.com quotes customers a starting price of $2,000, but bigger brands pay in the tens of thousands; app developers earn about $100 an hour.) Of course, that conclusion assumes that self-storage software providers won't soon include the development of a customer-facing mobile app with their cost of service. Some providers already have a mobile app designed for operators, but the next frontier could be customers. It can't hurt to call your management software provider and ask these questions.

Perhaps the best idea is to survey your customers (or a sampling of your customers) and ask, first, who uses smartphones as their primary cell phone and, second, who would prefer to access the facility website through an app instead of the typical browser. If an overwhelming number of customers seem to have an interest, and if you think you can appeal to a "techie" market by advertising your app, then it may be worth it. But my hunch is that the bulk of self-storage customers still don't expect this service, so you're probably OK to hold off on it for now.

Want to delve deeper into this discussion? Follow the thread and register for SST to post. Registration is free and can be done at http:///www.selfstoragetalk.com/register.php.