Multifamily Commercial Real Estate Social Media

The accessibility and reach of social media can be a great ally to reach your market in the apartment world. An integrated social media strategy will help you push leasing and communicate with residents, which equals: get new residents, and keep the ones you have! In this blog post, I will examine how social media can add value to the different facets of multifamily commercial real estate. 


SEO
How does your property gain visibility in an increasingly crowded digital sea?  Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Search Engine Optimization is the strategy of configuring your web content and connected channels to gain the highest possible rank on search engines. More and more, social media is playing an integral role in how likely a site is to show up in search results.

“It is”, as Kerry Kirby of the award-winning 365connect describes, “the ultimate content distribution channel.”  He says that “the most powerful impact of social media is its ability to generate new inbound links to you website."   

Content
As Kirby says, "Content that is linked back to your website, will not only drive more traffic, but also improve brand awareness and overall online visibility."  For the apartment market, creating relevant content for both prospective and current residents is important, but posting the same marketing message over and over will not work. Property managers need to deliver content that is related to more than just leasing. Some ideas are:

• Posting about community events in the area. 
• Creating content around property management tips and advice so that your company is indexed as the experts in Google and prospective residents' eyes.
• Household tips on cleaning, organizing, decorating for residents once they move in. 

Communication
Once you have the residents how do you keep them?  Communication. Social media can be an excellent tool in helping you communicate effectively with residents. When a resident complains online, or asks for something on the Facebook page, the rule of thumb is that they want a timely response, or they will quickly dive into negativity.  It is crucial to stay active and monitor your SM outlets.  It is the key to turning a complaint into something that makes their day.

 A key example of this, at a large property we manage, is a recent Facebook complaint that the lawn service was disturbing this resident early in the morning. The resident posted on our wall that 7:30am was to early and it was waking people up…and there were several exclamation points.  Had this stay on our wall for too long it would have been an open wound for our online leasing strategy.  Instead, we responded quickly, thanked the resident for letting us know that they contractors were there so early and took action to delay lawn work until a more reasonable time.  The negative “!!!”’s turned in to ‘you are awesome’ “!!!”s, and everybody won.

Add social media to your toolbox for multifamily commercial real estate. The accessibility and reach of social is an excellent ally to attract prospective residents and communicate with current residents.

Contributing Author:

Justin Larson
VP/Director of Sustainability
Block Multifamily Group
LinkedIn