Social Media Manifesto for Multifamily Marketing

The allure of social media is great, but it may not be appropriate for all properties. This is what we're using, hope you find it useful.

SOCIAL MEDIA MANIFESTO

1. Social Media Marketing is a viable marketing channel that engages the prospect and resident, and expands a community's digital footprint.

2. Establishing a Social Media Communications Policy reflecting the core values of the company, with a focus on encouraging professional interaction, will create measurable increase in traffic, branding and reputation.

3. Social Media Marketing has three primary functions: engaging prospects, increasing traffic to the website, and developing a more robust digital footprint.

4. Social Media Marketing should not be practiced in a vacuum. Proper online marketing should also include Search Marketing, Optimizations, and Email Marketing.

5. In our industry, it is appropriate to use offline marketing to support social media marketing efforts.

6. Facebook Pages should be set up and employed as follows:
* Pages should be informative, community focused and personal
* Participation should be encouraged by the user community
* Comments, negative and positive, should be monitored daily and responded to promptly
* Content should be fresh and regularly updated

7. Use of a twitter account is advised as follows:
* Twitter should be viewed as a channel to expand a community's digital footprint
* Twitter can be used/viewed as a lead generation tool for certain types of communities (student housing, in particular), with proper following techniques
* Should be used to deliver content, engage prospects-to-be, and direct traffic back to the community website
* Tweets should incorporate important keywords and phrases

8. Emerging social media platforms should be evaluated against these same criteria:
* does it engage the prospect and resident?
* does it expand the community's digital footprint?
* does it drive traffic back to the website or other marketing campaigns?

Very interesting list and I want to thank you for sharing. Your social media policy here seems to wrap itself around mainly marketing. Have you approached this topic from an overall company standpoint and how using these tools can connect the dots on all department levels within your management company? It is important to have a basic guideline but does your team feel the "freedom of movement" to just engage in daily conversation with these tools?

Once again thanks for sharing your manifesto and I look forward to hearing from you on how it has helped your company.

Hi Jere,

Thanks for sharing this. Does your company think of social media also as a way to engage, retain and extend the sense of community to current residents? It seems your focus is more for prospects and marketing. I think defining your goals is the first step to meeting your objectives so way to go!

-Jackie

Great info, thanks for sharing!

I would consider adding "facilitate relationship building with current residents, vendors and the community at large" as one of primary goals.

I would also consider adding something about maintaining compliance with Fair Housing while communicating via Social Media.

Really fantastic seeing this in writing; communities would be well served to mimic your example.

Jere,

Just read your provocative post yesterday. As we're currently thinking about our social media strategy, which is now isolated & not really connected to our overall marketing, I was wondering if I could contact you to see what you're doing -- and what seems to be working particularly well or not at all Could you please send me your phone and/or e-mail contact info? If you'd prefer to e-mail me, I'm [email protected].

Thank you,

Jeff Kole
ApartmentSavannah.com
912-232-3555
[email protected]

I work in the marketing/lead generation field and most of the customers I speak with at the community level and at the corporate level are utilizing social media effectively when it comes to retention. However, in terms of generating new prospects, social is still lagging well behind other digital marketing resources that are available, especially when weighing the amount of time spent using social against actual results.

Thanks for sharing this post. I myself have been working on a piece on how to use social media to market your company.

The comment I would like to respond to is where it says to respond to comments both negative and positively promptly. I agree that the timeliness aspect is crucial but my question is about the negative responspes.

How does everyone feel they should be handled? Should they be deleted? How far should we go to make sure that this unhappy camper is happy?

if you want to know where social media is heading than I seriously think you ought to read my blog:
www.multifamilyinsiders.com/home/multifa...usly-interested.html

see what is in store and figure out where your company stands in the litmus to know what to do next.

Re: Negative Reviews

Part of the reason people post negative reviews is that they are extremely frustrated and feel like they have no one else to go to. Perhaps they are shot down by your property manager and can't figure out how to get up the ladder to the next person. They have the need to "tell" on your company, and they can't find the proper person so they tell everyone.

I find that explaining everything you expect at lease signing as well as doing everything you can do at the time cuts down on negative reviews. If the resident knows what the policy is and UNDERSTANDS it, he is not shocked that he had to pay 3 month's rent to terminate his lease.

There are of course things out of our control like floods, tree frogs, and crime, to a certain extent. Responding to these reviews with what you are doing to fix things, ie. new drainage, white noise machine, and community watch will show the person reading the review that you are aware of the problem and are trying to fix it. You do have to say something, and as a consumer, just acknowledging the problem makes me feel like you are aware and will try to fix it. Asking for solutions is also good if it is a very specific problem, but in general, just say- we are aware and working for a solution.

And just to answer-we really did have people complain about tree frogs when our property first opened. They sang at night, and were too loud for this particular resident to sleep. I did buy him a white noise tape (ironically of nature noises). I don't know if it solved his problem, but the fact that I tried to help him made him happy.

I like the white noise tape you bought. I also think you raise interesting points about managing property management crises. User generated content about your community surfaces within 24 hours (actually within 16 hours of the time the issue hits) and if you dont have a PR program on how to manage such issues, then you will quickly see that you've fallen victim to the "Domino Effect" (Domino's massive PR crisis concerning an employee YouTube video). In addition to PR program on crisis mgt, you also need to have a corporate policy on employees participating through online space. Too much company sensitive info gets leaked that shouldn't. Teams need to be taught levels of disclosure as well as understand and practice company-approved social media. Thanks! Carmen

It's generally considered bad form to delete negative comments. Within the social media world, it reads as a company that doesn't care. One of the best way to deal with negative comments is to publicly acknowledge the person's problem and promise to follow up personally with them-- then do, either through email, in person, by phone or through fb messaging.

Hopefully, they will follow up to their comment. But if they don't, and you know they ended up happy, it's fine to follow up with a comment, such as "I'm so glad we were able to talk. I hope you're happy with the solution we worked out. Please let me know any additional ways I can be of service."

One thing to remember about negative comments is that if someone's unhappy enough to comment on your page, they're unhappy enough to comment about it off your page. The good thing about it being on your page is that you have an opportunity to address it. If they're just sending it out to their 400 Facebook friends, you never get a chance to try to repair the damage.