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In today’s digital landscape, social media isn’t just a fad; it’s a powerful marketing tool with the potential to transform your property management business. While some might be reluctant to fully embrace social media as a property management marketing strategy, fearing it’s a time-consuming burden, the reality is social media offers a wealth of benefits that can’t be ignored.
Like it or not, social media has become a powerful force in business. When well-managed, it offers several benefits, with the potential to significantly expand the reach and visibility of your multifamily properties.
However, problems arise when property owners and managers decide they can ignore social media, either half-heartedly giving it attention or relying solely on traditional property management marketing efforts, “the way we’ve always done it” attitudes, or past success with leasing and resident satisfaction.
After all, why change what’s seemingly not broken?
Yet, even for those with successful properties — who seem to be operating just fine in the status quo — ignoring social media is not the answer. Why?
Well, in this day and age, prospective renters typically start their research on social media. In fact, “an estimated 80% of apartment seekers look at social media before choosing their next rental,” so your social presence must impress. Because potential renters will engage on social platforms whether you do or not, participating is the best way to guide the conversation and ensure its value.
Jump to a Section
- 5 Benefits of Property Management Social Media
- Why Social Media Engagement is Valuable
- How Online Reputation Management Platforms Help
- The Risk of Doing Nothing
- 3 Steps to Property Management Social Media Success
- Level Up Your Property Social Media With Grace Hill
5 Benefits of Property Management Social Media
Don’t let social media scare you. It can be a powerful tool for multifamily property managers with clear and compelling benefits.
Here are some of the benefits of incorporating social media into your property management marketing strategy.
- Attract new residents: This is a big one. People increasingly use social media to find apartments, so having a solid presence can significantly boost your applicant pool. You can showcase your vacancies, amenities, and the surrounding area with attractive photos and videos.
- Improve resident communication: Property management social media creates a two-way street for communication with residents. You can share important announcements, answer questions, and even create a platform for residents to connect, fostering a sense of community and increasing resident satisfaction.
- Build brand awareness: A well-managed social media presence can help you develop your brand and make your property stand out from the competition. You can highlight what makes your community unique, whether that’s a pet-friendly atmosphere, a rooftop pool, or a commitment to sustainability.
- Cost-effective marketing: Unlike traditional advertising methods, social media marketing is a relatively inexpensive way to reach a large audience. You can create a free profile on most platforms and promote your listings organically. Additionally, you can invest in targeted ads and reputation management platforms. In fact, properties that invest in actively managing their digital reputation see a surge in inquiries, onsite traffic, and lease conversions, and 94% of local companies that invest in reputation management tools see cost recovery through ROI.
- Increase resident retention: Happy residents are more likely to renew their leases. Using social media to build relationships with residents and address their concerns promptly can help create a more positive living environment that encourages residents to stay.
Why Social Media Engagement is Valuable
Social media is a valuable tool to help people learn more about your property, and posting on social media should definitely be one element of your strategy. However, responding to social media comments and reviews is what moves the needle to elevate your brand.
Optimizing the value of social media engagement requires a plan for consistent and targeted social media activity. In doing so, you increase your brand awareness and become a “top-of-mind” choice for potential residents.
Social media offers many benefits for multifamily property managers looking to boost engagement with residents and attract potential renters. Regularly posting engaging content increases your property’s visibility online.
And while an intentional and managed property management social media strategy helps build community and a positive online presence, it also provides important intel about how your property is perceived and talked about online.
Social media “listening” allows you to gauge resident sentiment and identify areas for improvement. You can see what residents are talking about, gather feedback on events or amenities, and use this information to tailor your approach and inform your responses.
Never miss an opportunity to engage and spot problems before they go viral by listening and responding to social chatter.
Consider this: Just as you wouldn’t book a vacation or choose a restaurant without first checking the internet, your future residents are doing the same with your property. They are forming opinions based on what they find online. Will what they find — or don’t find — make that opinion positive or negative? In many ways, the choice is yours.
Overall, social media is a powerful tool for engagement in the multifamily property management industry. By using it effectively, you can build stronger relationships with residents, attract new renters, and create a thriving community at your property that others desire to join.
But here’s where things can get tricky. Although engaging on social media is a worthwhile practice, it can be overwhelming for multifamily organizations that try to manage their online presence without an effective industry-specific solution.
How Online Reputation Management Platforms Help
With so many social posting options, staying on top of reviews across multiple sites and social platforms is practically a full-time job! So while it’s necessary to be engaged and proactive with a social strategy, it’s an area that has really eclipsed what property management companies can handle manually.
Because of this, online reputation management (ORM) tools can save you and your employees valuable time and effort, rescuing you from trying to do all the things.
So, what is Online Reputation Management? ORM is all about shaping how people perceive your business online. It involves monitoring what’s being said about your company, addressing negative reviews, and promoting positive content. By strategically managing your online presence, you build trust with potential customers and safeguard your brand’s reputation.
As Warren Buffett once said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”
Proactive reputation management isn’t just about reacting to risks; it’s about creating strategies that stay ahead of them. The truth is it can be difficult to get a consolidated view, and property managers often waste valuable time accessing multiple review sources with separate logins, data sets, and reporting options.
One of the things that makes Grace Hill’s ORM solution so popular is that it uses AI-powered analytics and reports to unveil key metrics. This gives property managers a clear picture of location activity, top-performing content, trending hashtags, and follower growth—all in one central dashboard.
Investing in reputation management isn’t just about damage control; it’s about driving traffic, igniting interest, and ensuring your property stands out from the digital crowd.
The Risk of Doing Nothing
While doing nothing is an option, consider the risks*:
- Every unanswered online review is an unaddressed complaint that deters potential residents.
- 79% of renters report that reviews influenced their leasing decisions.
- 71% of those who research reviews won’t visit a property if the online reviews aren’t stellar.
- Turning away prospects and residents due to negative reviews, even if unknowingly, impacts turnover rates and ROI.
In the digital age, silence isn’t golden — it’s a deafening misstep. And whether you are engaged in social media or not, your residents are writing about your property online. You could be blissfully unaware of a scathing review on a niche forum, or worse, “go viral” for all the wrong reasons. Is pulling back from property management social media worth it? You know the answer is “no,” but what are you doing to mitigate the risk?
Don’t let your property suffer when robust and viable solutions are proven to help. Being reactive rather than proactive will leave you vulnerable to reputation damage and frustrated by inefficiency.
3 Steps to Property Management Social Media Success
We won’t sugarcoat it; social media is time-consuming, so you MUST have a plan. It requires a dedicated team and strategy. Because multifamily property teams are often already stretched thin, having an ORM solution is suggested, as it saves valuable time and resources.
After all, shouldn’t your onsite teams be doing the important work you hired them to do? Grace Hill’s reputation management solution is the ONLY one in the industry focused on multifamily, and it helps you easily monitor and publish to your social accounts across Facebook, X, Instagram, and Google (Q&A) from a single dashboard.
Regardless of the path you choose, here are three simple steps to property management social media success:
1. Choose Your Platforms Selectively
The first step to creating a social presence is choosing the platforms you’ll engage on. Be deliberate. Don’t try to cover them all. Even major brands and large organizations can’t do that well. Facebook is a good place to start.
Letting potential renters find out more about you is incredibly important. You might also find value in using Instagram to show off your community with images. Choose your platforms carefully and don’t overcommit; it’s more important to post regularly on a limited number of platforms than to post sporadically on a lot of them.
One benefit of using an ORM solution is that it simplifies your content publishing using calendars, bulk scheduling tools, and approvals to maximize engagement with prospects and residents.
2. Develop a Manageable Posting Schedule
Figure out when you can devote manageable chunks of time to your social strategy and then commit to that schedule. For example, if you decide to do two posts a week on Facebook, block out time on those days and commit to creating and sharing during that time.
In the beginning, you’re building your audience, so your content doesn’t have to be perfect, just consistent. You should try new messages and new types of content to see what resonates with people.
3. Research New Content Ideas
You can find ideas for content in various places, but start by sharing what you think is interesting about your property. Maybe that’s snapshots of things happening around your community or a feature about your front desk person.
Or perhaps it’s a “did you know” tidbit. For example: Did you know we have happy hours every Friday in our lobby? The content you create and share doesn’t have to be anything big or significant. Get creative and see what works.
When you use Grace Hill’s ORM solution, you have access to AI features that not only help you publish but also generate content ideas. It can craft engaging, personalized social content to ensure you never miss an opportunity to connect with your community while freeing your team to focus on strategic initiatives.
Above all, don’t be afraid to try new things. Social media is constantly evolving. Check your feed to see what people are liking and interacting with, and incorporate elements from those things that you see people engaging with.
Level Up Your Property Management Social Media With Grace Hill
Social media is part of a property management marketing strategy, but it is just one element of what should be a comprehensive plan. Quality training, policies, and reputation management solutions go hand in hand.
The best way to ensure your property management social media is engaging and consistent across properties is to implement policies and training that help align teams for better customer communication.
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- Training can ensure your team is made aware of legal and ethical considerations related to social media. Property managers who don’t fully understand the nuances around topics such as Fair Housing can put your property at significant financial risk.
- Policies, when well-written and industry-specific, can help regulate employee social media usage to ensure consistent brand standards and mitigate risk online.
- Reputation Management provides a consolidated solution tailor-made for multifamily that lets your teams get back to the business of sales and customer service. Blind spots in your online reputation are dangerous, but an ORM solution provides a proven, cost-effective method for achieving social media success.
Ready to control your property management social media so it doesn’t control you? Grace Hill is here with solutions that help.
