People share, read and generally engage more with any type of content when it’s surfaced through friends & people they know and trust! – Malorie Lucich – Facebook Spokesperson
Know and Trust
When it comes to using social media to market apartments, I think we are still in the early miles of a endless endurance pace across the deserts of Africa. Some in the business have caught the fact that business is transacted by great story tellers. And, it is incumbent upon us, on the selling end, to give exceptional reasons for our buying constituents to echo the very stories we tell them when we sell our goods and services.
Park Clayton Apartments
Park Clayton rests just about a mile from Washington University in Saint Louis. The apartment community is but 104 units and boasts zero meaningful amenities outside of location. Even that has it’s challenges as it relates to getting to the university. It sits on the opposite side of a major freeway that disects its way to downtown Saint Louis. Yet we have Likers and we have occupancy.
Our Mills Branded Park Clayton Specific Facebook site boasts just over 300 likes. They are made up of current residents, former residents, industry professionals from in and out of Saint Louis and employees of Mills. Within in the diverse mix of people is a group that hails from the Far East and they love Park Clayton. They love the Luaus, they love the open houses to show off our upgraded units, they love the annual St. Patrick’s Parade that makes its way down the street in front of the building and they love Reb’s dump joke Friday. And they love to share.
Share to Rent
About a year ago Teresa, the Property Manager, used Facebook to give away some goodies and the response was over the top. One resident shared with over 100 of his friends in order to stand out in his quest to receive the prize. He shared the story with his friends in the Far East and they shared back. And, they shared back in a big way. You see, this young man had friends who were in wait to come to the states. More specifically in wait to attend Washington University in Saint Louis. And, you better believe they leased at Park Clayton. All because we told some stories that people could share.
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An excellent example Mike, thank you for “sharing”. A struggle that I see in both our own portfolio and that of clients is that even when “management” eases the reins of approval on Facebook and or other social media channels usage, getting the site folks to actually use it is also a big hurdle to overcome.
Your sharing of like success stories, and ones that didn’t work so well will ease the anxiety of the folks on the ground whom we need to rely on to tell and share the stories
You are 100% right. We have 53 FB pages, each branded to the specific community they represent, and the initiation by the accountable parties is all across the board. Some do it well – like Teresa and her team. And, others – nothing. That is despite our best efforts in the way of FB training and follow up summits where we bring in the champions to brainstorm.
That said, one specific struggle we have is turnover. When the champion leaves and no one fills the gap, the pages go ghost town. It’s things like that that we have to continually adjust for. But on a whole, it is still all over the board.
It goes to something you have blogged about in the past – if we add, we must take away.
Hope your fourth rocks!
I absolutely love this story!
I love this story! And I’m enjoying your blog that I just stumbled upon today. You have a good feel on the pulse of how people connect – by values and experience. I’m an organic farmer when I’m off-the-clock, but during the day, I’m accounts manager for a property management software company. Both feed me for different reasons. Tapping into what that source is for others is what connects us, beyond the obvious ties. Kudos!
J
Thank you for taking the time to pen some feedback! Love that last sentence –
Hope your weekend is rest filled and packed with fun.
Take care and hope to see you back here soon.
M