Building Your Facebook Presence: Step-by-Step
2011-09-27 03:44pm
Author: Rentping Staff
Topic: Web Engagement
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So, what is the whole point of having your apartment community on Facebook? To put it simply, social media like Facebook leads to quality interaction. Quality interaction is what builds relationships. It is made up of conversations, handshakes, little favors, friendly greetings and smiles. It is what good property managers do to keep their residents happy, engaged and ready at a moment's notice to recommend your community to anyone they know.
Facebook is an opportunity to engage in this type of quality interaction. It's not about getting fans and blasting promotion news about rate specials or move-in deals. If you try to use Facebook as a platform you will fail. You need to use Facebook more like a ping-pong table. What does that look like? How do you do that? At RentPing, we take a three stage approach. It looks like this:
Stage 1: Build your page. A boring Facebook page is just as bad as a boring website. You want people to be interested enough to stay on the page long enough to comment, share or interact with others. That means you need content. Photos, Videos, Interesting Posts - content is what will keep people coming back to see more, do more and talk more. We can dramatically expedite this process for you at RentPing - just ask.
Stage 2: Build your resident connections. So you have a good looking page, and you have been posting quality, original and genuine content for a couple weeks. Now what? Now you start building your fan-base in the most important place: your existing residents. Why them? They should be your biggest fans! More than likely you have those residents who really like you. You see them regularly and talk with them every time they come into the office to pay rent, pick up a package, or ask a question. Do they 'like' you on Facebook? They should. Also, they will be the most vocal on your page, which builds your online reputation faster than anything you could do by yourself.
Additionally, consider putting up posters at the mailbox, fitness center, office door or a 'like us' paragraph in your newsletter. Offer candy to the first 50 residents who like the page. Sponsor contests through your Facebook page for your residents.
A successful completion of stage two looks like this:
- The property manager, leasing agent or person on property responsible for social media is posting as close to daily as possible
- Residents are commenting on these posts positively, and the page is utilized primarily as a resident interaction tool. There should be a strong focus on manager-resident interaction.
It doesn't matter how many fans the property has at this stage - or any stage for that matter. The focus is on quality interaction - not daily ad blasts.
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Stage 3: Engage the outside world. Encourage your residents to share your page with their friends. Ask local or nearby businesses if you can put a 'like us on Facebook' flyer on their posting wall, with a QR Code on it of course! Partner with these local businesses - offer to let them post on your wall (which your loyal, happy residents check regularly) in exchange for promoting your page. It is a win-win, as long as you impress upon that partner the importance of quality posts, not ad blasts.
Non-residents will start coming across your page more and more. Employees of your partner businesses, customers of those partner businesses and fans of those local businesses will start to be exposed to your page. On your page they will see a vibrant community, with happy residents who are regularly engaged by their property manager in a positive manner. Once those new non-resident fans start looking at all of your pictures, videos and posts they will start to see the grass is greener on your side of the fence. Once they start asking questions about floor plans, amenities, pets, availability, price, specials, or proximity to local points of interest - you know you have a hot lead that cost you absolutely nothing to obtain other than the time you spent to make your existing residents happy.
A lot of people worry that by marketing Facebook pages to residents you open up a platform for those residents to gripe and complain incessantly and make you look bad. For this reason, they don't allow their properties to have pages, or disable wall comments, or worse: only let their property mangers post info about new specials. This behavior is only counter-productive. Every complaint is an opportunity. For example, if David posts on your wall, "the pool is never clean, why doesn't anybody clean it!" That is an opportunity to respond with kind, concerned, professionalism by replying on the wall itself "David, thanks for letting us know! We will start paying better attention to the pool." At the same time, post a picture of your pool that you used in your promotional marketing, when it was sparkling clean, and leave a caption or a comment on it that says - "If the pool ever isn't looking this good, let us know!"
What will this say to your residents? It will communicate that you care about your property intensely. What will this say to your prospective residents, who may be researching your property and stumble across these posts? It will show them that the manager is actively engaged with the needs of his/her residents, and works to see those needs fulfilled. That is what Facebook, and all of social media, can do for your property.
Questions? I bet you have some. Give us a call, we would be happy to help you. You can also check out www.facebook.com/highpointenorwalk and www.facebook.com/oldmarketlofts for some great examples of what this process looks like. Katie at High Pointe and Holli at Old Market Lofts are social media rock star property managers who helped develop this growth process and love their results from it.