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How to Manage Your Properties’ Social and Reputation Efforts During Busy Season

 

As a property management team, you’re likely right in the middle of summer leasing. While a busy summer leasing season means winning more leases, ensuring your localized marketing efforts don’t slip through the cracks is essential. If marketing doesn’t remain a priority throughout the busy season, your properties will start feeling the impact later this Fall. 

 

We know that it can be challenging to manage your social media and monitor your reputation along with everything else on your plate. This blog is here to help. We’ll dive into how you & your team can navigate the busy leasing season while also ensuring that your properties’ reputation and social efforts don’t fall flat.

 

Reputation Management – What’s Most Important 

 

Reputation management is one thing property teams cannot overlook during the busy season. Summer leasing often leads to an influx in ratings and reviews, and it’s up to your property team to ensure these reviews are being monitored and responded to promptly. Eighty percent of potential residents consider reviews necessary to their property search. Similarly, 70 percent of prospective residents decided to visit a property with a higher online reputation. If your reputation management efforts slip through the cracks, you could miss out on new residents in the future. 

 

Now that you understand the importance of reputation management, you may be wondering which areas you should focus on the most. Data from our 2021 Localized Marketing Benchmark Report provides answers. When it comes to average star ratings, leaders in the property management industry had an average of 3.9 stars on both Facebook and Google My Business (GMB). Percent of reviews responded to and average response time is something to consider as well. Industry leaders in property management responded to an average of 50 percent of reviews on GMB, 40 percent on Facebook, and only 36 percent on Yelp. Average response times all met or exceeded 50 days. 

 

 

 

How does your portfolio stack up to these benchmarks? While you should meet these averages, beating them will help your properties dominate the market. For instance, your properties should respond to 100 percent of reviews received, starting with negative reviews. When you’re responding to reviews, the faster, the better. If a potential resident sees that your property is taking the time to address complaints and even respond to the positive reviews, they’ll be more likely to consider your property when it’s time to sign their next lease. For more tips on improving your review strategy, check out our blog on the topic. 

 

Finding a tool that can help you streamline your teams’ reputation management efforts across the portfolio is critical to maintaining a positive online reputation. 

 

That’s where SOCi comes in. SOCi’s Review Solution allows both your corporate and onsite teams to view every action taken on reviews within one dashboard. Now, your local, regional, and corporate teams will always know which reviews and social engagements are addressed, and which ones still require attention to ensure the prompt responses residents expect. SOCi’s Review Solution will significantly reduce the time your onsite teams spend monitoring and responding to reviews, freeing up time for your teams to continue with their leasing efforts.

 

 

Dominating Social – The Basics 

 

While reviews are one critical component of a winning marketing strategy, property teams shouldn’t forget about social. Often, properties put social efforts on the back burner, but by doing so, you could be hurting your bottom line. Localized content receives 12x the engagement of content not considered localized, so by leveraging localized content, your property is increasing its visibility online. Many teams understand the importance of social, but executing a social strategy can seem daunting. 

 

When choosing where to start, there are a few areas that teams in your portfolio should focus on. Again, data from our 2021 LMBR guides the way. Property teams should leverage both Facebook and GMB for their local social efforts. Currently, industry leaders in property management have 51 percent of their locations posting on Facebook and 40 percent posting on GMB. These locations post an average of seven times per month on Facebook and two times per month on GMB as seen below. To crush your busy season and beyond, every team in your portfolio should be meeting, if not exceeding, these industry standards. 

 

While the posting frequency is essential, the type of content your properties post is just as important. As mentioned previously, localized content outperforms content that isn’t considered localized by a significant amount, but what kind of content is deemed localized? Think of anything that relates to your specific property location. For instance, updates about your community, upcoming community events, local partnerships,  resident highlights, and employee features fall under localized content. 

 

 

 

 

Creating localized content doesn’t have to be scary, and SOCi is here to make it even easier. SOCi’s Social Solution enables local teams across your portfolio to manage and deploy localized content at scale while maintaining the brand guidelines set by your corporate team. With this tool, your local property managers can discover, create, and share dynamic content that is local to their market while maintaining strong brand consistency across your management companies’ portfolios. SOCi’s Social Solution provides content libraries for users to choose content from, saving your local property managers a significant amount of time during the busy season and beyond while still providing social content that is exclusive to your local community that renters crave. 

 

 

Setting Up Localized Marketing Strategies for Future Busy Seasons

 

While this year’s busy season for property teams is already here, the tools mentioned above can help you finish out the season strong without letting marketing efforts slip through the cracks. Your marketing teams can leverage these tools to prepare for future busy seasons. For instance, if teams across your portfolio know that June through August is typically busiest, they can pre-plan and schedule social content ahead of time, so they don’t have to worry about it then. Similarly, you can ensure that the teams across your portfolio are up to date with responding to all current reviews or allow you the opportunity to provide additional resources to assist your teams if you notice a backlog of reviews. 

 

Planning for the future is the best way to give your teams a leg up on the competition, and SOCi is here to help. SOCi will help your property management company crush its marketing goals while giving your local teams more time to focus on apartment tours or paperwork. Request a demo today for more information on how SOCi can support your team during your busy season and beyond!