The latest research revealed that 80 percent of consumers consider reviews important to their property search and 75 percent of residents look at ratings and reviews multiple times during their search. Your online reputation is key to having potential residents select your property for their next lease. A proactive locally-focused review and reputation management strategy, in platforms where residents are searching, can expand the reach of a portfolio brand and create genuine connections to an engaged base of loyal residents.

As a part of this content series, SOCi sat down with some of our customers and asked about their strategic approach to different components of localized social marketing (LSM). Our hope is that other marketers can read through the answers and learn best practices from the multi-location businesses that are excelling in LSM! 

TI Communities truly understands the importance of having a proactive, localized reputation management strategy for every property they manage, and every community that they serve. 

Q&A with TI Communities

According to its website, TI Communities is a property management company with a purpose that aims to preserve and enrich communities for working individuals and families. TI Communities offers a full-range of services to nearly 7,000 homes across the country.

TI Communities answered the following questions on the property management company’s best practices reputation management.

1. Tell us about your experience using SOCi Assist and how long you’ve been using it. Does your team supplement the content that SOCi Assist provides on social networks?

We have been using SOCi Assist for just over a year, and it has made a huge difference in our online presence. Our marketing team is a one-man show, so we didn’t have a lot of resources to keep us relevant and posting online consistently. With SOCi Assist, I don’t have to worry about making sure we get at least two postings a week because SOCi does that for us, and I have been able to add to grow off of and add too what SOCi Assist is doing for us.

2. What were your main challenges before you started using SOCi? 

Our struggle, in the beginning, was finding time to post and making sure we stayed relevant and consistent on social media. We really needed a great platform that educated future residents and current residents about who we are and what we do and what our goals are as a property management company. Working with SOCi, they have become an incredible partner in helping educate our mission and helping us develop our platform and online presence.

3. What have been the greatest benefits you’ve received from using SOCi? And what is your favorite part of the SOCi offering?

The greatest benefit we have received from SOCi so far is creating our social media presence and connecting with our residents through their reputation management. By SOCi being our partner in the growing process of our business, they have helped us develop our online story, and created a safe place for our residents to let us know how we are doing and knowing we will respond in a timely manner in both English and Spanish!

4. Tell me about what surprised you the most or made you the happiest about using the SOCi platform?

Being able to respond to our resident reviews within 7 hours on average has been a huge surprise and made us extremely happy! Our whole mission is based around our residents and us delivering the best customer service that we can, and this just helps us elevate our promises as a company.

5. SOCi defines Localized Social Marketing (LSM) as marketing efforts that focus on building a local presence for a business, leveraging locally-driven communication channels to reach the specific local communities it serves (rather than a broad/national approach). May include social media marketing, review sites, social advertising, and other two-way engagement channels.

• Based on this description, do you see localized social marketing (LSM) as a key area of focus in your marketing mix today? And what is your localized social marketing strategy that has proven to be most successful for your communities?

Yes! It is so important to us that we connect with our local community as it helps us build partnerships within an area that our community resides in. It also connects us with local organizations that we can provide customers too, and they can provide resources to our residents. This is what helps build our community, our residents, and, in whole, our mission as a property management company! We are very much in an educational stage of our marketing. We are still educating our residents, potential residents, and the communities around us on who we are and what we can provide. By showcasing our community programs and local organizations that we are currently working with on our social media, it not only educates everyone but helps us find new partners and residents to continue to help us grow!

6. Please rank the following areas of LSM on a scale of 1-5 with 1 being not at all important and 5 being critically important to your business:

• Local Ratings & Reviews: 5
• Local Search Pages like Google My Business (GMB): 4
• Local Social Pages like Facebook: 5
• Localized Content on the above-mentioned pages: 5
• Quick response to consumer questions and reviews: 5

7. What successes have you seen in your reputation management response strategy?

We have been able to exceed our goals with response time. We set out to respond within 24-48 hours, and thanks to SOCi, we have been responding, on average, 7 hours.

8. If you had to select a social or review platform that is the most impactful for your business, which would you choose and why? 

Google for sure. Everyone in the world turns to Google for answers, so it’s extremely important to us that we have a great reputation on that platform.

9. If there is one learning or pitfall you have learned through your LSM efforts that you would like to share with other marketers, what would that be?

Don’t be afraid to experiment and reach out to local organizations through Facebook or Google. Social media has created this whole new world of reaching people, and for 100 nos or unanswered messages, you may receive one that becomes an amazing partner or ambassador to your organization! Also, always staying true to your brand and who you are as an organization and representing that on these social platforms. You never know who is doing a deep dive on your social pages and connects with your brand and will want to help grow that brand with you!