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So many mentions…
I was lucky to sit on a panel last week with some multifamily social media smarty pants at the PMExpo. It was an absolute blast sharing the stage with Ansley Sudderth from Forrent and Kelley Shannon from Bozzuto. We discussed how we are using social media to communicate with prospective renters, current residents and employees. As you all know, it’s never as easy as just drafting a quick post. You need a ton of different tools we to create awesome visuals, plan content with your team and monitor if you’re engaging the right audience. Since there were so many different tools mentioned, I decided to create one ultimate multifamily marketing toolbox including all the tools we discussed. We use most of these tools daily for either Apartminty or WC Smith. There are free and premium versions of the products depending on your needs. Since there are 30 on the list, I won’t bore you with descriptions about each one included, but I do I my personal list of daily favorites! I hope you enjoy! If you want to learn more about how the tools work, don’t hesitate to reach out!
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Ultimate multifamily marketing toolbox. Your list of 30 tools and resources every multifamily marketer should be using.
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Social Monitoring
My personal favorite is Tweetdeck. You can set up phrases or hashtags that people may be tweeting. For instance….do you know how many people tweet “Apartment hunting sucks” everyday? It’s a lot. Maybe you can help them…in real time.
Tweetdeck is also useful at conferences or during Twitterchats (Like #Aptchat) if you want to follow along with what everyone else is saying. It’s nice because you don’t have to be following those people to monitor the conversation.
Social Posting
I’m a Buffer evangelist! The tool is already amazing, but then the company and the culture are absolutely something Maddie and I are modeling ourselves after. In the true spirit of “A rising tide raises all ships mentality,” Buffer’s blog is an amazing resource for all things marketing. Additionally, they host a weekly #Bufferchat on Wednesdays that tackles any marketing topic you can think of. I’ve learned *so* much from Bufferchat.
But back to the tool itself. Buffer allows you to schedule out your posts for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Google +. You can also see analytics on which posts get the most engagement. If you want, you can select specific times for posts {like Happy Birthday posts to residents} or you can just set up stuff in your cue to post as frequently as you prefer.
I use it for work and personally. On Saturdays, I tend to spend a couple hours reading all the blogs that have been stacking up in Feedly. I could share 100 articles Saturday morning or using the Chrome extension, I just throw them all into Buffer and they post once or twice a day.
Photo Editing App
If I’m being honest, I use two or three photo editing apps on a regular bass. A Color Story just happens to be my favorite at the moment. The filters and color fogs can really make a photo pop! They have a couple tutorials to help you get started. If you want to see an example of someone using the app well, check out my buddy, Melanie Ling from Acumen Agency’s Instagram account. Absolutely gorgeous!
Text Overlay Tools that Rock
So this one is a split decision in the Apartminty office. I am a hard core Word swag user and Maddie is the Canva Queen. Word Swag is an app and Canva can be used on the desktop. Canva can actually be used for much more than just text overlay. We use it for most of our graphics across the Apartminty blog.
Word Swag is strictly for word overlay or cool word art. They have what feels like endless font combinations to bring style to anything you need to say.
Content Analysis
If you don’t know what your traffic is doing once they hit your website, you’re always going to be guessing about what marketing iniatives working. Google analytics can seem intimidating, it’s not. It is one of the most helpful tools in the toolbox. My favorite data points to review are our goal conversions. We know how many people from each traffic source convert into actual leads for our leasing agents. More important than just where they came from, I’m also interested what they came for. With analytics you can see exactly what page or post on your website the customer landed on. From there, you can see where they else went on your site. When we see a behavior pattern emerge, we know what new landing pages we need to create. I need about 8 blog posts to tell you how critical the data is to our marketing plan, but I would just encourage you to dig in and learn more!
Team Communication
I’m pretty much in love with Slack and I’m still learning all of the features. Slack solved two major issues for us. The first is, we all get way too many emails! And while picking up the phone is great, I spend copious amount of time in meetings, conferences, and on airplanes where that just isn’t an option. Slack’s instant messaging feature allows you to get rid of all those “quick question” emails. You also can create different channels for different projects or teams. For instance we have one channel called #Icebox. It’s simply a place for us to store all of our awesome brainstorms for product features and marketing campaigns that we just cannot execute today. That way the brilliant ideas don’t get lost on scraps of paper or buried in notebooks and the team can comment on them. But no one is interrupted by someone dropping a note in there. Slack integrates with Evernote and Dropbox and about 150 other apps that you are probably using. So, like I said…I’m in love with it…and there’s still more awesomeness to learn.
Resident Events and Activities
A big challenge for some of our properties in DC that I have mentioned before, is the lack of amenity space. How are you supposed to compete with these luxury buildings going up everywhere when you don’t even have a lobby? Magnises may be the answer you are looking for. Originally theywere just in New York City and Washington, DC. However they are expanding to 15 cities this year including Chicago, San Francisco, LA, Miami, and Boston. As a Magnises member, your resident’s get VIP access to social events across the city. Everything from dinner labs, to cycling classes, to concerts and ballets. You get the benefit of connecting the resident to that lifestyle they want. They get the benefit of having the city at their fingertips.
So there you go…this is our multifamily marketing toolbox. Which of these tools do you use? Which ones would you like to implement, but want more training? We’re building tutorials right now. So, drop us a line and let us know which ones would interest you most!
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