In the world of marketing it is widely known that you have to get the word out on many different platforms to have the success you are looking for.
The multi-family housing industry is no exception. A property has to market themselves in a way that makes them stand out from the competition and develop a brand identity in the community.
What most properties don’t know is that the BEST marketing tool is sitting right in their leasing office everyday…their own staff!
Let’s say you have 4 people in your leasing office and 3 people on your maintenance team. If each of them has 250 followers on social media and they all re-post a marketing link for your property you are instantly exposed to 1,750 people on social media without ANY advertising dollars spent. These are all very modest numbers too!
Below we explain how to turn your employees into your new marketing secret weapon!
Basic Social Media Training
The first thing you will want to do is make sure everyone understands the platforms you will want them to share on. Facebook is a pretty safe one to start with because it is the most widely popular social media out there.
Gather your team together, perhaps at a happy hour to make it fun, and let them know you want them to help in the marketing efforts for the property. Ask them how they feel about sharing social media posts from the property with their followers. Also find out if anyone has any questions about how to share posts. By starting with the basics you ensure there won’t be any confusion down the road.
Set Up a Monthly Posting Schedule
Make your marketing efforts super efficient by putting a calendar in the leasing office of the posts that are to be shared for that month. Asking your staff to share monthly posts will ensure their profiles aren’t taken over by your marketing content. You can also take suggestions from the staff of what that month’s post should be. Try to have them involved in the process as much as possible, you want to make sure that the employees stand behind the posts they are sharing.
Make it Easy!
Let your employees choose when to share your marketing post throughout the month. You will know when they share because you will tell them to tag your property’s profile in the post. There are also great apps, such as this one from HootSuite, that will send a post to your employees and give them an option to share with a push of a button. Another great way to get the ball rolling is to set up posts from the property’s social media pages giving praise to an employee and tagging them. This gives the employee an easy post to share on their pages so they get used to sharing work-related posts. Something along the lines of:
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“Suzi did a GREAT job closing a lease today with a wonderful new addition to our residential family! Bravo to you Suzi (tag the employee)!”
———————————————————————————————————-Make sure you are constantly getting feedback from your staff to make sure everyone is excited to share!