4 Takeaways from Multifamily Social Media Summit 2019 – Napa, California

The SOCi team has officially kicked off our events for 2019! The first stop was Napa, California - Wine not? (wink wink) - for the 2019 Multifamily Social Media Summit. One of the highlights of this year’s event was a hot-air balloon ride. Our lucky team members got to sip champagne while floating up in the air as the golden California sunshine spread across the valley.

During the summit, SOCi’s CEO, Afif Khoury, delivered a session on “5 Social Media Trends in 2019 and How to Prepare.” He dove into the latest trends and explained why they matter for social media marketing, and how multifamily properties can take advantage.

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He covered a lot! So we put together 4 takeaways for you - so you can share with other social media marketers and your peers. Here they are:

1 - Social Has Gone Local

Residents are hungry for local interaction. Engagement on Facebook Location Pages is 2.5x higher than on corporate brand Pages. Each of your properties in your portfolio must have its own, dedicated local page – or Facebook will create one automatically! That’s correct! When a renter searches for one of your properties and sees no results, Facebook automatically creates that page to encourage engagement and deliver a better user experience. So… claim all of your local social media pages, and avoid having rogue ones, so you can have meaningful conversations with new and current residents, where they are.

2 - Proactively Manage Your Online Reviews

Renters searching for a place to live are turning to social media to read reviews and do research before deciding which community is the best fit for them. The volume of online reviews and ratings for multifamily properties is on the rise.

80% of renters consider consumer reviews important to their property search

Reading and responding to those online reviews shouldn't just be a reactive practice, but rather a part of your social media strategy, so those conversations translate into new residents and an increase in resident retention. We’ve gathered the top resident complaints (and how to respond to them!) to help you control the online reputation of your property.

3 - Social Boosting is Crucial

Recent changes to Facebook’s algorithm made organic reach drop significantly - up to 20 times! As a result of the “death of organic reach”, social boosting is no longer optional, and marketers managing social media accounts for multifamily businesses have had to increase their advertising budget to include sponsored content. With social boosting, multi-location businesses are faced with inefficiency. Marketers are spending time developing social content and keeping track of engagement levels for multiple social media pages for hundreds of locations… but additional time is now spent deciding which posts to boost, and for how long. Be sure to add social boosting to your social media strategy. Check out these tips for better social boosting to reduce inefficiency and reach high levels of engagement on social.

4 - Prepare for the Next Big Social Network

With the depreciation of Google Plus, Google has doubled down on Google My Business with Google Posts and Q&A features. Google Posts is a new feature that allows you to publish your products and services directly to Google Search (in the Knowledge Panel) and Maps.

For multifamily businesses, Google Posts is an alternative for sharing promotions, daily specials or any current events that may drive new and existing residents to visit your page. To summarize, a healthy localized social media marketing strategy now requires a mix of social content, care, and ads.