Social media marketing for apartments is a much better fit if your property is higher end, is unique, or has an aire of exclusivity.

So what to do? Engage people at a personal level. Don’t focus on marketing hype – the experiences that you share ARE the marketing hype. For example, don’t hype your olympic sized pool and instead promote the great pool party and add a quantity of photos. Let this fly through a network and people will find a way to get to your next function, hopefully have a good time, and at some point migrate into a desire to move in.

This process is what we call “Experience Branding” (as opposed to product branding). With Experience Branding you are creating a look-and-feel for your property, an emotional attraction, . . . the kind of look-and-feel that people want to have as their own. And when people have this they hold on to it and want to share it with friends.

Social media marketing does take a commitment however, if you manage it well, the residents and their network provide a large part of the content and direct marketing for you. This lowers your costs and increases your effectiveness. It’s word-of-mouth referrals taken to a new level.

Hire a good Internet marketing agency and take advantage of social media marketing. You will be glad that you did!

Your comment dovetails nicely with Ellen’s about not seeing many sites that are trackable and prove-able.

Still, I’m eager to reconcile both of your cautionary remarks (which I agree with) with Eric’s experience with a high-end product with unique characteristics. If I read Eric right, he’s taking a completely different approach to marketing. Instead of asking media to drive leads, he uses it to drive retention and excitement so that residents refer other cool, hip people who are part of the peer group. Social media provide the SEO value he needs to stay visible, and assist with group interaction and maintaining the cohesiveness of the group. Fascinating. I don’t know Eric, but I’m willing to bet his education and experience are a little different than most real estate owners’. Maybe anthropology? By using social media to maintain a healthy, active group the group tends to expand by its very nature. Sort of like a bee hive. Social media just provide the communication mechanism that keeps things flowing. Renting is a natural by-product, as people want to be close to the center of the hive.

1) Do not just put of a static page. Have a twist, maybe a group to meet people in the apartment, or discuss events, relevant rental issues, maintenance requests. Facebook isn’t an ILS.

2) Much like blog, you cannot just put it up and let it go. You need to seek out members, engage the community, discuss issues, and make yourself (or your employees) immediately available. Respond to comment within 24 hours, thank users for joining, ask them questions, make it a social environment.

3) The ROI may never be concretely measurable in leads, clicks, or leases. Customer support, transparency, and availability will increase your presence and off-line/online WOM, which is difficult to measure.

There is a place for advertisers withing social networks. It just has to be within the vision and goal of the specific network. In the case of Facebook, make it social. For LinkedIn, make it professional. And for Habbo, maybe create a Hannah Montana avatar. (Joke, please no one do that.)

Our Goal; To provide our residents with an experience and value with a high enough return to create enough Customer Evangelists within our core resident base that they self rent our apartments. We are working hard to lead our resident Influencers within our core resident base, and have transitioned most of our marketing budget inward, to further focus on our existing residents. Only good things have happened from this move. Resident retention has significantly improved, and we have created a forum and a field for the Influencers to participate. Along the path we hope to become Social Media experts based on our experience as to what works for multifamily and what doesn’t. We are learning as we go, but are seeing stellar results.

Perhaps the greatest benefit for us by utilizing these tactics and strategies is that when a potential resident does a Google search for Royal Oak Apartments, Urbane Apartments pop up on page one, number four or five consistently, which then typically drives the prospect right to our web site, thus allowing us an opportunity to showcase our offering

In addition to my “day job,” I also review Internet businesses seeking investments from a local venture capital company. Lately, most of them have an unproven business model with social networking components. The ones that get funded seem to have the biggest upside potential. We also want to make sure we don’t miss the next big thing. 5 years ago, we had the pay for performance paradigm shift, and now we face the social networking revolution.

My guess is some social network marketing efforts will be obviously profitable, but that most of us will be spending to maintain sites we are not sure are working.