You want to be known for your excellent customer service, your expertise in all things property management, and your commitment to your owners and residents. In short, you want the best reputation in your field.
A company’s reputation is often spread through word of mouth. If one happy resident or property owner sings your praises, chances are you’ll attract more business.
But you don’t have to cross your fingers and wait for good reviews to build and broadcast your message. You can manage your business’s reputation proactively through your social media accounts.
Use platforms like Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and even TikTok to get your property management business’s name out there, to build your reputation as an industry leader, and to highlight good reviews of your services.
In this article, we’ll give you five steps to do just that. At the end, we’ll introduce you to a property management company (TRE Homes out of Austin, Texas) that has done an exceptional job building a social media presence that resonates. You can check out (and even follow) their accounts to help inspire your own social media action items.
#1: Choose the Right Social Media Platforms
First things first. Your message will never reach the right people if you’re on the wrong social media platforms. And trying to cover all the platforms will result in less-than-quality posts that take up too much time to keep track of.
Instead, do some research to figure out which platforms your audience uses. Set up accounts for yourself and tailor your posts to speak directly to your audience.
That may mean having a presence on certain platforms for property owners and others expressly for residents. In any case, it’s smart to understand where your audiences exist on social media so you can make sure that you’re speaking to them.
For example, millennial residents will most likely be on Instagram. Property owners will probably have a LinkedIn account. Residents and property owners in their mid-30s and up will have Facebook, while residents in their 20s might have TikTok or SnapChat.
A word of caution: Don’t get on a platform if it isn’t right for your brand, even if your target audience is there. Your residents may be on TikTok, for example, but if short videos are not part of what your company represents (aka your brand), your messages may fall flat.
#2: Post Useful Content in a Genuine Way
Speaking of your message falling flat, your next step, once you have your accounts set up, is to start posting truly useful content that feels genuine to your audience.
For your residents, that may simply mean using WhatsApp or a Facebook group to announce upcoming events or major scheduled maintenance—in addition to your other property management software communication channels.
For property owners, you may want to consider creating blog content relevant to their interests on LinkedIn or Facebook. You could even create a podcast on topics having to do with real estate investment or resident relations
For prospective residents, think about posting images that showcase your properties on Instagram, or even short videos on Youtube or TikTok highlighting events.
We know you’re busy. So, don’t think you have to start creating original content from scratch all the time. You can also curate content—pull related articles, videos, blog posts and other content from other sources and repost on your social media channels.
Anytime you share a local news story or industry-related event on your timeline, you’re essentially curating content. The important thing to remember is to share the entire piece and to give credit to the original poster.
We’ll go into this in more detail in a minute.
#3: Post Regularly
Once you know what you’re going to post and where you’re going to post it, plan out a regular calendar of content for each of your channels.
Nothing hurts a company’s credibility like an inactive social media account. It makes you look disorganized, like you’re not committed to your audience.
And make sure you are tracking comments and posts to your social media accounts by other parties. If you get a complaint or negative review, address it immediately and professionally. If a poster praises your company or shares your content, thank them.
And for all other comments, stay engaged in the conversation. You will boost your reputation as an open and responsive property management company that cares about customer service.
We know what you’re thinking. Posting and tracking your accounts regularly can suck up a lot of time. But there are tools that will manage your social media accounts for you.
Software tools like Hootsuite allow you to schedule content to post automatically and track each post’s performance. Pro tip: Buffer and Mention are social listening tools that flag comments and mentions of your company and analyze them to determine if they are positive, negative, or somewhere in between.
#4: Collect Positive Reviews
Give your property owners and residents every opportunity to give you a positive review. Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as Google, feature reviews prominently. If a property owner or resident is happy with your service, encourage them to leave a review on any of your platforms.
For platforms such as Instagram, create a hashtag and encourage residents or even property managers to tag images of their favorite things about the properties you manage or the events you put on. It’s just as good as a review!
#5: Share and Like Others’ Content
Just as you like people to share and like your content, so do others. Sharing, commenting, retweeting, and liking content is a particularly effective way to stay top of mind with prospective property owners.
Get your name in front of them by sharing their content on your own feed or leaving a conversation-starting comment on their wall.
And as we mentioned above, you can curate quality content for your own feed this way, putting yourself out there as a thought leader in property management and real estate investment.
Trē Homes: Using Social Media to Boost Reputation
We’ve gone through a handful of steps to build your reputation through social media. Now, let’s look at a property management company that has proven how valuable reputation-building on social media can actually be.
Trē Homes is a property management company located in Austin, TX. Their social media presence spans several sites and includes a well-thought-out mix of formats, all of which shout their core message from the rooftops: financial independence through real estate investment.
And their work is paying off. They have an average rating of 4.9 from 259 reviews on Google and an average of 4.8 on Facebook from 48 reviews!
Core Content
Their core content is their podcast and vlogs, which they blast out across their social media accounts.
Their videos and podcast episodes cover everything from investing in apartment complexes and how to get a line of credit to company announcements; all topics geared toward positioning them as thought leaders in their space. They feature company founders Matt and Lexi Teifke.
They have a continuity in their style: simple, light-hearted, and straightforward. Followers know what to expect when they watch a video or listen to a podcast from Trē Homes.
Content for Social
You can find their videos and podcasts on Youtube, but they’ve also made them available on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
They also use their social media assets to announce open houses and other company news and content. Most recently they even hosted a Facebook Live on the importance of long-term investment strategy in the midst of financial instability. Their ability to be nimble and embrace what’s on their audience’s mind is a masterclass on how to use social effectively to support the partnerships they have with their owners.
TRE Homes, a property management firm out of Austin, TX, consistently posts engaging content on social media like this promo for a live session on Facebook.
Curated Content
On Facebook and Twitter, they post curated content from local sources and images of the Austin area. It’s all extremely visual and shows their audience that they are experts in the Austin metro area.
Their posts follow the three principal rules of curated content:
- They post the entire piece from the original poster.
- They add their own comment that speaks to their own audience.
- They post only content that’s relevant to their brand and their audience.
This is a property management company that has put a lot of thought into who their audience is and what kinds of content they should be creating for them. By offering useful, insightful information for property owners, they have built a reputation as an experienced, knowledgeable property management firm. By featuring their founders and including humorous memes, they show their human side, making them approachable and relatable.
The final piece of the puzzle? They post regularly and frequently.
Building your reputation online can be as simple as posting helpful information to your residents or as thought-out as a podcast; or it could be something in between. The key is to find the ideal platforms for your message and your audience—and regularly posting content that will put your property management business front and center in a natural way. Always ask yourself what’s in it for your audience. While you can’t control what people say, you sure can influence it by being a part of the conversation. Besides, who else is better prepared to tell your story online than you?
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