Sparkle Hammond's Blog

And I'm not talking the married kind of engagement. (although that can be pretty pricey too)

I'm talking the price of engagement in regards to social media. I was not a bandwagon social media user. I wanted to understand how to engage and converse with our residents and potential residents before I jumped on the social media train. I also wanted to understand how to measure engagement and then translate that to value for our clients. 

For me, the  issue with social media is not the time it takes to post, blog or tweet, the issue is engagement. Are you maximizing on opportunities of engagement? Are you talking at your residents and prospects are talking with them? Having thousands of fans or followers are great but what are you doing with them?

What gives you the best engagement bang for you buck? I have included my top three.

DON'T BE A NEWS FEED HOG

Posting and tweeting are a marathon, not a race. If you clog up their news feed, they are sure to unfollow or unsubscribe. Studies show a post every 3-4 hours is the sweet spot.

INSIGHTS

Are you looking at your insights page? Your insights page has a wealth of information and demographics. Use that to your advantage when posting. 

FEEDBACK SCORE

Look at your most successful post (in terms of likes, comments, impressions, re-tweets, etc) and figure out your feedback score. For the posts with the highest feedback percentage, do you see a pattern of posts people engage with most... sports, fashion, decorating ideas? 

I benchmark everything. As a Director of Marketing, making sure my marketing team's time is well spent requires just that, benchmarking everything. Have we figured out the secret formula to social media, engagement and ROI.. not yet but I'm working on it. :-)

Happy posting!

Sparkle Hammond, M.Ed.  First Communities | Director of Marketing
shammond@firstcommunities.net
www.century-apartments.com | www.facebook.com/centuryapartmenthomes

I am the first the admit, I have used social media, text messages, email campaigns and any other "newby" marketing tool put in front of me. You all who haved used them in the past or currently using them know this can be a full time job.

When can we go back to the basics? I am so proud of my organization for not only employing new tools to market our communities but knowing that the basics such as follow up, awesome greetings, and customer service will always lease apartments. Instead of a training on Twitter, let's have some training on creative follow up techniques. 

Just a thought...... 

I wondered if creating a myspace page would be worth my while. I am busy as is...facebook,  linkedin, blogging, tweeting, you name it....I am doing it. I ventured out to see if this could be beneficial for my communities. I started out with Tom as my friend as everyone does. After a week, Tom was still my only friend. After two weeks, Tom was still my only friend. On to the third week and I received a friend request for someone looking to move in the Atlanta area and would like my assistance in finding an apartment. YEAH!!!! My confidence was built at this point. I reached out to "friends" to tell them about this wonderful FREE service I could offer them..... getting them the best offer... at one of MY communities. Two months later and I have over 30 friends looking for apartments.

In my book, it has been a success and will continue to be. I am loving the FREE advertising and making freinds.