I think this will dramatically increase as the multifamily industry's acclimation to the most effective methods of using social media increases. I also believe just as apartment communities are only in the last year or two really implementing social media strategies; the renting population is also just becoming more accustomed to using social media for communication with businesses not only friends and family.

I do not believe multifamily will ever see the site visits that businesses offering goods and services see because of the nature of our product. A retail store for example can offer a new product at a discounted price everyday to their fans or followers, whereas the renter is not interested in renting a different apartment every day and has not nearly the incentive to visit the apartment community page. We should focus on content that is desired and helpful to drive them there more often.

I think the low % indicates an opportunity. I often see apartments community pages with very low interaction/LOW interaction on their social networking page. If its not worth seeing, its not worth revisting. The few communities that have active pages, with throughtful comments that encourage a social atmosphere, and sharing - I notice that residents comment & interact more often - this generates more interaction, and higher percentage of people who visit those pages.

With social networking pages - you get out of it what you put into it.

6 months is a long time in the social media world (and a long time to collect data for this kind of survey). I bet if you look at June data alone, the story would be quite different. I offer as a comparison that mobile traffic doubled on my ILS over the past 6 months. Total average mobile usage was nothing to write home about, but doesn't it get your attention to hear that mobile traffic doubled? It's quite a different way to spin the same data. I'm sure social media usage by renters doubled over that time period, and the trend is what we should focus on.

Let's face it - not all community's social media efforts were created equally. On the best practices end, you have Urbane Apartments. On the other side, you have hundreds of Facebook and Twitter pages with a couple of apartments ads, and that's about it.

In addition to the quality of the social media initiative, penetration also depends on the involvement of the property manager and the demographics of the community. If the property manager doesn't tell people about social media pages and if you can't get the web designer to add a link to Facebook/Twitter/etc. in a timely manner (I could tell you horror stories) user adoption will suffer.

Finally, renters cannot be trusted to self report. Again, I offer an example from the ILS world: phone and walk in lead tracking. We all know that renters don't always do the best job of reporting where they found out about your community (e.g. "I found you on the Internet. No, I don't remember exactly which site."). Given the increasingly high Google rankings Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and property blogs are getting, it's hard to believe the impact of social media optimization didn't drive more than 7% of renters to a community's social networking site alone.

Sorry for the long response, but I am married to an analyst and I worked in the survey world briefly, so I'm prone to be skeptical about all things statistical.

These are great findings but at the same time what is the breakdown of these statistics regarding gender or age? I could see a drastic change with young residents vs mature residents. More and more of the "older" generation is taking advantage of Facebook for example but only to keep in touch w/ their distant families or to play farmville (by the way love that game!) They really haven't (and the large majority will never) really appreciate the social networking sites for the networking aspect. Keep in mind, Facebook being the most popular has so many different pages, groups, etc that you can become a part of, it is almost impossible to keep up with every page every day if not every week. I know there are groups that I personally have accepted and never been back... not because it's not interesting but because of lack of time. I think we'll see the number drastically higher if it was broken down in age.

I think these numbers are skewed by the fact that the vast majority of renters in apartment communities live at properties that have not yet embraced social media, or have a website designed 10 years ago before the idea was relevant. We have not embraced technology quickly in this industry - just look at any leasing office at a B property and you will find a dot matrix printer slogging out a report somewhere. But the management companies that have incorporated this into their sites, or are currently rebuilding them with this new functionality, will certainly benefit from the edge.

Oh wait, I just saw another thing in Brent's comments: You mean some people actually prefer Microsoft products? Who are these people? What do they th [NOT RESPONDING] CTRL ALT DELETE

Hello All,
I found this survey not useful at any level, and not sure of what the intent of it was, although I can speculate. I actually listtened to the presentation at NAA and found it equally maddening.

Others commenting herein have hit on the points, as it isn't that the apartment prospects aren't participating, there are rarely no apartment communities for the prospect to participate with! Hopefully apartment marketers aren't using this type of data to steer their descions.

Ellen, Thank you for the kind comments, we really appreciate that.

The survey data isn't incredibly surprising, considering the way in which the questions were asked. In fact, I believe the answers would have been very similar if you asked the question about a dry cleaner or a grocery store instead of an apartment community. Of course, people aren't visiting apartment company profiles/pages on social networking sites ... most of us are there for other reasons, like keeping in touch with friends.

We need to stop worrying so much about the channel, and focus our efforts on the story we're trying to tell. As Chris mentioned, it's about word of mouth (although I disagree that we need to look at social media as a resident retention tool ... social media can used for many different business purposes). Give your audience something they can support and connect with on a personal level, and they'll follow/like/friend you. Provide interesting/unique/entertaining experiences that get people talking (and not just residents), and our properties wil find much greater success, not only in social media, but across all communication channels.