This week, a few of us at Apartments.com had the chance to escape Chicago's chilly temperatures to attend the 2015 Multifamily Social Media Summit in Napa. And what an amazing week it was! We heard from dynamic speakers, connected with smart industry peers, and left the summit re-energized and armed with great information and ideas for being better social media marketers.

Did you miss the Multifamily Social Media Summit? Here are four key takeaways.

Build Trust with Your Audience

People are turning to the internet to do research before making purchases – including their next apartment. Providing these folks with the information they’re looking for is key in building trust. And let's face it -- people are more likely to buy from those they trust. “Honest, transparent and helpful content is the greatest sales and trust building tool in the world, period,” returning keynote speaker Marcus Sheridan (partner at River Pools and Spas and founder of The Sales Lion) emphasized. For example, if a renter is looking for your rent ranges and availability and your website doesn’t include that information, they’ll likely pass you up in favor of an apartment community that is open and honest with that information. 

Visuals are Key

According to Buffer, tweets with images received 18% more clicks, 89% more favorites and 150% more retweets than those without. And SocialBakers.com found that Facebook posts with photos get far more audience interaction than those without. The bottom line here is that people love visual content. After all, visual content is much easier (and usually more interesting) to consume than a big block of text. Several speakers – including Joie Healy the Senior Manager of Social Media Communications at Cisco -- emphasized the importance of integrating quality visual content – such as videos, photos and infographics – into your social media content mix in order to drive more audience engagement.  

Maximize Your Content

Creating quality content takes time and resources, so it just doesn’t make sense to adopt a “once and done” approach. Instead, repurpose your content by packaging it in different ways. For example, Ian Greenleigh, keynote speaker and author of “The Social Media Side Door: How to Bypass the Gatekeepers to Gain Great Access and Influence,” suggested breaking up a longer YouTube video into shorter Vine or Instagram “microvideos” or  turning a series of blog posts into an ebook.

Focus on the Channels That Work For You

If you're like most multifamily professions, you simply don't have the time to build a strong, strategic presence on every social media channel out there. Instead, focus on the social media channels that have the most impact for you. After all, it’s better to build a great presence on two or three social media networks than to have a lousy presence on a dozen.

Did you attend the 2015 Multifamily Social Media Summit? What were your favorite sessions?