From Instagram to Facebook to Snapchat and beyond, we know social media is an excellent component to a successful marketing campaign, allowing you to amplify awareness of your property’s brand on a channel where prospects are actively consuming content on a daily basis. Did we say daily? Yep. In fact, 74% of Facebook’s 2 billion users say they check the platform multiple times a day. With the chance to have millions of people see and interact with your content daily, finding the right time and place to schedule your social media posts can seem daunting. Where do you start?
The Research Behind Social Posting
Believe it or not, there is a science to when to schedule posts, and there’s research to back it up. The trick to finding the best day and time to schedule a post is simple – post when the largest number of people are visiting the channel. For instance, Sprout Social finds that the best time of day to post on Instagram is between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. – avoid posting between 3 and 4 p.m, when less people are likely to see your post. When it comes to Twitter, Fridays between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. are best. However, with 350,000 tweets happening per minute, Twitter can be a difficult channel to drive engagement. It’s best used as a customer service platform – to answer questions or contribute to industry conversations in real-time, ultimately creating a better brand experience.
While general posting times are a good base to start with, get to know how your unique audience behaves and uses their social media channels. Utilize data and analytics within each platform and know what metrics to track. For example, student housing audiences might be online later in the evening in between study sessions – much differently to prospects in an older, more suburban demographic. Check out what times of day and days of the week got you the highest reach and interactions from your past posts and test new timing.
Not all Platforms Were Created Equal
What makes sense for one platform might not make sense for another. Multifamily is a visually driven industry, so focusing social media efforts on channels like Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat can increase your chances for success and engagement. That’s not to say having a presence LinkedIn or Twitter should be forgotten about. LinkedIn works well for recruitment-type content as well as industry news and business announcements.
If there’s one tip to take you to new levels on your social media scheduling process, it’s to always review the intent of a post before clicking the “schedule now” button. Are you trying to get traffic to your site to see the new model photos in your gallery? Are you hoping to engage with your current and prospective residents with more likes, comments or shares? The channel and time can differ depending on the intent of the post. When it comes to channel, Facebook and Instagram’s gallery options are great ways to showcase your floor plans and amenities where as LinkedIn can be a good place to announce company news. For time of day, consider posting on a Wednesday or Thursday if your post is about new restaurants and bars within walking distance of your property to give viewers some time to plan for a date-night on Friday or the weekend ahead.
Create a Content Bank
Creating a content calendar, filling out post copy, finding images and the like can be incredibly time consuming. Coming up with new and exciting content every week? Ain’t got time for that. Save yourself some trouble and create a bank of evergreen content that can give you a source to pull from when your time is crunched.
Want to dive deeper into social media strategy for multifamily? We’d love to brainstorm together.
