Do you ever struggle to create content for your apartment community’s Instagram feed? For already busy property managers, coming up with consistently good posts, videos, hashtags, descriptions, and overall engaging apartment marketing ideas can be very time consuming and exhausting.
Don’t worry if you ever felt this way; we have your back. This blog post will outline many creative and easy ideas to set your Instagram marketing strategy on fire, and increase traffic to your apartment community account.
Crafting your Instagram marketing strategy for apartment communities
With over 2 billion active Instagram users visiting at least one business profile each do, it is no surprise that brands are putting more effort into developing a creative Instagram strategy. Instagram has emerged as one of the best social media platforms for businesses where people expect to engage with brands. So this is where apartment communities can begin to take advantage.
Before jumping into the marketing ideas, there are three core elements that we strongly advise you to review before jumping into any creative work to help you bring structure to your strategy.
- What are your goals? Reach more followers? Engagement on your posts? Brand awareness? Make sure your strategy is centered around what you are trying to gain from your Instagram account.
- Who are you trying to target? Who is your audience and what kind of content will they expect from your account?
- How will you use Instagram’s features to achieve your goals and reach your audience? You have many options to choose from (though we recommend a combination of all!). Feed posts, carousels, in-feed videos, stories, reels and IGTV or Live can help you reach a larger audience.
20 ideas for marketing your apartment on instagram
A well-rounded marketing strategy for Instagram has a mix of different features that you can use to engage with your followers in different ways, and helps you reach new potential customers as well.
Here are examples of how to use different features in your apartment marketing strategy:
1. Give a free apartment tour of your available units
We start with the basics: An apartment tour. Who doesn’t love a peek into someone’s (potential) home? Even when you are not apartment hunting, looking at apartments is really enticing! (Just ask the 40,000 people who have already uploaded apartment tours to Instagram, or the 1.8 billion people who have viewed apartment tour videos on TikTok!)
The idea is simple; you record a walking tour of your available units with your phone. But it’s the details that help you stand out on Instagram. Here are three tips that will help your apartment tour get more views:
- Speed – Trends show fast-paced videos perform better than a leisurely stroll through an apartment. How fast? You should squeeze the entire tour in 10-20 seconds unless you narrate the video. You can walk through the tour at normal speed, and speed it to 2x or 3x during the editing process.
- The Beat – Pair your tour with a joyful song, preferably one that is trending. To identify a trending sound or song, go to the reels tab and start scrolling through the videos; in some videos, you’ll notice that an arrow will appear on the bottom left corner, which means it is trending; click on it, and it’ll give you the option to save it. Once you save the sound you can come back when you have your video ready to pair it.
- Add Text – Adding text to the video helps the viewer to gain context of what they’re looking at instantly. Knowing the rent of that apartment is $X and where it’s located can make a world of difference between someone staying to watch your video or just keep scrolling.
Upload your apartment tour directly to Reels; that way it’ll be pushed to people unrelated to your account, aka free reach. The video will also be displayed on your IG Profile, and then you can click on it and share it as an Instagram story to engage with the followers of your account.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
2. Introduce your awesome team
Part of building your multifamily brand is making it feel authentic and human. A great way to do this is by showing the incredible people behind it. This type of content allows you to show that you are a friendly community that cares for people, and doing this helps make you more approachable to future residents.
Take this idea and repurpose it in as many formats as you can. On a video, you can introduce your team’s smiling faces one by one, add their names to text, and upload it to reels. Take a group photo of your team, and you have a feed post. Individual pictures of your team and their job duties, and you’ll have a carousel. Finally, schedule the content for different dates; and remember to always share it on your stories.
3. Show off your floor plans
Don’t miss out on the opportunity to showcase your floor plans on your social media! You can repurpose images and 3D models to make Instagram posts, carousels, and even stories. Showcasing your apartment layouts on Instagram can help potential residents visualize the space without having to hunt for images on your website, and are only a DM away if they have any questions.
4. Share building features, archetecture or landscaping
Instagram is still a photo app; after all. If you have photos, renders, or videos of the outside look of your building, or around your community, you should share them on your Instagram account. Seeing photos of a nice-looking building, or a well manicured lawn can add to their decision to contact you. The more points of reference they have, the more likely they will request more information or schedule a tour.
5. Share your residents reviews
When apartment hunting, one of the main concerns for potential customers is establishing trust with the apartment community. To address this concern, you can post past residents’ reviews in the form of a single feed post, a carousel, and Instagram stories.
6. Answer frequently asked questions
Educational content helps you to reach more audiences, especially if you do it through Instagram reels. Why? Because you are sharing helpful information for anyone that might be apartment hunting or considering moving soon. Take a few of the questions you recieve more frequently and add them as text on top of a video apartment tour (perhaps one you’ve already featured on Instagram – we love repurposing content!).
7. Share pet-friendly content
It is well known that many apartment seekers consider our furry friends part of the family, and pet policies can make or break a deal when deciding to rent an apartment. Pets can make your Instagram content more enjoyable (everyone loves puppies) and add a lot of brand personality to your apartment community. You can make the content educational by sharing your community pet policy, tips on what to ask before moving in with a pet, or you can even share a video of your pet searching for a new apartment like Gordo, seen below.
8. Share tips with apartment seekers to avoid scams
We’ve already mentioned that generating trust can benefit your apartment community and potential residents. So use your expertise in the industry to provide helpful advice to apartment seekers on how to avoid scams. This kind of content doesn’t have to be complicated or fancy; take a look at this example:
9. Show the neighborhood around your multifamily community
We often overlook the exciting places around us just because we are used to seeing them daily. But if we take a fresh perspective, we can share many interesting experiences around the neighborhood of our apartment community. A photo of a delicious slice of pizza from the restaurant around the corner or a sunset view from a window; if you piece all of those photos together, you can make a video, individual posts, stories, and carousels with this concept. The idea is to take potential customers on a ride of what they would see if they decide to move in.
(Plus, tagging neighborhood spots can help improve your local SEO!)
10. Increase engagement on your posts with a game
One of the most challenging things to accomplish with Instagram content is to get people to engage with your posts or videos. Increase the engagement and comments on your posts by coming up with a fun game, like in this example where they take the “Never Have I Ever” game but make it a Renting Edition.
Tip: Don’t let your graphic design skills dissuade you from trying one of these posts! Free tools like Canva have hundreds of templates that can help you achieve a professional, trendy look on Instagram.
11. Offer tours around the amenities
Provide a video tour of the amenities in your community just like you would a vacant apartment unit. You can do a quick overview of everything you offer to residents, and a more in-depth tour of each amenity available. Want an even more creative idea? How about conducting a tour from a different perspective, like Tory’s favorite amenities in the example below.
12. Share questions to ask when apartment hunting
Your expert knowledge can be very helpful for apartment seekers, and can help build trust in our brand simultaneously. You can repurpose videos you’ve already taken and answer the questions in text for Reel, or try a Canva template to create a post, carousel or stories answering the best questions to ask a leasing office when looking for an apartment.
13. Share tips on moving to your city
The pandemic scrambled the calculus for many people as to what they should prioritize when finding a new home, and perhaps your neighborhood is exactly what they are looking for. Try to create content catered towards future residents moving into your area. You can provide a series of tips, recommendations or even specials for those moving in from out of town. Take a look at these examples:
14. Tips on living with roommates
When producing content for your Instagram strategy, the best way to make sure that it will perform well is to get to know our target customers so that you can add value to them from different angles. If you are unsure, look at the current residents of your apartment community. An excellent example of this can include providing tips for living with roommates or in close proximity to neighbors.
15. Recommend apartment decor accounts
Sharing apartment decor accounts on your content schedule is an excellent way to engage with your audience and give more versatility to your topics. Remember, not everything you share needs to be created and curated by you! You can lean on other accounts for help, too! Accounts like the ones below can help provide renter-friendly decorating ideas and help boost engagement with help from these larger accounts.
16. Interactive content
Help boost your engagement by providing interactive content to your followers. This can be done easily on Instagram Stories with polls, a question box or other stickers available in the Stories function. This can also be done in Reels or in a feed post to show off some of the differences between your apartment units. Like in the example below: Would you rather have a dishwasher or in-unit laundry?
17. Share apartment leasing specials
If you have apartment specials for the season, Reels can be an excellent feature to increase your video’s organic reach. The good part of this type of content is that you can repurpose your video tours or simply record tours of units included in your rental special. Make sure to add the promotion details in the text when editing the video.
18. Discuss the benefits of renting vs. owning
We all know the real estate market is crazy, and that can be a benefit for leasing agents! Discuss on your page some of the benefits of renting, like not having to pay an HOA, or mow the lawn once a week. There are many benefits of living in a multifamily community, so use your platform to talk about it – you may just convince a few potential residents to put in an application.
19. Share moving tips
Sharing moving tips shows that your apartment community cares about making the life of its future residents easier (and potentially smoother for your leasing staff). You can provide tips for packing, dealing with movers and what the process will be like for picking up your keys.
20. Share Memes
Memes are everywhere, and it’s always a good idea to follow the latest trends. So try to come up with a few cheeky ideas that will give your followers a laugh. And if you thought that you couldn’t do a good meme about apartments, just take a look at these examples:
When in doubt, repurpose content!
Coming up with unique and engaging content ideas can be exhausting and frustrating at times. So when in doubt, repurpose an old post into something new! Take an old feed post and turn it into a Reel or an interactive story.
When it comes to Instagram, consistency is the key; that’s why it is so helpful to have plenty of content at hand. Create and experiment; practice makes the master.
If content generation still feels overwhelming, contact a Respage expert to learn more about our Social Media Management solutions to help manage your social media accounts.
