The Multifamily Social Media Summit was a two-day event that brought together experts in the industry to discuss the latest trends and best practices for social media in the multifamily housing space. Attendees had the opportunity to hear from various speakers and participate in panel discussions. Several “Hot Takes” emerged throughout the event, offering valuable insights and takeaways. In this recap, we’ll dive into some key highlights and takeaways from the summit.
This year, we had a significant presence at MSMS, with Rent Dynamics becoming the Official Podcast Sponsor for the summit; Mike Wolber led some fantastic talks with industry leaders from all corners of Multifamily. Hit the subscribe button below to keep up to date for when all the episodes air!
Hot Takes from SMS
Information Access
Sierra Berg, Marketing Director at Pillar Properties, focuses 2023 on ensuring that prospects have access to the information they need right when they need it by investing in chatbot technologies, lead nurturing, or even improved website SEO.
GenZ Shift
Delany Duke, Director of Digital Services, and Mark Jennings, Social Media Specialist, at Landmark Properties, are looking to bring trends and practices from Student Housing as GenZ shifts into Conventional Housing. Creating more engaging and property-specific content, specifically through video and social that is fun and “sells the dream” in an authentic and genuine way.
Hospitality First
Ryan Funt, Senior Director of Marketing at Fitzrovia, is taking notes from the hospitality industry with how they build these vibrant communities through enhanced amenities, better customer experiences through every touchpoint on their leasing journey and pulls the resident in to help drive better retention.
CDP – Customer Data Platforms
This year, Andrew Davis, MSMS’ Keynote, weighed in with our Hot Takes and is all-in with Customer Data Platforms (CDPs). Understanding that first-party data will be our ‘Get Out of Trouble’ Card as Cookie Restrictions increase, we can begin aggregating our data for marketing, leasing performance, residents, and property information. By centralizing this data, we can build more robust forecasting models and insights into our community performance.
Centralized Leasing Powered by AI
Laurel Zacher continues to show that putting the customers and leasing teams top of mind for Security Properties Residential creates more opportunities for success. As their VP of Marketing and Customer Engagement, they focus on improving the leasing journey for everyone who takes part through enhanced automation, more intelligent lead management, and follow-up protocols.
GA-4
Bozzuto’s Senior Marketing Analytics Manager, Xiyao Yang, took a minute after her insightful session with Daniel Paulino (VP of Digital Marketing) to dive a little deeper into the impact that GA-4 will have not only on the marketing teams but the communities in general. Focusing on how new analytics and strategies will evolve as new event logic is applied to marketing KPIs.
Fan Favorites
This year’s Multifamily Social Media Summit was not short of amazing speakers.
Kicking off the Summit this year, we say four incredible Workshops from Erica Byrum’s Social Media Strategy Best Practices, Short-Form Video Platforms with Delany Duke and Mark Jennings, Lacy Jungman and Lindsay Duffy sharing How the Best Storytellers Win, and a closer look into ChatGPT powered Social Media with Lidia Zaragoza.
Two standout favorites from Wednesday’s Workshops:
The Dynamic Duo – Lindsay Duffy and Lacy Jungman put on a session that excited and motivated people to pick up a camera. Exploring Storytelling Strategies That Work provided tactical examples of how your teams can leverage video marketing efforts and the importance that storytelling plays in those efforts. They also sat down with Rent Dynamic’s CRO and Host of Modern Multifamily, Mike Wolber, to further explore the industry. (Subscribe here to get notified of the episode airing.)
Lidia Zaragoza had a great take on how Marketing teams can start to Revolutionize Social Media Strategies with ChatGPT and MidJourney AIs. Reducing workload, expanding on creativity, and increasing content creation to levels we haven’t seen before. With the rise in popularity with ChatGPT integrations and workflow enhancements, it’ll quickly start to become table stakes for any company to have at least one form of ChatGPT to improve their product offerings.
Thursday featured an incredible Mentor Roundtable Q&A Session with Erica Byrum (AVP of Social Media, Apartments.com), Tamela Coval (Industry Principal, LivewireX), Lindsay Duffy (Director of Training and Marketing, Western Wealth Communities), Delany Duke (Director of Digital Services, Landmark Properties), Jamie Gorski (SVP, Experience Officer, GID Windsor Communities), Mark Jennings (Social Media Specialist, Landmark Properties), Carrie Polonsky (SVP, Talent Services, TI Communities), and Katie Terwilliger (Manager of People Operations, Cardinal Group Companies).
Julie Brade (MeasurementMarketing.io) and Ellen Thompson (Respage) also explored the true definition of Data-Driven Marketing and how marketers can build actionable insights when they have the correct tools in front of them; in some cases, it can be as simple as a tailored dashboard (shout-out to Rent Dynamics’ incredible product team for prioritizing features like this in our reporting, Executive Dashboard, and Leasing Dashboards).
Closing out the week on Friday, Priyanka Agarwal taught us how to Flip the Hate in the Online Circus by practicing the 4P Rule – Professional, Personalize, Polite, and Prudent. With more than 500,000 tailored responses to reviews of all types, her team at J Turner provided some amazing tips and tricks with tangible results.