Questions for Kyle – How to Use Social Media (Part 1)

Image by Asthma Helper via Flickr

Social Media. It’s the elephant in the room for many property managers and landlords. You know you should be using it, but you don’t know where to start. And you may not be entirely convinced that you do need to be using it. After all, you’ve been filling your vacancies just fine without it so far, right?

Maybe, be even if that was the case, a new generation of renters are moving out of the parents’ basements and into their own place. This generation uses social media for everything, including something like finding a place to live. It’s important to begin your social media campaign now in order to connect with these new renters.

So, where do you begin? The first thing you should do is create a Twitter account. Twitter is a site that shares short messages (140 characters or less) with the followers. One great thing about Twitter is that you can customize your name. For example, our company account is @seattlerentals (don’t worry about the @ symbol, that will be explained later). You should create a name for your property or company as soon as possible, even if you’re not intending to launch a campaign right away. The longer you wait to claim a name, the more time it gives someone else to swoop in and snatch it! You should also create a Tumblr, WordPress or Blogger account too. If the name you want isn’t available, try to register it on a different site.

In the coming weeks, we’ll start discussing how to most effectively use these tools, but the first step is simply getting the name you’d like to run your social media campaign under. Next week, I’ll write on how to use different blogging tools in your social media campaign. Feel free to look at the way we use social media by looking at our Facebook Page and Twitter accounts.