Leasing Apartments Directly From Social Media Is Coming

TikTok is no longer social media’s underdog. It has become the first non-Facebook app to achieve 3 billion downloads – and don’t forget: 19% of its users are age 39 or older. 

It has become the app to emulate, with snackable, vertical video making an appearance on almost every other social app.

Greer Kimsey and Lauren Sloat from StreetSense, a national design, marketing and consulting firm, spoke to it and other emerging trends during the Multifamily Social Media Summit last week in Napa, Calif.

TikTok is expected to see its largest spend in paid advertising year-over-year and “this is where the industry is heading,” Sloat said. Apartment marketers will not be far behind, using these platforms for more direct selling (leases) to prospective residents. 

Social commerce and shoppable ad formats are taking center stage and social media is shortening the customer journey. For example, advantageous apartment communities are looking to put their floorplans on social media so their followers can start their purchase from that point.

Instagram checkout has more than 130 million users to tap and reveal product tags in shopping posts each month. Pinterest has buyable pins where brands can tag products in shoppable pins and creators can tag products used in their own Idea Pins and then lead directly back to the brand to checkout.

Twitter is testing Twitter Shops, using a “View Shops” call-to-action button on their profiles, from which business profiles can showcase 50 clickable products that link out to the brand’s website so users can make purchases.

TikTok and Shopify have integrated and installed across Shopify’s social commerce channel with TikTok allowing sellers to reach consumers more directly where they are. 

And sure enough, the panel said of marketers that use short-form video such as TikTok, 95 percent say they are increasing their spend on those types of channels this year. 

Short-Version Video Harvests New Audiences

TikTok and similar platforms such as Reels on Instagram are all great ways for marketers to get in front of new audiences, the panelists said.

Others to watch include YouTube’s platform Shorts has had over 5 trillion views and the company hasn’t even started to promote it. Pinterest’s channel is Idea Pins and SnapChat offers Spotlight. 

Facebook’s Reels, which is trying so hard to compete with TikTok, they said, are soon adding new ad formats “so now is a good time to start experimenting with that platform.”

Sloat said, “TikTok, in a rare reason to copy Instagram, now has stickers and these calls to action are a great way to skyrocket engagement.”

Storefronts “look a little bit different these days,” with the metaverse and social commerce paving the way for a new way to shop, Kimsey said. The metaverse is the next storefront for social media marketers as it offers virtual worlds (VR), digital meet-ups and augmented reality-driven (AR) filters. 

“Real estate is more than just physical spaces,” Kimsey said. “It’s now an immersive, virtual one. Facebook’s Horizon Work Rooms use avatars that can display much-improved social cues and has 3-D backgrounds – even though they are being shown on a 2-D computer screen. 

“Roblox enables virtual birthday parties for kids, among many other things. This lets those invited truly feel like they are in the room and not just watching a video.”

Augmented reality (AR) filters are used on Pinterest and can indicate, for example, where the furniture in a picture of a room was purchased. “In the very near future, you can’t design brands without AR and VR involved,” Kimsey.

Audio-Only Social Media Making Noise

Audio-only social media is still evolving, but is growing. 

LinkedIn is launching its own podcast network; Twitter may be adding a built-in podcast tab; Amazon launched Amp, which is more about music than chatting; Spotify acquired multiple podcast and analytics firms to enhance its product; Clubhouse is “still kicking” and just added a text-based chat room; and Aawaz is the largest spoken-word audio and podcast network in Indian languages. 

Audio production is much easier and costs less than video, the panel said. One apartment marketing idea offered is to have a group of residents speak as a panel about the reasons why they like to live at the community.

Digital communities are more impactful than ever. 

Facebook has 1.8 billion monthly users on its Reels and Stories channels. Twitter is testing its communities out. LinkedIn has more than 2 million active user groups and they are more intimate because they only let in individuals – not companies. Discord is growing beyond gaming. Reddit has 52 million daily active users. These communities are great at creating thought leadership. 

Paid Social and User-Generated Content Emerge

Paid social is growing in importance and user-generated content (UGC) is going to play an even larger role. 

“UGC helps to facilitate the sense of community that consumers seek. It encourages customers to get excited about your product or service, making them want to make a purchase and share their own experience as a way to be involved in that community,” Kaitlin Ramby, author, “The Ultimate Guide to UGC,” said in a comment shared by the panel.

Also helping to bring engagement leverage, Instagram Collab enables marketers to expand their reach without having to pay for it by allowing co-author posts on Reels. When a user invites someone to be a collaborator on their post, the content can be shared on both users’ timelines. The post’s engagement statistics will also be streamlined with a shared like count, view count, and comments section.

Community, amongst your creators and followers, is more important than ever as both creators and your audiences look to associate with brands that share their personal values. 

After all, having a purpose-driven brand is good for business, Kimsey said. Companies prosper when they tell their customers how they are going to “save the world” and express their core values about fairness. Consumers are beginning to truly “look for this,” Kimsey said.