6
Ways to Utilize P
More Leads to Y
By Jon Simpson
T
oday’s residents are not
just relying on Facebook
recommendations or Craigslist
to find their next multifamily apartment
home. They are turning to alternative
tools as well for research, guidance, and
inspiration, such as on-line bookmark and
picture-sharing site Pinterest.
What once was a site for teens to share
crafts and recipes with friends, is now
a profitable social media platform for
savvy marketers. With more than 150
million monthly users, Pinterest provides
a refreshing way to maintain and enhance
your search engine optimization
(SEO) efforts. While Pinterest relates
more to social shares and engagement
metrics rather than technical SEO
tactics and back links, the pinning
platform spurs more than 2 billion
searches each month. Additionally,
more than 250 million of those monthly
searches are visual searches — opening
the door for significant multifamily
marketing potential.
How do you build (and maintain) a
strong presence on Pinterest? Below, we
explore a few ways to get started and
make the most of this growing social
media platform.
1. Start a Business Account
The first step is ensuring you create
a business account and not personal as
this will give you access to the Pinterest
ads manager and analytics tracking. Use
your property’s full name in your account,
and be sure to include all necessary
descriptive information in your Pinterest
bio, including contact information, logos,
and any community amenities or features
you would like to highlight.
30 | TRENDS AUGUST 2019
2. Create Your Boards
Pinterest boards are the topics by
which you organize your content. You
should create boards that showcase your
property (rooms, amenities, events), as
well as boards that provide tips and tricks
for commonly searched apartment topics.
Make sure not to go overboard with the
number of boards so that you can keep all
of them active, and create descriptions
for each one. Consider creating the
following boards:
•
•
•
•
•
Interior decorating tips
Neighborhood guides
Easy recipes for entertaining
Space-saving tricks
Household hacks or craft ideas
4. Develop a Strategy &
Be Consistent
While Pinterest may operate a little
different than other social sharing
networks, that does not mean you can
create an account and occasionally
log on to pin posts. Just like your other
platforms, it’s crucial to develop and
maintain a consistent sharing strategy,
regularly check analytics, and continually
engage with other users. Strategy is at the
core of building a following, spreading
brand awareness, and enhancing your
SEO efforts.
3. Research & Include
Keywords
Perhaps one of the most important
aspects of Pinterest is to include
appropriate keywords. Each “pin”
needs to contain keywords in the title or
description to increase its relevance in
search engines and direct more people to
your boards. To accomplish this, you will
need to conduct thorough research on
your target residents to discover
what they are most interested in and
searching for online. Pinterest offers a
guided search tool to help find more
relevant results and narrow down the
focus of searches. Once you type in a
keyword or topic into the search query,
Pinterest will suggest semantically-related
modifiers, which indicate some of the
most popular search queries related to
your topic. Keep track of these popular
queries and past them into a document
that you can keep on hand when pinning
new content to your boards.
www.aamdhq.org