How to Use 2021 Social Media Holidays to Boost Your Resident Engagement

Who else gets super motivated at the beginning of the year? Do you get really energized and commit to completely revolutionizing your property’s social media strategy only to fall off by February? It’s okay – we can honestly say we are all guilty of that. But the craziness of 2020 is in the rearview mirror, and a new year is upon us. 2021, we’re ready for you!

At Repli, we’re big on helping you optimize your current marketing efforts – and the easiest place to start is with your social media calendars. Why start there? We’re glad you asked. It only takes about 20 minutes to create a social media calendar that doubles as a resident event calendar.

Why You Need to Prioritize Social Media in 2021

Many community managers tell us that they understand that social media is important. But between resident events, managing leasing, and juggling daily responsibilities, it’s just hard to keep up. Completely understandable. But at the same time, we can make a strong argument for why social media should be a top priority. Here are a few of the top reasons:

• People are on social media an average of 2 hours and 22 minutes per day. 
• The majority of Millennials and Gen Zers will not go to your website. Instead, they will find you through your social media accounts. 
• A strong social media presence can improve local SEO. 

We can go on and on, but at the end of the day, a strong social media plan can improve your branded searches, drive engagement, promote your property via word of mouth, and ultimately. 

So, What Does That Have to Do With Your Resident Event Calendar

The biggest struggle for every community we work with is time. Unless you’re blessed with a large marketing team, there simply isn’t enough time in the day to accomplish everything you need and want to do. That’s why combining your resident event calendar with your social media campaigns can save time and kill two birds with one stone. 

Let’s jump into an example. January 14th is Dress Up Your Pet Day – a fun day for everyone. A social media holiday like this is great for apartments because there are so many ways you can take one holiday and turn it into several pieces of content.

Here are just a few ways you can create multiple pieces of content:

• Start a social media contest . Ask residents to post pictures of their pets in a cute costume and use a special hashtag to be entered to win a prize.
• Collaborate with a local business to offer a prize or host a socially distanced event. Team up with a local pet shop to create a fun prize package with toys, treats, and goodies for your furry residents, or invite a local veterinary office to host a vaccination clinic.
• Create a series of blog posts about pet-friendly attractions in your local area . If you have a blog, write about your pet-friendly community, local dog parks, or compile a list of dog-friendly restaurants in your town.
• Host a pet-friendly event for residents and potential renters . Invite current and potential renters to a puppy yoga night, yappy hour, or any kind of paw-ty where four-legged friends are welcome. Be sure to follow CDC’s guidelines for hosting events to ensure the health and safety of all attendees. 
• Create Facebook ads to promote your pet-friendly community.  Use images from your #DressUpYourPetDay events to show how great your community is. 

One social media holiday can easily create days or weeks worth of content that will get your current residents engaged while showing off how fun and welcoming your community is to potential renters. Just make sure you take a bunch of high-quality pictures and videos to share. 

How to Easily Manage Your Apartment Social Media and Resident Event Calendars

Planning and scheduling posts can feel like a huge ask – especially when you’re trying to plan out an entire year’s worth of content. But when you break it down into pieces, it’s pretty easy. Just follow these 3 simple steps. 

• Pick out the social media holidays you want to use this year.  A quick Google search of “2021 social media holidays” will bring up thousands of search results. Go through a make a quick list of your favorite social media holidays.
• Create a spreadsheet.  Google Drive is always a great resource when creating a content calendar. You can easily collaborate with your marketing team, property managers, or whoever is involved in sharing content. Create 12 sheets, one for each month, and create columns for all of the important information such as; publication date, content description, calls-to-action, pictures/videos, content description, and any notes or resources.
• Fill in the blanks and adjust throughout the year. Take the list of social media holidays and fill them in the content calendar. It was that easy. It only took a few minutes to brainstorm 12 months’ worth of social media content AND a resident event calendar. Now you have an idea of what you need to accomplish throughout the year.

Now that your juices are flowing add in anything other ideas you have. You can also check out this great blog post with 15 social media ideas for apartments for extra inspiration. 

Hopefully, by the time you read the end of this blog post, you’ve come up with 12 months of social media content and resident events. If you’re still hurting for some big ideas, we’ve got you covered. Check out our FREE eBook of uncommon social media holidays – we’ve even come up with resident event suggestions for each holiday. You can download our eBook by clicking the link here.