In fact, finding and tapping into the networks of your friends and fans online is the ultimate in leveraging social media. “The power of social media as a marketing tool is almost solely in making your business visible not to your residents or followers alone, but to all of their friends and followers,” Bonardi says. “It’s not about getting your name out to your existing network. It’s about getting your name to hit the news feeds of thousands of people who aren’t connected to you yet.”
That’s exactly the goal of San Francisco–based RentMineOnline, an automated referral service that launched in 2007 and leverages the Facebook Connect app—the same tool The Washington Post uses to tag its articles—to entice a community’s residents to do the marketing for the firm’s multifamily clients. Based on the same tried-and-true programs that have always paid existing residents for referrals that result in leases, RentMineOnline lets residents easily recommend an apartment community to their Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, or e-mail networks. If one of those referrals results in a new lease (which RentMineOnline can accurately track via friends lists coupled with unique URL click-throughs), the resident gets the promised referral fee. “We’re taking the same referral programs that existed for years in the industry, but instead of a flier or a door hanger, you’re tapping into the power of putting word-of-mouth marketing online,” says RentMineOnline founder and CEO Ed Siegel.
So far, that viral social power has generated nearly 7 million recommendations for Siegel’s clients’ properties. But it’s the algebra behind that number that truly shows the potential of social media. Those 7 million recommendations are the result of RentMineOnline reaching out to 1.5 million residents, of which only 3 percent—or just 45,000 residents—actually responded to its pitch. But those 3 percent were the gateway to almost 7 million other people—a factor of more than 155 times the actual touchpoints. “Because the average user has about 150 friends, if they put a recommendation out to their entire network, the numbers start adding up fast,” Spiegel says. “The Web is an immense and powerful tool.” And those friend-to-friend recommendations work. For Trevose, Pa.–based Korman Residential, which operates properties throughout Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Florida, engaging RentMineOnline led to 87 new leases in eight months, after residents sent recommendations to 40,000 of their friends suggesting they move in to their communities—a mere 0.02 percent referral-to-lease conversion, but Korman would not have otherwise had ready access to those new residents.
