Using Twitter For New Student Housing Leases

Twitter has an amazing search feature that allows you to find people talking about things in real-time. We would perform a daily (sometimes hourly if an orientation was scheduled) search of relevant keyword strings such as "accepted to ABC University" "ABC University orientation" "look for apartments near:City" etc. Over the course of a few months, we identified hundreds of new incoming students! From the community Twitter account, we then reached out to those students welcoming them to the University, inviting them to open houses and promoting a drawing at the upcoming housing fair. There were days where we leased over 30 beds!

It's important to understand that Twitter was a small part of a larger strategy. We were set back from the campus so it was key that we generate awareness before the beginning of the school year. Twitter allowed us to do just that! Inviting them to the drawing at the housing fair or orientation table allowed us to capture their contact information and build our email list. We would have several hundred new forms filled out every time we did a push on campus!!

You'll notice that I didn't mention any hard sells. Soft sells work well on social media. Instead of blasting our specials, how many beds we had left or requesting a deposit right then and there, we built relationships with the students so THEY were empowered to make the decision to lease.