Instagram, the remarkable app for sharing photos and video with clever and creative filters, just turned 3 years old. One surprising fact is that even though Instagram has built up a user base of more than 150 million people who have shared more than 16 billion photos(!), it has yet to make a single dime. All that is about to change as Instragram begins allow ads in photostreams before the end of the year. To compete with Twitter’s Vine, Instagram has also introduced the capability to record very short videos no more than 15 seconds long. The length and size of these videos makes them ideal for sharing. Here is a brief introduction to who is on Instagram now and how professionals in multi-family can take advantage of this valuable tool to generate new revenue.

Instagram is ideal for marketing apartment complexes for a number of reasons. It can deliver stunning photos of properties to a targeted segment with searchable keywords that capture their attention. According to the Pew Research Center, Instagram is popular with young urban professional women, age 18-29, and draws a significant base of African American and Latinos. Those characteristics matches extremely well with the demographics of renters as identified by the National Multi Housing Council (NMHC). The NMHC reported that 57% of renters are under 30. In major urban centers in the US, apartments make up between 30 to 50% of the housing market. Single females are the most common household type for renters, representing 28% of renters of apartments built from from 1990-2011.

So Instagram is ideal for motivating the audience most likely to be in the market for apartments. It has already become a high impact, low cost way of generating sharable content across social networks, especially Facebook, and are frequently found on Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest. To make sure that Instagrams can be shared on other popular services like Foursquare, the company maintains an rapidly evolving social network connection guide.

Now with in-stream advertising images and short video, apartment owners will be able to connect with their target audience in a way that was impossible before now. Some apartment complex owners have already begun mastering the format, as pointed out in The Art of Instagram for Apartments, produced by theApartment Internet Marketing Conference.

UDR Apartments has been very successful in finding the right approach to Instagram. They display professionally composed photos on the UDR website, but their Instagram page has a spontaneous feel that registers as more authentic with the target demographic. In this example, notice how they used a light filter to sharpen the colors in low light. The hashtags (#) help them be discovered regional rental searches. The likes help them because UDR can look at their individual profiles and find out types of pictures and subjects these users prefer.

Here are eight more great examples of multi-family businesses who are leading the field in their use of Instagram:

CMC Apartments

DTN Management

Planned Property Management

Drexelbrook Apartments

Glenwood Management

Milestone Management

The Pointe Brodie Creek

Eleven 

All indicators show that Instagram is going to be a powerful tool for management companies although it is still to early to determine the actual return on investment. What’s your Instagram strategy?  We’d love to hear your experiences with Instagram or photo-sharing on social media.