Designing for the Social Media Influencer

Multifamily marketers are in love with the Instagrammable Moment. It’s a powerful way to broadcast your apartment property’s awesome amenities and lifestyle to potential renters—best of all, it costs absolutely nothing because your residents are the ones posting and hashtagging the property.

Apartment communities that have invested in concept-based demographic design backed by research see better results for attracting interest via social media. So just think what can happen when the design is conceived with social media influencers in mind.

“We draw them in with a number of smaller vignettes throughout the property. When we design a wider variety of interesting spaces, this subtly encourages residents to take more pictures and selfies,” says Lindsey Nation, West Coast Design Director in HPA Design Group’s Newport Beach Office.

Social Media images capture the authentic look of the property more accurately than professional overall shots that normally reside on a property’s website. When residents post their own pictures, they reinforce the culture of your apartment community by sharing what it’s really like to live there, versus just a few beautifully rendered shots of amenity spaces.

Imagine the quantity and quality of content if you invited the right blogger—who has the following you want to engage—to stay at your property for a weekend or a whole week. “We are now designing a guest unit for this purpose, much like a model, but this unit will host a micro influencer for a certain amount of time so that they can get to know the property and share it with their followers.” A combination of bold and subtle design cues will encourage lots of amazing photo opps.

All social media mavens love to post selfies with unique backgrounds, so rotating art galleries that incorporate local talent and tell the story of the neighborhood are effective for creating vignettes in model units and common areas. You can also entice residents and visiting micro influencers with a strategically placed neon light, groovy hanging chairs or a patterned backdrop in the dog wash station (pet amenities are absolutely a big part of this movement). Allow your residents to interact with unexpected touches like a life-sized Superman wax figure or an oversized Connect Four. These are just a few ideas to attract the everyday influencer. The more creative the photo opp, the more likely your property will go viral.

“We make it eye-catching, eclectic and interesting so that people want their photograph with it or in it,” Nation adds. You’ll capture great organic content and images—not just driven by the marketing team, but by the personality of the property itself.