How To Find And Improve Online Reviews Of Your Housing Properties

By Alexandra Brown on February 27, 2016

College students always have preferences. Whether it’s regarding favorite dining and drinking locations, study spots or coffee shops, they’ll have their reasons.

They’re the same with their living spaces on campus. Most college students end up living in apartments or houses, as opposed to university housing like dorms, their sophomore, junior and senior years on campus.

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It’s inevitable then, that they are going to have their preferences for these spaces. These could include rent, location, size, amenities offered and pet restrictions.

Another thing very common among college students is the use of social media, which is why this is the platform they choose most often for reviewing living spaces.

Student housing property managers would be best off finding online reviews of their companies on various social media platforms. These could include Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and even Yik Yak.

College students might choose to post statuses on their personal Facebook accounts of complaints about their housing property managers, or even post on their friends’ walls with complaints.

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They can do the same on Twitter, and with both Facebook and Twitter, students have the option of tagging their housing property managers/companies, assuming those organizations have accounts on those platforms.

Reddit is also a popular social media platform for college students in general, but specifically in regards to posting about housing on campus. The platform is more question/answer based than Facebook or Twitter, and students often post anonymous questions about the best housing companies on campus, their reputations, previous experiences other students have had, etc.

A newer social media platform that has become especially popular with college students specifically is Yik Yak. No account is necessary — solely downloading the app onto your smartphone will allow for anonymous posting based on geographic location.

The app simply consists of a newsfeed of anonymous posting based on the user’s geographic location.

In general, reviews tend to contain complaints, which are negative. These can consist of things like students’ complaints about rules in their leases they believe are unfair, problems with amenities and utilities, and maintenance issues.

If any of these problems have occurred under your management, there are always ways to improve reviews to make your company more appealing to students.

One common way to improve reviews and overall service is to offer surveys to your tenants. Drop a survey in each of your tenants’ mailboxes with a few questions regarding maintenance, satisfaction with amenities and service in general, and any other concerns.

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Most college students won’t want to bother with surveys. This is why offering an incentive is essential with this strategy. Before the questions appear, make it known to the student that if they do complete the survey by the date provided, they will, for example, get entered in a raffle for a gift card or some other monetary incentive.

Offering an incentive definitely increases the chances of your survey getting completed, and with truthful and accurate answers. And from the survey comes ideas on ways to improve your service, and thus reviews, that show up online and are accessible to anyone.

Another way to improve reviews is to comment on posts or tweet back at unhappy students, asking them how you can help improve their situations. You can also send out weekly updates or newsletters via email to your tenants, letting them know which problems you’ve taken care of. It’s important to let your tenants know that you are improving things, so they know their complaints are being heard.

On the other hand, if reviews you come across on social media platforms seem to be positive, it’s definitely beneficial to make it known to the public.

Make an effort to share certain posts containing positive reviews that get posted on Facebook. This would assume that your company has a Facebook page. If you don’t have one, get one.

If you come across tweets on Twitter either tweeting at your company for something positive, or mentioning your company in the tweet, re-tweet them. You want to get your name out there for college students to see. The more you share, re-post and re-tweet, the more often your name shows up on search engines like Google.

Another way to share your positive reviews is within your weekly updates/newsletters. In addition to mentioning the responses you’ve been giving to tenants with problems, share the positive reviews you’ve found via social media. If students see that other students are satisfied, they may have a change of opinion.

Once good news and reviews get circulated via email, students may feel more inclined and more comfortable to reach out when they’re having problems. In turn, the reputation of your company becomes greatly improved.

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