Self-storage is a concept everyone understands, and the truth is, self-storage owners really need to grab the attention of consumers if they REALLY want to boost their bottom line. One great way is to set up a dedicated Twitter page for your business and make sure you have someone on your team that monitors that page. Twitter is an outstanding platform to stay engaged with your customers, to respond immediately to any issues and to promote discounts and new services.

Facebook is another really good social media platform, because you can keep your existing customers informed about new services and new offers, while also promoting your business to prospective consumers. You can also post valuable and informative content, and – most importantly – post videos that humanize your business and employees to connect with your consumers. And don’t forget that when customers “like” you on Facebook, that they are also promoting your services to all their friends who may not be aware of your services. Think of it as kind of a free referral system by existing customers to people who likely have the same interests, wants and needs, in other words, your perfect target market.

LinkedIn is another platform that offers outstanding opportunities for people in the self-storage industry. There are thousands of business owners on LinkedIn who you can target as potential customers. LinkedIn offers a sponsored email service that identifies businesses that are geographically appropriate to your business, which lets you compose emails targeting each company. The sponsored email is a pay service, but may be well worth the price, given how many marketing opportunities are presented on LinkedIn.

I also think Snapchat offers some very cool opportunities, because it is a fully visual platform where you can be a little bit more casual and entertaining in terms of your marketing approach. You can create contests in which you challenge users to take photos of the most unusual items they would keep in a self-storage (keep it clean) unit, and the most creative entries win some kind of freebie from your business. You can also create live stream events on Snapchat that give people a peek into your self-storage units and unique features (temperature controlled), and show them examples of some really cool things other customers keep in their units (vintage cars, etc).