Craigslist Posting Best Practices

Overview

Craigslist remains one of the best, most cost-effective platforms for advertising available units, driving leads, and generating leases but it also comes with some unique challenges! In this article, we share our pro-tips to help you generate better results while avoiding common Craigslist pitfalls.

Staying visible is very important

Craigslist experiences heavy traffic, especially in busy markets. It's very important to post regularly throughout the day to ensure your ads are easy for potential residents to find. If you post infrequently your ads will become buried beneath other ads and may never be seen. This is because users typically only browse the first 1-2 pages of Craigslist before altering their search criteria. In most markets, ads only remain on page one for approximately one hour, and in really busy markets, for only about 30 minutes. 

Use Current Photography

The rental market is extremely competitive so it's essential to make a positive first impression on potential residents who see your ads on Craigslist! Make sure the images you use are high-quality and provide an accurate representation of the apartment available or of the community amenities and surroundings. 

Avoid Ad Flagging and Removal

To solve the issue of an ad becoming buried or lost on Craigslist, your first impulse may be to post a large number of ads or to post the exact same ad over and over. Craigslist doesn’t like this. In fact, this activity is viewed as spam and can result in your ads being flagged and removed. 

Having your ad flagged on Craigslist means it was identified as problematic. This can happen for a few different reasons: the Craigslist bot detects too much posting activity or ads that are too similar, or the Craigslist user community manually flags your ads. 

It's difficult to determine exactly why flagging happens but there are a number of things you can do to avoid it:

• Post from the correct location - The Craigslist platform does not permit posting in more than one city from the same account. For example, if you try to post ads in the Atlanta region from a computer in Oregon, Craigslist will flag and remove your ads. This is because Craigslist is designed as a hyperlocal search platform and they only promote local community advertisements.
• Titles Are Important - The title of your post is one of the most important components of your ad. PostEngine will create titles for you by picking 3 amenities at random to feature in each title. If you want to write your own title be clear and descriptive but avoid using all caps, exclamation points, emojis, or anything that might register as spam.
• Avoid Posting Identical Content - A Craigslist search results page that contains ads with similar content will appear spammy. While posting frequency is one of the keys to success, do not post the same ad content over and over again. Vary content by changing the featured image, the title, and the body copy on every post. PostEngine automates content variation, generating unique ads with content from your community website. This ensures your ads appeal to a greater number of prospects and that they're less likely to be flagged.

  • Pro Tip: Use the Custom Headers and Footers and Neighbourhood Description settings in PostEngine to improve the searchability of your ads and highlight information that might not be on your community website. Include info that will be appealing to renters such as unique amenities, surrounding zip codes, major employers, and landmarks.

• Timing is Everything - Craigslist has rules about how often users are permitted to post. Posting too many ads in a short amount of time can trigger flagging and ad removal. We recommend leaving at least an hour between every post. PostEngine's Scheduled Posting feature can help with this!

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