SOCIAL MEDIA FOR A HISTORIC OFFICE BUILDING: 18 MONTHS WITH THE UNION TRUST BUILDING

The Challenge

An office building is a hard account to run. Its audience is tenants, their employees, brokers, neighbors, and people who love old buildings, and none of them followed the account for the same reason. The Union Trust Building had more material than most: a 40-foot stained-glass dome, a 55-ton bank vault door, Gothic chapels on the roof, and a lobby full of restaurants. Its feed mostly covered events.

When we audited nearly two years of Facebook and Instagram data in November 2023, the numbers matched the feed:

• Reach was narrow. The accounts were reaching just 1.8% of the potential audience in the building’s top five cities, and had captured only 0.2% of it
• Events carried everything. Event posts led reach and engagement on both platforms, and they were most of what the accounts posted
• The audience wanted more. Followers were looking for the building’s features, the lives of its tenants, and community efforts, not only events

The Strategy: Instagram First, Building as Main Character

The audit became a 2024 plan with five goals: keep a consistent presence, expand audience share where it mattered, run Facebook and Instagram as one system, grow Instagram engagement and reach, and diversify the content. In practice that meant:

• Reels first. Instagram Reels with trending audio and on-screen text, where engagement was already highest
• Facebook as a reshare, not an afterthought. The same content, captioned for Facebook’s older audience
• Consistent stories. Polls, Q&As, and reaction sliders to turn followers into participants
• An information hub. Event announcements, amenities, and building news, so tenants had a reason to follow

The Series That Carried the Calendar

Monthly management started in December 2023 with eight feed posts and eight stories a month. Rather than filling slots one at a time, we built recurring series so every month already had its next episode:

• History. Throwback Thursday posts on the building’s past, and History with Charles, where the building’s longtime security supervisor walks through its stories. The vault episode, on the 55-ton Mosler door installed in 1918, drew 2,000 Instagram views
• Day in the Life. A six-part series: morning, midday, and evening in the building, then the property managers, engineers, and security team. Part 1 drew 2,155 Instagram views
• Meet the Staff. Short spotlights on the engineers and staff who run the building. The spotlight on engineer Dan reached 2,500 views on Facebook, the most of any Facebook post in the engagement
• Tenant spotlights and testimonials. Restaurants, new tenants, and interview-style testimonials from the firms that work there. The Speckled Egg spotlight drew 1,736 Instagram views
• Building highlights. The dome, the stained glass, the 10th-floor theatre, the art program, even the lobby carpet designed to echo the dome
• Restaurant collaborations. National Cocktail Day with the building’s restaurants as Instagram collaborators, National Pancake Day, and other food holidays

Events, Covered the Same Week

Tenant events stayed on the calendar, just not as the whole calendar. Each came with a set package: one to two hours on site, two reels, and five stories, with the first story posted live. Over the engagement we covered 15+ events, from happy hours and makers markets to a Taste of UTB tasting with five restaurants and a Make-A-Wish fundraiser with BNY Mellon that closed at more than $8,000 raised. We wrote the full event process up separately in the tenant event content playbook.

Production & Execution

• One shared tracker with a monthly calendar, per-post captions, and per-post Facebook and Instagram views, impressions, and engagement
• Content days around the building most months, so the series always had footage ready
• A local hashtag bank capped at 15 per post: #uniontrustbuilding, #downtownpittsburgh, #pittsburghhistory, #pittsburghlandmarks, and more
• Quarterly reports on reach, interactions, and follower growth for both platforms
• A leaner package from November 2024, four feed posts and four stories a month, with every tenant event run on an announcement, shoot, and recap cycle

The Numbers

Instagram, the platform the strategy put first, moved fastest. Quarterly Instagram reach went from 3,052 accounts in fall 2023 to 5,900 in Q1 2024 and 8,000 in Q2. Followers went from 821 to 910 to 1,004. In the first quarter of monthly management, Instagram content interactions went from 311 to 1,100 and Facebook interactions from 166 to 630, while Facebook followers grew from 216 to 244.

Across December 2023 to March 2025 the tracker logged 219 posts and stories, including 50 reels, and 49,738 Instagram views and 14,111 Facebook views.

What Changed Along the Way

Growth wasn’t a straight line. Interactions spiked in Q1 2024 and fell back in Q2: Instagram from 1,100 to 654, Facebook from 649 to 336. The Q2 report put it down to Facebook algorithm changes and a follower preference for static posts and carousels. The calendar followed the audience: from late summer 2024, the feed leaned more on carousels and graphics. Instagram reach kept growing through Q2 even as interactions dipped.

Key Takeaways

• Make the building the main character. A landmark has a story no other property can post. History and behind-the-scenes series gave the account an identity beyond events
• People outperform places. The staff spotlights and Day in the Life episodes were among the best-performing posts on both platforms
• Build series, not slots. A recurring format makes the monthly calendar easier to fill and gives followers a reason to come back
• Invite tenants in. Collaborations and testimonials put tenant brands on the building’s feed and the building on theirs
• Report quarterly and adjust. The dip in Q2 interactions changed the content mix. That only works if someone is looking at the numbers

Frequently Asked Questions