Social media
How Social Are You?
Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms can help tell your story and build connections.
By Sarah Hoban |
“Almost
90 percent of my clients use social media,” says John Orr, CCIM, vice president
of Colliers Retail Services Group in Charleston, S.C. “If your clients all use
telephones to communicate and you use a pigeon to carry letters, are you best
serving your clients?”
Okay,
maybe your clients aren’t using social media. (Of course, how would you know if
you’re not using it?) Even if they’re not, Orr says, you can bet your
competition is tweeting, posting, blogging, and researching your clients
online.
Yes,
it’s still true that commercial real estate is a face-to-face business. But to
get to that face, you need a connection. Sales calls used to be way to start
the conversation. Today, the conversation starts on social media.
But if
you’re not a big user of social media, it can seem intimidating. Which platform
should you use? What should you say? How often should you post? Unfortunately,
there is not a universal, one-size-fits-all approach.
What is
universal, says Jennifer Ortado, marketing manager at Compass Commercial Real
Estate Services in Bend, Ore., is the need to provide value to clients.
“Content is king,” she says. “Each platform gives you a different opportunity
to share your voice. Within each platform, what type of information are those
followers looking to gain?”
Social
media has redefined how we communicate and to make the most of it, you have to
tailor your message to the platform, not only its own rules and restrictions
but also the expectations of your audience. Commercial Investment Real Estate
surveyed CRE pros to provide a look at the major platforms and how they use
them.
LinkedIn:
Keeping It Professional
Even professionals
who do little else with social media create profiles on the LinkedIn site,
which boasts 300 million members. It’s a
good first step: “People have to know how to find you,” says Gant Hill, CCIM,
president of Gant Hill & Associates in Louisville, Ky.
Once
you’ve set up a profile, it becomes a showcase for your professional expertise.
You can post links to articles or blog posts you’ve written, news stories that
you’re mentioned in, and other articles with sharable professional information.
Others
share, too, which makes LinkedIn a valuable research tool. “Before I make a
call, I go into LinkedIn and pull up the client’s bio, résumé,
and links to their company,” says Ethan Offenbecher, CCIM, a broker at Coldwell
Banker Commercial in Austin, Texas. “It’s a fantastic tool for researching both
clients and companies in preparation for calls or presentations.”
Especially
valuable are its specialized discussion groups. CCIMs have established several
LinkedIn groups, but there are almost 3,000 commercial real estate groups
available. Participating in just one or two is a good way to increase your
exposure, Offenbecher says. “When you post and tag to groups, it gets the word
out in multiples,” he says. “Instead of just reaching your own connections, it
reaches the group members as well.”
Twitter:
News in 140 Characters
In the
early days of Twitter, “there were no rules,” Orr says. “People would tweet out
ridiculous things like, ‘I had Cheerios for breakfast.’” These days, you can
still find plenty of frivolous Twitter postings, but its brevity and reach have
also made it a powerful marketing implement.
Orr is a
big fan of Twitter. He has his own feed and also manages the feed for the
Colliers Charleston office and for the South Carolina CCIM Chapter. He pushes
out content links to his own blog, as well as articles to share. He also posts
links to industry news or local happenings affecting the real estate market.
There’s
more leeway in Twitter content and tone, Orr notes. While his professional
feeds stick to real estate, on his personal feed, “I’m not quite as strict on
myself. It can be a little more fun or whimsical than LinkedIn.” He admits to
tweeting pictures of Charleston’s fantastic sunsets and sunrises as well as
posting tweets about hobbies or other personal subjects. His criteria: “It has
to be current, relevant, and interesting.”
However,
his own cardinal rule is that he does not post listings. “It compromises the
integrity of the newsfeed when you push your listings out,” Orr says. “If I want
to see an ad, I’ll get your newsletter or subscribe to your email updates, but
don’t gum up my Twitter account with your listings. That’s not what I’m there
for. I’m looking for 140 characters or less of insightful, current, relevant
content.”
While “you
can’t tweet a deal,” Orr notes, you can “create a foundation for the
relationship, and then you make a deal from there.” He credits social media use
for connections that led to numerous deals, including a local attorney who
followed him on Twitter. “We didn’t know each other, but as it turns out, we
were across the street from each other,” he says. The attorney’s brother-in-law
was opening a restaurant, and Orr found him “one of the coolest restaurant
spaces in Charleston.”
Other
Twitter users create their own newsfeeds to follow information on various
topics. Robert Zavakos, CCIM, director at NAI Dayton in Dayton, Ohio, decided
to capitalize on that. “When I first saw Twitter, I wondered, what is it good
for?” he says. “I saw people putting listings on there and thought: Would I
look at a listing on Twitter? I don’t think so. But I enjoyed reading the
brief, condensed bits of information.”
One day,
he saw a ticker symbol and got an idea. He began to collect retail
capitalization rates from around the country and started the feed
@retailcaprates. Every day, he posts five to 10 different rates on current
triple net lease offerings. Nothing else. “It is basically snapshot of an
existing NNN deal,” he says. “Tweet example: Walgreen’s 5.5 percent cap rate, 25
year, absolute net ground lease, Austin, TX.”
To date
he’s tweeted more than 2,669 NNN retail offerings. “This is a tool for someone
who has an asset to sell but might not know how to price it,” he says. “They
can look at my Twitter feed and pick out [similar sales] from different parts
of the country and use that as a tool to set a price for their asset.” The
account currently has 2,000 followers; Zavakos says he limits the followers to
commercial real estate professionals who buy, sell, or develop properties, so,
“my Twitter feed is a great source of CRE information — not just cap rates,” he
says.
Facebook:
Getting Personal
Opinions
are split on the use of Facebook as a professional social media tool. Many see
it solely as the most personal, used to share family pictures or updates with
friends. But that may be an outdated perception. More than 400 of Fortune 500
companies have corporate Facebook pages, including top companies such as
Walmart, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Berkshire Hathaway, Apple, Phillips 66, General
Motors, Ford Motors, General Electric, and Valero Energy, according to a
University of Massachusetts 2014 study.
But the
personal aspect of Facebook is exactly what appeals to Hill. “I like to know
more about the people I’m communicating with,” he says. Hill does post personal
photos and news on his Facebook page, as a way of showing people who he is.
“I’m a relationship broker,” he says. “When I work with a client, I work with
them from start to finish, and I work on a personal level. When someone hires a
real estate person, they get to know them pretty well, and it helps to like
them and to feel a connection to them.”
Because
Facebook posts can be longer, it’s also become an effective storytelling
platform, Ortado says. Compass Commercial’s Facebook page is aimed at local
clients, whereas Ortado targets a broader audience with Twitter. “On Facebook,
we share community events, company culture, and city information as well as our
news releases and listing info,” she says. “But we try to be careful with the
frequency of such posts as we want to be a resource and not use social
platforms as a sales tool.”
Blogging:
The Longer Story
There
are no word count limits for blogs (although you’re wise to be concise), and
you can definitely develop a personal style, which in turn, can appeal to
clients, current or future.
“At
times, commercial real estate can be perceived as a little unapproachable,”
says Kadie Pangburn, marketing coordinator at Crunkleton & Associates in
Huntsville, Ala. “Blogging has created an avenue for us to make our company
more accessible to the public. It gives us a platform to break down some of
these concepts and some of the complicated jargon that we use.”
Besides
educational articles, Crunkleton’s blog, which Pangburn manages, also features
client spotlights. “We’ll talk to the owners and let them tell their story,”
she says, “whether it’s a new business or just a new space.” The blog posts
also include pictures from the business, which makes an attractive package to
share with local media as well as with friends and family of the business
owners.
“It does
great things for them, but it also does great things for us,” Pangburn says.
“It gets our name into the community. It really helps strengthen our
relationships with our clients and shows that we’re here for them, even after
the deal is signed.”
The
company also uses the blog as a conversation platform. “We’ve created posts
announcing new retail developments and then we ask the public what retailers
they would like to see there, she says. “It helps us direct our pursuit of
retailers for that space.” It also gives the company leverage with retailers by
illustrating existing demand, she adds.
The blog
also streamlines Crunkleton’s PR efforts, as several local reporters follow the
blog. “It’s been a good way to communicate with them instead of having to run
after them to get their attention.”
Podcasting:
Hear Here
Justin
Lamontagne admits that making podcasts may not be for every real estate
professional — but listening to them should be. “You can’t believe the amount
of information and resources available on podcasts,” he says. “And the nature
of our business is that we’re in the car a lot,” so it’s a time-efficient way
to access those resources, he adds.
BUT DOES IT
REALLY WORK?
Does all that social media relationship building ever pay off
with a deal? Here’s what CCIM members have to say about
their own experiences using social media.
“We seem to get the most response from Facebook. We have
sold two properties from it as well as completed one lease.”
— Lee Wheeler, CCIM, NAI Wheeler
“We often get private feedback from interested parties, and
recently sold a large historic building by posting a picture of
it on Instagram.”
— Gant B. Hill, CCIM, Gant Hill & Associates
“I reach out to vendors to build relationships with them so we
can refer business to each other. This strategy landed me an
assignment to find a property for a local financial institution
and generated $535,000 sales transaction.”
— David Monroe, Bellator Apartment Group
“My greatest social media triumph came about last year. I
had been interacting with another Twitter account that was
focused on commercial real estate in my market. We regularly
commented on and retweeted each other’s content. I knew
him only by his name but not company or title. One day I came
across his full credentials and immediately made a cold call.
When I said my name on the phone, he knew right away who
I was. He was happy to set up a meeting and invited the CFO
from his company. Three months later I closed a $7.5 million
deal with his company, one of the largest developers in Canada.
— Adam Powadiuk, CCIM, First National Financial LP
|
A broker
with NAI/The Dunham Group in Portland, Maine, Lamontagne is contributing to the
mix. Last year he launched “Commercial Real Estate Elite: Broker to Brokers,” a
30-minute free podcast available on iTunes. Lamontagne interviews a top broker
from each state, to give listeners best practices, tips, and resources.
“Getting
it up and running was certainly the biggest hurdle,” he says. He hired a
consultant to help him, and it took him about four months to master the medium.
He estimates that he now spends about one to two hours a week preparing the
shows, which are underwritten by a sponsor. “Interviewing real estate brokers
has been a breeze,” he says. “I’m just talking shop, which is what I do on a
daily basis.”
He
reports good feedback on the podcasts and promotes them on his LinkedIn and
Twitter feeds. Twitter, in particular, “has been a phenomenal resource for me.”
Measuring
ROI
There
are a variety of ways to quantify social media use — a platform’s analytics
tools, the number of followers or “likes” — but users agree that most of the
benefits are often intangible or long-term. “It isn’t something that directly
results in money in your pocket,” Hill says. “It’s a combination of things that
you can do to make yourself more valuable to someone else.”
But
users also agree social media is simply part of work they were doing anyway. “I
read different websites and trade publications and if I find them interesting,
I’m going to push them out,” Orr says. “It’s going to take me a few seconds
push out a link in social media, and when I do, I’ve created value for my
comrades in the social media circles.”
Social
media, adds Offenbecher, “helps you become a reputable source of information,
and with that, you earn trust. As people trust you and understand that you’re
an expert in the market, then they want to do business with you.”
Sarah
Hoban is a business writer based in the Chicago area.