The Role of Social Media in Commercial Property

The working title for this report was 'The Twitter paper'. Twitter is but one small example of the raft of tools for communicating, networking, commenting and creating that have been brought together under the umbrella called social media.

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Social media is everywhere and in a burst of creative energy reminiscent of the first dot com boom, every day new sites and models push the boundaries just that bit further.

For individuals a cornucopia of different channels offer an overwhelming choice of possible interactions but for the commercial user, the elephant in the room is how to monetise these services.

Social media and commercial property

At first sight to a property manager, say, or to a retail agent there is an extent to  which all this is of fringe importance at best. It is easy to laugh at nonsense on Twitter but the key question shouldn't concern what is stupid about it, but instead how a short messaging service can be smart and useful at an individual and corporate level. In the past couple of years traffic on Twitter has exploded, growing far beyond the geeks and hardcore social networkers into the corporate world.

In the world of social media, status is measured by such yardsticks as the number of your friends on Facebook, the number of people following you on Twitter or the number of people reading your Blog.  In much of the world of property, status is measured by the ability to attract work and successful projects from a network of contacts. The commercial property sector encourages graduates to "get out into the market" to make contacts because we know that improving their personal brand will enhance the chances of them earning revenue for the firm. 

Structure of report

This report begins with a brief discussion of what social media is and where it fits into the sprawling internet we have become used to.

The second section describes some examples of social media, and explores many of the opportunities for property professionals.

The third section describes which types of social media are likely to be of benefit to the various business functions covered by chartered surveyors.  There are threats in social media - if you do use it, you might get it wrong; and if you don't use it, you might miss out to your competition and surrender your online reputation to the discussions of others without having any input. Both sets of threats are discussed in Section 04.

Lastly, if you are persuaded that you should at least find out enough to prevent the threats, a summary of first steps has been provided to help you prioritise investment of time and resources in social media.

Acknowledgements

This report was commissioned by the management consultancy professional group and authored by Andrew Waller and Bob Thompson of Remit Consulting.

For more information

Management consultancy professional group
e mc.professionalgroup@rics.org