Commercial Real Estate Finance

Posts Tagged ‘social media marketing’

Back in October, I had the pleasure of attending the Philadelphia Real Estate Council‘s fourth quarter round table, where the topic was a departure from the group’s usual fare (capital markets, urban development opportunities, valuation). The subject of this meeting was “Social Media and Real Estate.” Three guest speakers shared their experience with social media, its challenges and opportunities. The underlying question throughout this conversation was this: when it comes to commercial real estate (in all of its forms), what is the ROI for social media marketing?

I’ve tackled this subject before, here on the Llenrock Blog, and I’m going to save us all a lot of hand-wringing by saying this: It is impossible to know the ROI for social media marketing, in commercial real estate or anything else.

So let’s stop talking about social media in these terms. It’s difficult to calculate the value of social media for the same reason it’s difficult to calculate the value of any marketing/advertising. There’s a lot of guess work, but we know when it works. And that’s the point all those people in the social media business (myself included) are trying to make: even if we can’t make a direct connection between a company’s online presence and annual income, a connection still exists. Read the rest of this entry »

A couple months ago, I emailed a fellow CRE blogger who is based in the Midwest. It was a simple bit of correspondence, intended to say how much I enjoyed his site and to exchange links. “Oh yeah,” he said. “I know the Llenrock Blog–I read it all the time!”

I shouldn’t have been surprised. Despite living 1,000 miles apart, in very different markets, we were both familiar with each other’s social media efforts and respective companies. As in other industries, social networks have served to consolidate us, to create relationships between professionals and clients in a way that couldn’t have happened just a decade ago. Yet many CRE firms have been slow to embrace social media as a networking/PR tool, as reported in a recent CoStar Group article.   Read the rest of this entry »