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The Business of “Social Media”

By Miriam Lamey

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A lot of professionals--not all--sometimes find it hard to take things like Facebook and Twitter seriously. After all, the former can include many an incriminating photograph of one’s family or friends, while the latter is a surprisingly cheerful collection of pithy statements, seemingly spammy sentences and throwaway comments. Some don’t see Twitter, therefore, as a serious networking tool. Fortunately, this perception of the social media network is becoming outdated. Technology and usage have progressed to an impressive extent since the days when to “tweet” meant to make a bird call, and the platform itself sounded like a gossipy bunch of women.

However, in a complex and serious field such as commercial real estate, the question that can often hover on the lips of many is: “Why bother with social media?” “Why Tweet?”

To answer this one must take a step back. A large part of building relationships between companies, industry professionals and even between the media and its subjects depends on good, old-fashioned human interaction. When dinosaurs roamed the earth, this was frequently done at business luncheons, expensed dinners, in-person meetings and--gasp--over the phone. Today, with companies watching their budgets and lots of new, snazzy technology, this has become less frequent. We email. We text. And more often than not, we get our news in a feed on our iPhones or iPads.

Yet social interaction is still key to closing those deals and getting the right contact to speak up. While this is frequently done in the time-honored manner (actually talking with one another), some curious interactions are happening online. Here’s an example and I’ll illustrate using poor, previously misunderstood Twitter: People now attend conferences and, with their trusty Twitter accounts, can locate others at the same event by employing the “#” (hashtag) before an acronym or short, sweet phrase describing the event. While this promotes networking, it also brings a new social angle to the conference or event, in ways that were not possible. Don’t have time to visit booth 24? Be sure to Tweet and you might end up with a new email in your inbox for later communication. Attending an event solo? Tweet the conference hashtag, see who searches for it and you might have dinner plans--and a new deal--before you know it. The same thing happens with another online tool, Foursquare, but I won’t bombard you with too much information just yet. However, I will encourage you to remember this for future reference (no, there won’t be a test.)

Of course, attending a conference is only one example of how Twitter can be used for social purposes in this increasingly less social, more digitally-isolated world. While nothing can replace face-to-face contact, there are myriad merits to continuing the conversation online. It’s becoming more apparent how Twitter and even following a professional Facebook page can facilitate this. Between sharing stories, learning more about faraway colleagues and developing thought leadership, both social media tools have more uses that for which they often receive credit. There’s a new social aspect to all this tweeting and Facebooking, and it’s all pivotal to doing business in the future.

In this blog, I hope to demystify Twitter--and Facebook and even Foursquare eventually--and show the commercial real estate community how these platforms can act as valuable tools for social interaction, networking and sharing information. Because it’s a new, exciting digital world in which we work and operate, and there are so many ways we can all benefit professionally from this technology.

Are you on Twitter for work? Do you use Foursquare for networking purposes?

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