Casting a Wider Net(work)

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Casting a Wider Net(work)

Using social media to strengthen your online brand, reinforce tenant relationships, and reach prospects!Casting a Wider Net(work)

Casting a Wider Net(work)

1Good afternoon and thank you for joining us today for our Real Estate Operations Masters Series. Todays topic is an exciting one social media in real estate. My name is Sarah Fisher, Marketing Communications Director at Building Engines, and we are sponsoring todays presentation. This Webinar is part of our ongoing Real Estate Operations Masters Series, where we present expert content from industry leaders on a variety of important building and facilities operations topics, at no charge to you. In addition to todays webinar, we have prepared other content on this topic including video vignettes, checklists and articles that we will be sharing with you over the coming days and weeks, so please look for those as follow-up to the webinar.

[Enter any extra notes here; leave the item ID line at the bottom]Avitage Item ID: {{F7BBF06A-C4C5-4489-B069-A62A10F1CE6B}}1Patrick BraswellPrincipal, Scotland Wright Assoc.About Patrick: Patrick Braswell joined Scotland Wright Associates in 2010 to specialize in the representation of office tenants in metro Atlanta and throughout the country. His focus and expertise are on all aspects of an office tenants commercial real estate needs.

Patrick has negotiated over 200 lease transactions and consistently has been recognized as a member of the Commercial Board of Realtors Million Dollar Club (more than $5 million in volume). Prior to joining Scotland Wright Associates, Patrick spent seven years with Colliers International, where he was an assistant vice president of Colliers Office Services Group. While at Colliers, Patrick was awarded the companys Enthusiasm Award for 2004 and the Originating MCA Award in 2006.

Patrick Braswell2Our featured speaker today is back by popular demand his name is Patrick Braswell, and he is part owner of a real estate brokerage firm based in Atlanta called Scotland Wright Associates.

Patrick did a webinar earlier in our series around tenant management, and we received so many questions from the audience around his participation in social media and what they could learn from Patrick around social media, that we decided to bring him back for a webinar dedicated to the topic.So first off, Patrick welcome.PATRICK: Glad to be here.

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Todays Webinar TopicsWhat are key industry or technology trends driving change?

How do you define business process re-engineering?

How and why do companies decide to take a serious look at their processes, and how do they get started?

How do you advise companies to approach such areas as benchmarking, data migration and overall management of operational changes?Casting a Wider Net(work)

Todays Webinar Topics

3And with that, lets get back to todays topic of social media.

As we prepared the agenda today, we thought some of the questions you may have for Patrick including:How did Patrick get started in social media?What are some of the key social media tools and sites and how does Patrick recommend to use them?For the novices how should we get started in social media?And for the more advanced users what are some new sites or tools we should look into?

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Social MediaStand out from the Crowd!

Casting a Wider Net(work)

Social Media

4Ok Patrick, lets get started. When did you get started using social media?PATRICK: I probably started using social media, Id say, two years ago and it came with the idea that I really needed to start doing something different. My industry, like most industries, is very, very competitive, and were all, in my opinion, starting to sound the same, look the same, and I just wanted to do something that would help me stand out from the sameness that was going on. So I started doing a blog about office space here in Atlanta, and because of the blog, it led me into other social media avenues like Linkedin and Twitter. So the blog was the catalyst, and with it, at the same time of myself doing the blog, I started to utilize Twitter and Linkedin at a very high level.

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Blogging enables you to: Increase your presence as a thought leaderDrive prospects to your websiteHone in on current issues & pain pointsStand out among competitors as the expert

Casting a Wider Net(work)Blogging

Blogging

5SARAH: So lets start with your blog. Tell us about blogging why do you do it and how does it benefit you?PATRICK: The blog is called mosatlanta.com, and thats m-o-s-atlanta.com, and what it has done for me is kind of created this perceived expert in my field of Atlanta office space. I probably get a thousand to fifteen hundred hits a month on my website, mostly because of the blog. At one point I was blogging every day, which I would tell you is not sustainable. It was a lot of fun, it got my creative juices flowing, it made myself a better broker, but it was not a sustainable pace. Now Im probably doing a blog every other week or once a month, and thats kind of more of a sustainable pace for me, just because Im so busy running a company, trying to represent my clients and everything that kind of goes with that. What I tell most people about a blog is this: Some people will say, I think its a waste of time. Whos going to read it? I dont have time to do it. If you do it and you put the effort into it, it will make you a better whatever-the-case-may-be, whatever you are. If you are a property manager, its going to make you a better property manager, because you have to sit down and think about your craft. What I want to say about my craft, what is it that is a pain that Im feeling, what is it that is a pain that Im seeing within my own industry, and then you start writing about it. And through that repetition, I promise you, it makes you a better broker, or it makes you a better property manager, or it makes you a better whatever-the-case-may-be, whatever industry youre in. For myself, it really made me start thinking about some of the kind of issues that tenants run into when theyre negotiating a lease or when theyre looking for office space, or when theyve already signed a lease and theyre in there for five years, some of the issues they run into with property management. I mean, I had to sit down and think about it so it was top of mind and fresh so when I was out and meeting with people and they would ask me a question, I already knew the answer immediately, because I probably blogged about it two or three days ago, or whatever the case may be. It truly is a way for you to hone your craft. But then, on top of that, people do read this stuff. It is amazing how much people do read this stuff, and if you can coincide your blog with the Twitter feed and Linkedin feed and a Facebook feed, that in itself will start getting the word out. And it is a great way to distinguish yourself, and to differentiate yourself amongst your competitors, as an expert. blogging is still relatively new for the property management industry. So if youre willing to take the risk to get yourself out there and to do it, people will read it, people will start perceiving you as an expert, and over time, you will become an expert because you are doing this over and over again.

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Business Process Re-engineering Technology Adoption in Real Estate

Dont Connect With EveryoneDont Connect with People You Dont KnowGet Active!Join Discussions, CRE Industry Groups, etc.Casting a Wider Net(work)LinkedIn: Tips for Getting Started

Run Searches for your Top Prospect Companies

LinkedIn: Tips for Getting Started

6SARAH: You mentioned LinkedIn, can you take through how you use it and what you recommend?

PATRICK: in my opinion, and again, this is my humble opinion, so take it for what its worth, Linkedin for business people, business associates, is the best social media site out there. Period. And again, this is just my opinion, but it is the site that I use on a daily basis. I use Linkedin more than I do Twitter. Im not on Facebook. Youtube, Google Plus, whatever the case may be, Linkedin is by far the best tool. So I started using it two years ago. I started blogging and started asking people about good social media sites for people. And a friend of mine just said, Hey, man, you need to check out Linkedin. Its really a great site. So I checked it out, signed up, did my whole profile thing, got it out there, got it going, and then immediately started getting people that wanted to connect with me. One of the mistakes that I made early, and that I hope that you dont make, is that I started connecting with just anybody and everybody that wanted to connect to me. So Ive got probably close to 800 connections now, of which Id say 150 people I have no idea who they are, and it kind of clouds what I use Linkedin for, and Ill get into that a little bit later. So my first advice on that is dont connect with anyone just to connect with people. Connect with only people you know or want to connect with. The second thing that I did, which was a mistake, is I had my I.T. guy, and you can do this, but I had him download every single contact I had in my database, which was over, at the time, probably 1,000 people in my database contact. He immediately sent out an e-mail to every single one of those thousand people, of which I probably only knew 150 well, which those 150 people they connected with me. That was good. What was bad was, again, it probably added another 75-80 people that I didnt know that just connected with me because they connected with me. So, again, it kind of clouded my Linkedin experience at the beginning. But another thing that it did, and its funny, because I use Linkedin a lot. I actually give presentations to prospects on how to use Linkedin, and Im actually on whats probably a blacklist on Linkedin, because if you send out to people you dont know, and if those people ignore you, thats fine. But if those people say, I dont know you, which is one of the options you get when someone tries to connect in on Linkedin to you, if you get enough of I dont know you, then Linkedin will red flag your account, and so every time you want to connect with someone from here on out, you actually have to have the persons e-mail address. Whereas if you were just connecting with people you know, all you got to do is just say, I want to connect with them. Linkedin sends that person an e-mail, and then you connect with them. So thats kind of the pitfall number two. Now what I use Linkedin for personally, and again, its going to be different for different people, the vast majority of individuals use Linkedin as a way to find jobs, and a way to post jobs, and it is an incredible tool for that. But I use Linkedin as a prospecting tool. Personally, for me, I have increased my number of face-to-face meetings by about 150 percent, and what I do is I do searches on companies that I want to get in front of. So if theres a company that I know of that Id like to get in front of, I then go to Linkedin, and theres a way to change the people search to company search. Search the company, and then it will show you how youre connected to that company, whether you have a first-degree connection to that company, meaning I actually know somebody in that company, or whether you have a second-degree connection into the company meaning somebody that Im connected to is connected to a person in that company. So thats usually the case, and so I will take my second-degree connection and send that person an e-mail or give that person a phone call and say, Hey, I see youre connected to so-and-so within XYZ company, do you mind introducing me or letting them know that Ill be calling them? And just by doing that simple step, my meetings have shot up, again, by 150 percent of what I was doing before as far as number of face-to-face meetings.

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Casting a Wider Net(work)LinkedIn for Property Owners & Managers

Create Groups for Tenants, by buildingUtilize the Group Discussion Format to:Promote your organizationAnnounce capital improvementsSurvey TenantsEtc.

LinkedIn for Property Owners & Managers

7Now Patrick, how specifically should property managers or building owners use LinkedIn?PATRICK: Now as a property manager or other ways within the commercial real estate world to use it, if I were a building owner, I would set up individual groups within Linkedin, which is a tool you can do. You can set up your own group, and I would set up a group for my tenants to talk to one-another. Its a way for you to monitor what theyre saying, as well. So I would go in there, I would connect to all the tenants that are within my building, or if Im the property manager, I would connect on Linkedin with the people that are within my building, and then I would start a building group for those tenants and allow people to see whats going on within the building. You can do announcements within that group that will send an e-mail out to everybody. You can open up forums of discussion. You could do things to where, Hey tenants within this group, Im going to be investing a million dollars within the building. Here are the three things that were thinking about investing in. Whats most important to you? So its just a great way to allow your tenants to have a voice in a group thats private to only those tenants, and have them really have a feel of, Hey, these owners care what Im saying, or these property managers care what Im saying, and theyve created this atmosphere, this intimate place for us to go in and communicate to one-another. So I think for property managers and building owners that would be just an incredible tool that no one is utilizing right now on Linkedin. So, bottom line for me, I use Linkedin as a way to stay connected to my contacts, to get in front of new prospects through my contacts and through my network, and then I do myself participate in a lot of different commercial real estate representation groups. So its kind of a best practice groups and ways for me to interact with my peers.

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Casting a Wider Net(work)Twitter for Property Owners & ManagersFollowTenantsProspectsTip: Group your contacts for easy following- i.e. CEOs of Tenant CompaniesWatch ForHelpful Personal InfoState-of-Business UpdatesComments on Your Building/OrganizationTweetBuilding/Portfolio InfoIndustry KnowledgeTip: Respond to Tenant & Prospect Tweets about your Org. (especially the negative ones!)

Twitter for Property Owners & Managers

8SARAH: And how about Twitter?PATRICK: Twitter is, for me personally, its one of the more fun sites that I use personal and for business. It is an incredible tool to gather real-time information on news and updates and whats going on. But if I were a property manager, what Id use it for myself is Id follow my own clients and my prospects that are on Twitter. And you will be amazed at how many people are actually on Twitter if you look. But for me myself, I follow my contacts and my prospects that are all on Twitter, and it is an incredible tool for me to understand what their likes and dislikes are, because people will tweet about, Oh, my sons got a ball game today. So, therefore, I know this person has a kid and they like to play baseball with him. Or theyll tweet about, Hey, were out searching for office space. So I know this persons out searching for office space now. People will tweet about just about anything. The cool thing about Twitter is you can set up different groups to only follow people within your building, so if you know that Ive got 15 tenants in this building, and all the CEOs of these tenants have a Twitter account, Im going to put them in a special group within Twitter. You do that, and then you can follow what these 15 people are saying. You never know. These 15 people could probably go out on Twitter and have a complaint about a building. Man, this building, I cant believe they did such-and-such. And if you were to respond to that, like a lot of big corporations are doing when a customer has a complaint and they complain about it on Twitter, they monitor that stuff, and they immediately respond to it. A customer satisfaction level, they shoot up when they see that you do care and that you see them on Twitter. Theyre kind of pretty amazed by it. But for myself personally, I use it as a way to voice my opinion about things that are going on. People do follow it, and they do reply to it. But I also use it as a tool to follow my prospects and my clients, to know what theyre into, to know what they did the weekend before, to find common grounds to talk to them. You know, as a building owner or property manager, I think a cool thing to do is to be on Twitter yourself and to tweet about different things that are going on in the building, whether its a client appreciation day or, Hey, XYZ is happening to the cooler systems today. Its going to be down from Saturday to Sunday. Those things, throw them out there on Twitter. Its not much harder to add them and to do it, and people do follow that stuff, and they probably follow it more than they do e-mails. My own personal experience, I have been able to communicate with people on Twitter that I have probably sent them, I dont know, 10-15 e-mails with no response. See if theyre on Twitter, follow them for a week or two on Twitter, and then reply to something that they have said on Twitter, and they immediately reply back, and then we start a dialogue. The next thing you know, I have a meeting and theyre a client. I think the same can be said for, if someone were willing to take the time as a building owner and a property manager, to set up groups within Twitter that is all your tenants, and you can follow those tenants and see what theyre saying, you would have an intimate knowledge of whats going on and a way to communicate with them that you just cant.

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Casting a Wider Net(work)Personal Vs. Company Twitter Accounts

Personal Vs. Company Twitter Accounts

9SARAH: And how do you recommend for our audience that they go about setting up their personal or business Twitter accounts?PATRICK: I have a MOS Atlanta, which is my blog, Twitter page, and then Ive got a personal Twitter page, which is Patrick Braswell. I have had so much more interaction and connection with my Patrick Braswell page than I could ever have on my MOS Atlanta page, and its part of the reason of people dont want companies following them, they want individuals following them. So my Patrick Braswell profile tells you exactly what I do, and it is me, so people feel like, Oh, Im having a personal interaction with Patrick, versus my MOS Atlanta Twitter account, I mean they think its some company, and they just dont want to have that interaction with a company. They want to have an interaction with an individual, and I think thats what Twitter and Facebook are there for. I mean, as an individual I want to get down to an individual connection with somebody. So quick advice on that: Dont have a company page. Actually have an individual page, and it will increase your traffic, it will increase your connections, and increase the relationships you form on both Twitter and Facebook.

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Casting a Wider Net(work)Tips for TwitterCreate watch groups for tenants, prospects, vendorsManage all your companys Tweeters from one locationMonitor & Respond to Conversations about Your Brand:

Its so hot in this building! They need to fix the AC!

Loved tenant appreciation day! #icecreamsundays

Tips for Twitter

10SARAH: And does Twitter support groups like LinkedIn does?PATRICK: You cant set up Twitter groups, but you can set up a group of people that you follow on Twitter. A great website to do that is called hootsuite.com. H-O-O-T-S-U-I-T-E. Hootsuite.com, and it allows you to select people and put them into different groups, and then you can follow those groups. It is an incredible tool. I wouldnt monitor it 24/7, but look at it every other day, see what people are saying. Within hootsuite, you can also monitor different search terms. So if you were to, say, put in the name of your building on hootsuite, every time someone said the buildings address or the buildings name, you would see that tweet. So that is a good way for you to monitor what people are saying about your building on Twitter. That could be anything to say, Hey, 1117, this building had a great client appreciation day. They served hot dogs. And you would see that someone said that, and you could reply to it. Or, Man, 1117, cant believe that its 100 degrees in here. They really need to fix the HVAC. Well then you know that people are complaining about the HVAC and you need to do something. And you can reply to them on Twitter. Again, its just an amazing tool that people really resonate with that, This building cares about me. Owners and investors, kind of the same thing, building operations, Id say its kind of the same thing with each one of those social media tools.

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Casting a Wider Net(work)FacebookNot the best option for Commercial Real Estate

Focus your time on social media platforms where there is a high concentration of business owners, executives and real estate professionals that consistently engage.

Facebook

11SARAH: Lets touch on some of the other large social networks, how about Facebook?PATRICK: I do not use Facebook. People probably think Im nuts, but I just dont trust Mark Zuckerberg. I dont want him to own all my information. I dont know, I dont have a Facebook account, and its part of my distrust for the CEO of the company and what hes trying to do with the company. But with that caveat said, I do believe Facebook is a very powerful tool. I know a lot of people who use it, and it can be used like Twitter and like Linkedin. It is a way to connect to your tenants, to connect to prospects on a level that is outside of business, and that is a more personal and interactive way to get in touch with them. For my personal experience on Facebook, and this will kind of relate back to Twitter, if you have a Facebook page and its for your company, for what we do, I dont believe people follow it. If youre going to have a Facebook page, have it be a personal page and connect to your clients and prospects that way, or the people within your buildings, whether its industrial or office.

[Enter any extra notes here; leave the item ID line at the bottom]Avitage Item ID: {{88E0EF8D-1C83-4371-8238-27944E9B96A3}}11Casting a Wider Net(work)YouTubeGrab some quick videos and:

Promote Your BuildingSpotlight RenovationsMarket Vacant Space

YouTube

12SARAH: And how about YouTube?PATRICK: Love Youtube. Absolutely love Youtube. I will videotape some tours that I go on, I will take my little flip camera with me and do the outside and the inside of a building when Im touring office space with a client. They love it, download all of it onto Youtube, which is free, and send it out there. People absolutely love the fact that they can see a video of the space they just toured. So if I were a building owner or property manager, I would be doing Youtube videos of my vacant space and getting it out there for everyone to see. I think its a very underutilized tool. I will also do some blogs from Youtube. I could be taping myself on my flip camera right now and put it out there. One unknown fact about Youtube, it is the second most searched website in the world. Google is first, Youtube is second, before Bing, before Yahoo!, before everything else. So people do more searches on Youtube than they do on the second tier search engines. So thats just a little F.Y.I. So if you put in there warehouse space at XYZ, and someones searching for warehouse space, they actually will search for warehouse space on Youtube. So its a good way to market your property that is cheap. I mean, its cheap, its free. Just buy a flip camera for a hundred bucks, or do it with your iPhone or your iPad or whatever, and put those videos out there. Its an underutilized tool.

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Casting a Wider Net(work)Other Sites for Consideration: Google+

Tenant Contacts3

Other Sites for Consideration: Google+

13SARAH: Are there any other sites that we have not discussed that you want to mention to the audience? PATRICK: theres two social websites that I will bring up. One of them is Google Plus. I do like Google Plus. I know its a lot like Facebook, but it has a lot more privacy set up to where I can distinguish whether or not youre a friend, someone I do business with, so youd be in another circle, or someone that I barely know but I do want to keep tabs on, so they would be in another circle. Meaning you can separate people out in different circles, and each circle is a different level of privacy or what someone can see on your Google Plus account. So I am on Google Plus. I know its a lot like Facebook, but Googles a big corporation, to me theyre a public corporation, I probably have a little bit more trust in them than I do Facebook, which is nave.

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Casting a Wider Net(work)Other Sites for Consideration: Gist.

Other Sites for Consideration: Gist.

14SARAH: And you mentioned you have one more site?PATRICK: the final site I will talk about is a site called Gist, and its G-I-S-T .com. Again, G-I-S-T.com. Im just now starting to get into it, but it is a great way for you to correlate all of your contacts and see what those contacts are doing on their social media sites. It also keeps record of all the e-mails that youve sent that contact, as well. So its a pretty cool tool. I havent gotten that much into it, but from what Ive seen of it, its awesome to be able to look up a prospect or client on Gist, and to see all the social media stuff, whether its Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, what have you, blogs that theyve done thats out there in cyberspace, so to speak. It kind of brings all that stuff into one place for you to look at, and then over on the far right column it will have every e-mail that theyve sent you or that youve sent them.

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Casting a Wider Net(work)Other Online Resources

Other Online Resources

15SARAH: And are there any other online resources, besides social media, that you want to mention?PATRICK: LoopNets iPad app is really cool. Ive used it before. Its very well done. CoStar just came out with their app, which Im having a CoStar representative come out to our company, to give us the presentation on it. From what I hear from people that have seen the presentation on the CoStar app, its far superior to LoopNets app. It allows you to do searches, to evaluate deal structure, to look up public companies leases, to see stacking plans. Im real excited to see it, because I hear it is absolutely phenomenal. Those are the two resources that I use that are industry-related. Again, I use CoStar every day on my computer, but as far as mobile applications, kind of more of a social media-type feel to it, LoopNets app is awesome, and CoStars app is awesome. actually, there is one other pretty cool application thats out there that no one really knows about: Its called Blend Rate, B-L-E-N-Drate.com, and you can download their app, and it is a way to evaluate deals that will give you the net effect of, and its probably the most simple tool that I have seen out there as far as rating deals or proposals that you get from building owners and from landlord reps.

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Casting a Wider Net(work)Tips for Getting Started

Tips for Getting Started

16SARAH: Were going to open it up for a Q&A in a minute so audience this is the right time to be submitting any questions for Patrick. Patrick, before we do that, do you wan to recap for the audience any final tips or suggestions for getting started?PATRICK: Yeah, just real quick: If youre listening to this and youre wanting to get started, my very quick simple advice to you is just to keep it small at first and keep it fun. As you keep it small and keep it fun, it will grow upon itself. For those who have been doing it for a while and theyre like, Oh, Ive heard all this other stuff, I challenge you just to get onto Gist. Its a new site. Again, its G-I-S-T.com, and its really, really cool. Ive been doing this very actively for two years now, and Ive never heard of it, and somebody told me about it, and it was a lot of fun. SARAH: Outstanding Patrick, thank you. R: No problem. It was a lot of fun, and if anyone has any questions, Im here and would love to answer them. No question is too small or too big for me to answer, so I appreciate everything. Thank you for your time.

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Using social media to strengthen your online brand, reinforce tenant relationships, and reach prospects!Thank YouThank You

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