How can Twitter Enhance my Real Estate Operations?
Twitter is the latest social networking craze to hit the internet. Twitter lets users send short text messages (called “tweets”) of up to 140 characters in length from their computers or their cell phones to a group of people (called "followers") who have signed up to receive these updates. It was initially designed to keep friends and colleagues informed about one's daily activities.
Twitter is increasingly being used for commercial purposes. Companies are tweeting news, corporate announcements and even job openings to their followers.
The question that I asked myself is how can real estate brokerage companies and property managers take advantage of Twitter? Furthermore, are they even using Twitter? And if so, does it pay for them to be on Twitter? As it turns out, several of the large international real estate brokerage companies have recently set up shop on Twitter and are using it for a wide variety of things.
The real estate company with the largest Twitter presence at the moment appears to be Colliers International (twitter.com/ColliersIntl). Colliers has a Twitter site set up out of its corporate headquarters in Seattle with a modest 650 followers (this pales in comparison to celebrity Ashton Kutcher who has 2.5 million followers!). In 140 characters or less, Colliers posts links to recent market studies, offers economic predictions and stimulates discussion through thought provoking tweets like “is being "green" taking a backseat in this economy?” Colliers also has several local Twitter feeds set up such as Colliers Kansas City, Colliers Idaho and Colliers Parrish (serving 11 offices in Northern California and Nevada). Colliers recently tweeted about its presence at the International Council of Shopping Centres (ICSC) conference in Las Vegas and encouraged all attendees to visit the Colliers booth.
CB Richard Ellis (CBRE) is also making use of Twitter. There are Twitter feeds set up for local offices as well as one for the CBRE Research Group in the UK. CBRE is using Twitter in much the same fashion as Colliers with about 600 followers spread out over four different Twitter feeds.
Jones Lang Lasalle has taken a slightly different approach. They’ve set up a Twitter feed called “JLLJobs” (twitter.com/JLLJobs) where job postings all over the world are tweeted to followers. Interestingly enough in this down economy, there are only 100 followers signed up to receive job updates from Jones Lang Lasalle.
It doesn’t seem as if Twitter has fully caught on in the Canadian real estate community. None of the Canadian affiliates of the large commercial brokerage companies have a presence on Twitter and the only Canadian real estate broker that I was able to find with a Twitter presence is Royal Lepage Canada with 488 followers, although they’re primarily in the residential market. Essentially, a Twitter presence amongst the real estate brokerage houses is clearly still in its infancy.
Twitter and Property Management
Presently, Property Managers have virtually no presence on Twitter. However, given Twitter’s powerful communication potential, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before they get into the game.
Allow me to give the following example. Let’s say you’re a property management company and you manage a major downtown office property. The property management company could set up a Twitter feed where they tweet about daily building activities in their building (like blood drives or flu shots), changes to the hours of operation, closures of certain entrances and exits, malfunctioning elevators or reduced prices on car washes in the parking garage. Their followers would be their tenants who would sign up to receive these updates whenever they’re posted. These updates take mere seconds to write (remember, it’s only 140 characters) and could be done on the run from a cell phone or in front of your computer.
The property management company could advertise their Twitter site with an email to all their tenants encouraging them to sign up for the feed on their Twitter accounts.
How could tenants and property managers benefit from using Twitter? Updates would be received by tenants in real time and would keep them informed about everything that’s going on in their building. It would also allow for direct property manager-to-tenant communications and keep everyone in the loop on forecasted building activities and emergencies.
It’s Free
What’s the best part about Twitter? Setting up a Twitter account takes mere minutes and costs nothing. I recently set one up (twitter.com/wjegher) and one of my first tweets was about the article that I’m writing for Le Pied Carré about how Twitter can enhance your real estate operations. I’m up to 10 followers!
William Jegher is President of Wika Consulting, a consulting company specializing in facilities management and real estate benchmarking, communications and consulting. Contact him at wjegher@wikaconsulting.com