Sperry Van Ness & Social Media
Social Media and Commercial Real Estate – while some say the two don’t mix, I say they’re flat wrong. I’ve been evangelizing the innovative use of technology and digital media in commercial real estate on this blog since day one. While I normally don’t use this forum to tout the company, I’m making an exception for this post.
The video above simply validates what I’ve been saying for quite some time, which is that social media and commercial real estate fit like hand-in-glove. Yes, I know it’s difficult to believe, but it’s true – there are still naysayers who decry social media and its effectiveness – they just don’t exist at Sperry Van Ness. We have won listings, received media exposure, broadened and deepened relationships, and yes, we have closed real deals with social media. While some of our industry peers play the skeptic and hold on to the past, we embrace the demands of the market and look to the future.
Sperry Van Ness is the only major national brokerage firm that has mandated and achieved a 100% corporate wide adoption of social media. In fact, our position within the commercial real estate industry is so dominant with respect to social media that we dominate the top 25 most influential commercial real estate professionals on Twitter as ranked by wefollow.com. We actively blog, tweet, participate in discussions on LinkedIn and Facebook and we are huge believers in the power of viral video. Why is this important? Because it allows us to engage and be in the flow of real-time conversations in ways that our old-school brethren simply cannot. We are engaged, we listen, we understand, we get it…
I’ll climb down off my soap-box for now and give you a few updates…We are doing some great things with the redevelopment of our Digi award winning Online Publisher product (the web based tool that SVN Advisors use to create content rich proposals, brochures, property websites, etc.). The single point of entry design that SVN pioneered in 2000 is being rebuilt with Web 2.0 technology. The rebuilt product features content syndication capabilities, enabling our Advisors to seamlessly interact with various social media portals. Here, SVN Advisors will be able to push their newly listed inventory to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube, right from OnlinePublisher. Further, SVN will remain one of only a handful of firms/portals whose listing data LoopNet accepts through an automated data feed.
OnlinePublisher has always done what no 3rd party application to this day does: Manage people and revenue. In our new release, we’re incorporating various components of our unique culture into the application – at SVN, our culture of collaboration serves as the foundation of our brand. The no “locked doors, locked drawers” culture is now being digitized, and the new OnlinePublisher includes a priv. social network which allows our Advisors to collaborate on projects in real time, listen to and learn from one another, and through a knowledge base, to discover valuable information from past discussions even if the Advisor wasn’t part of the conversation. Perhaps most exciting is that all of the above will be mobile ready. We are rapidly embracing mobile technology at Sperry Van Ness and to prove it, our new iPhone application is in development.
Stay tuned for more updates in the near future, and in the meantime, if you have any suggestions for me please leave a comment below…
5 comments
Kevin hi, nice to see that you are getting early wins by quickly leveraging the growing power of digital media. Our industry is at a cross roads so I’m also glad that you continue to demonstrate your leadership in innovating and evangelizing.
In true Wed 2.0 spirit, you conclude your post by asking for suggestions. Please find below a few initial thoughts about adoption, benchmarking and global reach:
1. Industry adoption: I’m glad you highlighted the recent efforts of CREOpoint partners like the CCIM, NAIOP, NAR, SIOR and ULI associations. It will make some of their sharper members think twice.
You rightly state: « You simply don’t have time to not be involved in social media.» In the last three years, I met with hundreds of leaders like you from over 20 countries to discuss their online strategies. I found that most don’t have one (yet !) or don’t know how allocate their time between different social media initiatives by objectives (defensive online reputation management, expanding their digital footprint, relationship development, recruiting etc) and by channel (blogs, Twitter, FaceBook, CREOpoint etc).
This is rapidly changing and getting sorted out thanks to a combination of posts like this one, the fear of missing out, experimentation and best practices. It reminds me of when senior brokers were resisting email. Now if you take their blackberries away from them, they revert to fetal position…
2. Benchmarking sources: I also like CREOpoint’s ranking in WeFollow.com (#4 just after our partners NAI, ULI and CCIM) and way before long established and much bigger organizations. It proves that the internet is a great equalizer. However the rankings are not truly representative since they are only based on Twitter. Microblogging only represents less than 10% of the 5,500 CRE-relevant online sources CREOpoint has identified and aggregates/ analyzes for our clients.
For example the largest U.S. and European brokerage firms have asked us to comprehensively assess their situation thanks to our unique « CompetitiveMonitor ». They leverage our proprietary capability to access and then focus on key sources to find out what is being said about their corporate brands not just in Twitter, but also in press feeds, websites, blogs, Google Buzz, Yahoo forums, LinkedIn answers and network updates, FaceBook Fan Pages and group walls, YouTube, Digg and CREOpoint. I just had a quick look at the results for SVN Vs Colliers and Marcus & Millchap for example. If you are interested, I would be happy to privately share some highlights with you.
3. Online channel reach and focus: Generalist social media tools like LinkedIn, FaceBook and YouTube are great for some things but are being blocked by 2/3 of companies due to virus, spam, irrelevant noise, employee productivity or reputation risk reasons. Our site visitors don’t have that problem since CREOpoint (and some emerging look alikes now
are the only platforms exclusively for CRE decision makers.
4. Commercial real estate investment is growing as a global business: Just as you and I don’t like to read stuff in Spanish even if we could figure it out, non-U.S. investors prefer to work/read in their languages. We are proud to be the only online network with members in 50 countries who use CREOpoint daily (including SVN content) in 13 major languages (e.g., French, German, Hebrew, Mandarin).
Hope that helps advance our joint cause. I welcome feedback from you and your readers. It would be good to continue our conversation and I look forward to seeing you again soon (CREOpoint member event in London Sept 17, ExpoReal Munich or ULI DC in October, MIPIM Hong Kong in November or next time I’m in sunny California or you are in hot and humid NYC?).
[...] Sperry Van Ness & Social Media — MaggiacomoBlog (Source) [...]
Thanks for the note, Todd. The more in the business who participate in the conversations taking place in social media, the more efficient the marketplace becomes. Couldn’t agree with you more…
Comments above from one of the CRE industries social media pioneers. CREO point changing the way CRE practitioners do business…
Yes, JC, let’s catch up the next time you are in CA.
[...] To read more about how SVN is using online marketing technology to advance the position of their brokers and listings, click HERE. [...]
Leave a Comment