View Q1 2015 Getting to Like Social Media by scharchitecture

1st Quarter 2015

Getting to social media

inside

KIMCO • BAY MEADOWS • OFF THE GRID

Inspired by a topic for a future issue of the VIEW?

INSIDE T HIS ISS U E CASE STUDY: Bay Meadows

Social Media for the CRE Professional

Coolest Way to Sell a House Ever

CASE STUDY: Kimco Reality Corp.

The Sharing Economy Potiential of CRE

CASE STUDY: Colliers International

“Tweet” & “Follow” & “Join” CREW SF

Amanda Walter Interview

Restaurant Report: Off the Grid

The Social Media Tool Kit for Retail Shopping Centers

A Word from Our Sponsors

THe view editorial staff Editor Editorial Review Contributors

Graphic Designer

Donna Schumacher Richard Isaac Nanci Anderson Lori Coleman Maureen Futtner Stacey Goeddel Tara Hardesty Barak Kassar Jennifer Lynch Kristine Owyoung Donna Schumacher Angie Sommer Lori Seaberg Mingus

KIMCO

REI Toons The lighter side of retail. Cover: Kimco REIToon, Original tag line reads: “With 3% battery left, Jessica quickly realized she should have actually printed out her stack of coupons.“ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at http://blog.kimcorealty.com.

If you have an idea—even a tiny gem of one—please contact us to get the conversation started. We at the VIEW are here to help you project your voice into the San Francisco real estate community. Or better yet, become a member of our team! Interested in a doorway to meeting new people, forging new connections, and generally learning about all that is happening with Bay Area commercial real estate? Of course you are. Contact us today; we’re just an email away: ds@donnaschumacher.com

CREW SF Communications Team Call for Articles for the VIEW

UPCOMING ISSUES

2015 Quarter 2: Headquartered in San Francisco Deadline for articles: April 15 Angel: Tracy Everwine 2015 Quarter 3: Life Above 30: High RIse Construction Deadline for articles: July 15 Angel: Helen Duong 2015 Quarter 4: Adaptive Reuse Deadline for articles: October 15 Angel: Debbie Leifer 2016 Quarter 1: World Class City: The Role of Culture Deadline for articles: January 15 Angel: Laurie Gustafson

A N G E L P R O FI L E

Tara Hardesty

President | The Marketing Method Group, Inc.

What it does: Retail Real Estate Advisory Services Birthplace: Fullerton, CA

Company: Owner of The Marketing Method Group, Inc., San Francisco (founded 2005), which provides strategic marketing solutions to real estate firms Background: 23 years’ experience in creating marketing solutions for shopping center developers CREW history: Member since 2007. Committees: Communications, California Conference, Board liaison for the Membership Committee, Chapter Delegate for CREW Network Charity: American Red Cross

First job: Selling floor covering for my dad’s business. Vinyl was a big seller back then. Extracurricular passions: Reading, writing, outdoor activities, family Travel tip: Go to Italy. Whenever you can. Especially Florence. Recent travel highlight: The Midwest in fall. The colors had just started turning and the air was crisp and cool.

Top SF restaurant picks: Kokkari, Jackson Filmore, Zarzuela, Firefly 15 minutes of fame: I have been interviewed by local news channels over the years, most recently while sitting outside Peet’s on California Street. Dozens of friends called that night to say they saw me on TV.

CASE STUDY:

Bay Meadows:

The Bay Meadows development, an 83-acre multiuse development in San Mateo, CA, has been designed to appeal to a new generation of Peninsula dwellers: individuals who love the clean, friendly feeling of the suburbs but who also love walking, biking, and independence from the car. It is a transit-oriented development, located on the Caltrain line. When completed, Bay Meadows (BM) will include 1,000 homes, a high school, 18 acres of parks and green space, five state-of-the-art office buildings, and a retail street. Its location between San Francisco and Silicon Valley means that the Bay Meadows target audience is exposed to technology to a greater extent than average populations—either directly (professionally) or indirectly (through networks)—making it vital to communicate with this audience through social media. The marketing strategy for the development has always included a social media component, which has evolved over time as the development has progressed. A thorough understanding of four keys factors provided the cornerstones of this strategy: (1) the target audience, (2) perception of place (what this audience thinks of Bay Meadows), (3) the most effective changes that Bay Meadows can initiate to shift this perception of place, and (4) key messages needed to communicate to this audience and also connect into BM’s larger marketing objectives. Originally formulated as a team effort involving 6 Degrees, Maureen Futtner (PR), and Rubber Design (graphics), the social

media strategy was phased to coordinate with construction. As buildings were completed and the Bay Meadows community coalesced, the social media strategy needed to stay ahead.

Phase I: A Blank Slate: Establish Base Followers Initially, the lack of development at the project (imagine vast swaths of flat dirt pads with only tree-lined streets), combined with a general lack of understanding of the concept and project (continues on page 4)

(continued from page 3) munity and expanding the follower base, which became increasingly important as residents moved in and were surrounded by significant construction. In addition to photos of the parks and homes under construction and testimonials from new residents, BM also focused on a narrative on exciting changes in the larger community, the city of San Mateo. To better illustrate its content, BM incorporated a robust blogging strategy and rolled out new social media efforts: Mosey, Instagram, and YouTube and Vimeo video channels. After Google revised its web spiders and algorithms, blog content became more important than ever, because it drives search rankings, which can affect all other marketing strategies. Phase II’s focus on creating excitement about the community helped BM to increase its followers to over 3,000.

As buildings were completed and the Bay Meadows community coalesced, the social media strategy needed to stay ahead. Phase III: Significant Completion: Community Engagement

scale, required a social media strategy that focused on illustrating the Bay Meadows vision and the lifestyles of its future residents. As with traditional advertising, “content is king,” but in social media, content must be focused and forceful to compete for attention. This demands a much faster creative cycle. In Phase I, BM’s social media content focused on reposting articles and stories that were “brand analogous” and of interest to its target audiences, key information about Bay Meadows (such as summaries of building plans as they were designed), and videos that shared the design team’s perspectives. First, BM wanted to create a base of followers that was reflective of its target audience. To learn what was most interesting to that group, BM started with a neutral brand voice. Social media was equally important as a method for BM to collect insights about its audience and to ensure it was building an audience that would be receptive to its messages in the future. At that stage, it limited its social channels to Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest to gauge and refine the social media strategy and target audience before expanding to other channels.

Phase II: Construction Underway: Create Excitement As portions of the project reached completion, the strategy shifted to instilling a sense of excitement about the developing com-

Once Bay Meadows had contiguous completed portions of the project, a critical mass of residents, and signs of being a true community, its social media strategy had new opportunities. The objective became more about engaging followers and encouraging them to tell the Bay Meadows brand story directly. To accomplish that, it focused on creating compelling experiences with the brand that bolster affinity and reciprocity—such as Movies in the Meadow, a movie and night market in the park, and Momdays, Monday afternoon playdates for toddlers—and encourage its followers to become more involved in telling the Bay Meadows story to their networks. Meetup, Instragram, and LinkedIn are the most recent tools folded into the social media strategy.

Phase IV: Ongoing Maintainence: The Future Looking ahead, Bay Meadows intends to link social media messages more directly with its advertising efforts. It is also undertaking a database migration to begin “micromessaging” select content to members of its audience who share specific interests, instead of delivering the most appealing messaging to the widest audience. As its retail and commercial spaces are completed, another milestone will be achieved in the project development. Bay Meadows is looking at the power of video (e.g., Hyperlapse, GoPro) and how to best incorporate it into its strategy. But who knows what future technology will bring between now and 2017?

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About the Author Stacie Goeddel is a real estate partner at Holland & Knight LLP and concentrates in the areas of development, hospitality, and finance, with a specialty in urban in-fill and restart mixed-use developments.

“Do I really need to? Does it really matter? And what is it, anyway?” Maybe you ask these questions when prodded by a colleague who says, “You’re still not on LinkedIn?” Or perhaps you figure “social media is just for B2C marketing, not for the working professional, right?”

dialogue, we can do that by being an ideal party guest: • Share memorable stories and useful information. • Introduce people to one another. • Be authentic and down-to-earth. • Occasionally, say something provocative or critical, to spark conversation.

• Don’t talk about yourself too much. Historically, marketing meant pushing your message out to 4. Social media is a communication tool. It shouldn’t replace lunchyour target audience: creating a commercial, a brochure, flyes, events emails, or other outreach you do for your profession. ers, or even just a résumé. In social media, however, where But it can greatly augment and focus all your networking. a consumer can express opinions for all to hear, a brand can have a direct and dynamic conversation with its target market. KEY SITES FOR CRE PROS And that’s the key element of social media: it’s a conversation, Which social media platform is right for you? a dialogue, not a one-sided monologue, and the professional As social media requires time, I advise people to pick their or brand has the potential to influence the conversation. platform based on which they enjoy most. If you find yourAccording to the latest Pew Research Center survey (Janu- self pinning inspiring images on Pinterest, then that’s a great ary 2015), it’s undeniable that American Internet users have place to start. Or maybe you love snapping pics around the city and posting them on Instagram. Then by all means, puradopted social media in droves: sue an Instagram presence. • Seventy percent use some social networking sites. Facebook. Facebook’s great strength is B2C marketing, and • Fifty percent of Internet users with college educations other articles in this edition of the VIEW address how to best use LinkedIn. use Facebook for consumer marketing. For the CRE pro, oth• Facebook still dominates, but 23% use LinkedIn, 22% er platforms beckon. use Pinterest, 21% use Instagram, and 19% use Twitter. LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a business-oriented platform with nearly 300 million users. Executives from all Fortune 500 compaChannel your inner “best guest” at a nies have profiles on LinkedIn. Visibility in the business world is of paramount importance for those in CRE. cocktail party. Why not log on and check out if your peers or competitors Your profile on LinkedIn is your living portfolio and also your Rolohave a professional presence? Many will. And if they don’t, dex. Keep your profile updated. Additionally, you can gain indusyour clients or potential clients do. So there’s a world of net- try knowledge by belonging to groups on LinkedIn. Posting rel(continues on page 6) working going on that doesn’t include you.

KEY CONCEPTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA 1. Your professional identity is your “brand.” Your working identity should be thought of as your brand. Your name, your photo, your voice should consistently represent the values that clients and peers have come to associate with you. 2. Set goals for your social media. Whether you aim to expand your network or gain industry knowledge, setting up simple goals will help direct your efforts. 3. Channel your inner “best guest” at a dinner party. With social media being a dialogue, you must develop strategies to pull listeners into your sphere. And, just as with in-person

If Kristin and I ever put our house on the market, I’ll be calling these guys instead of the home stagers: http://youtu.be/ D2QOtnLdnLQ (Editior’s note: Too bad this is paper, or you could just click on this link!)

coaster . . . I don’t think the roller coaster is a promotion for an actual house (it’s for the campaign itself). Though the real estate agent (Van Diest & Van Diest) featured in the sign in the first few seconds of the video was certainly a winner.

Dutch bank ABN-AMRO created this fantastic video as part of a clever, larger campaign in which people selling their homes can win big ads (funded by the bank) to help promote their property.

Adapted from a blog post that covers digital marketing, content, and branding. This post is part of Rassak’s “YouTube Tuesdays Plus” featuring mini case studies of marketing videos.

Promotions so far this month include a radio commercial, a “mega” billboard, a newspaper ad, and posters outside ABN-AMRO bank branches. And, of course, the roller

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About the Author Barak Kassar is principal and creative director at Rassak Experience, an award-winning digital branding building and communications firm based in San Francisco.

(continued from page 5) evant updates in groups is an effective way to be that “ideal party guest.” Commenting on and “liking” others’ posts is also good etiquette, as well as a smart tactic to show up in users’ news feeds. Any biz dev pros will want to follow specific companies on LinkedIn. For potential clients or employers, following a company’s LinkedIn posts can provide a wealth of insight. Getting started: Join the CREW SF LinkedIn group (https:// www.linkedin.com/groups/CREW-SF-130143) and get active by posting unique, usable info up to once per week. Twitter. Twitter enables users to send and read tweets, which are limited to 140 characters. Twitter is often the platform of choice for thought leaders, journalists, and others who want to establish industry expertise, or for those who like to stay on top of industry knowledge. Twitter’s simple interface is deceptive. With its hashtags, handles, and retweets, Twitter can appear inaccessible.

Getting started: Once you establish your own Twitter profile, start by following @CREW_SF and @CREW_Network. Helpful hashtags include #CRE, #BayArea; #GreenBuilding, and #Sustainability. Search these hashtags to find appropriate “tweeps” (Twitter users) you can follow in turn. To recap, here’s how to get started on social media: • Outline simple goals for your professional brand. • Identify whom you want reach, your “target market.” • Select the social media platform that you’ll enjoy using the most.

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• Don’t be just a social media “stalker.” Jump in and tweet, share, and update, or you’ll never be noticed. About the Author Maureen Futtner leads PR for the People, which specializes in crafting communications campaigns for organizations dedicated to transforming our cities.

CASE STUDY:

Kimco Realty Corp.

Today, 52% of online adults use two or more social media sites,1 up 10 percent from 2013. Approximately 2.6 million tweets were sent during the one-hour State of the Union address in January, and 44,000 were about a single comment made by the President.2 If these numbers prove anything, it’s that social media can no longer be considered a trend. Social media has become a pillar of information sharing, and as a real estate investment trust (REIT) that owns and operates North America’s largest publicly traded portfolio of neighborhood and community shopping centers, Kimco Realty has incorporated these social platforms as a major element in its communications strategy.

...we launched the REIToon cartoon series on our blog in order to help bring some humor and camaraderie to our industry— and these funnies became an instant hit! Back in 2011, Kimco wanted to take a leadership position in the industry by using social media to inform and communicate with stakeholders. We wanted to amplify our communications and thought leadership initiatives, generate greater buzz in the marketplace, create additional communications channels to reach stakeholders, and share our view on topics relevant to the retail real estate industry. We also wanted to build even stronger relationships with our tenants, investors, and colleagues. As part of that broader initiative, we launched the REIToon cartoon series on our blog in order to help bring some humor and camaraderie to our industry—and these funnies became an instant hit! Nationally syndicated cartoonist Mark O’Collin is the

mastermind behind the cartoons, which poke fun at the quirks of REITs, retail, and real estate. We post a new cartoon every month to the top of the REIToons page. To get stakeholders involved in the action, we’ve also held a national REIToon caption contest for the past two years, challenging our social media followers to come up with the cleverest captions for two new REIToon sketches. We got submissions from people in organizations of all sizes, all across the country, and this year, our winners were pretty witty in their own right. The winning captions were published in Kimco’s second-annual REIToons wall calendar, accompanied by the 10 most popular REIToons from the past year. For the past two years, we’ve developed copies of these calendars to hand out to industry peers during the International Council of Shopping Centers’ (ICSC) National Conference, but we’ll also send one to anyone who wants a copy! Part of our approach is to generate greater awareness and affinity for the retail real estate industry, and so we encourage the sharing of these REIToons by all of our blog readers and social media followers. We just ask that if anyone would like to share or republish any of the REIToons posted on the Kimco REIToons page (blog.kimcorealty.com/kimco-reitoons), please include the Creative Commons license: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at http://blog.kimcorealty.com.

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Have an idea for a REIToon? Send an email to Blog@KimcoRealty.com. 1 2

www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/09/social-media-update-2014 time.com/3677555/nielsen-obama-state-of-the-union-viewership

About the Author Jennifer Lynch is Senior Marketing Project Manager at Kimco Realty Corp., owner and operator of North America’s largest publicly traded portfolio of neighborhood and community shopping centers. Jennifer has been with Kimco since 2011. She has an M.S. in real estate from New York University and lives on Long Island, NY.

LiquidSpace, the largest real-time marketplace for professional meeting and workspace, has brought the sharing economy to the commercial real estate industry. It enables individuals and companies to instantly find and book meeting and office space across the United States, Canada, and Australia. More than 5,500 vetted, and reviewed workspaces in 600 cities are available on-demand—in real time via the Web or mobile app— through the LiquidSpace platform, which recently surpassed its one millionth transaction. “More and more work happens on the go, while most desks and commercial office buildings sit empty the majority of every day,” said Mark Gilbreath, founder and CEO of LiquidSpace. “Our platform gives people instant access to the great spaces that surround us. Professionals today have more mobility and choice than ever before, and this global trend is fueling great demand for our platform.” At the same time demand for flexible workspaces has grown, the supply of workspace venues available on LiquidSpace has more than doubled in the past year, and new types of spaces have been introduced to its marketplace. Hotel meeting rooms, conference centers, legal deposition rooms, and corporate training facilities are now as easily accessible on-demand as coworking spaces and private offices. In fact, the supply of hotel workspaces available through LiquidSpace has grown by 1060% in the past year. Recently LiquidSpace introduced a redesigned website with curated collections of workspaces. The collections allow customers to quickly find spaces that are best suited to specific business activities, such as sales meetings, interviews, strate-

More and more work happens on the go, while most desks and commercial buildings sit empty the majority of every day. gy offsites, customer trainings, quiet work, legal depositions, board meetings, and more. (Visit www.liquidspace.com to view the curated collections.) Within the next few weeks, LiquidSpace is relaunching its mobile app to make it even easier for mobile professionals to find and book workspaces while on the go. (To download the app for iOS or Android, visit www.liquidspace.com.) About the Author

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Nanci Anderson is Vice President of Operations at LiquidSpace, leading the execution of all business operations, partner relationships, and service delivery, including building best practices for a consistent, exceptional member experience. Nanci has been an executive leader at several start-up organizations, such as Net Perceptions, Kardia Health, and Gearworks, building exceptional teams, driving revenue growth, and delivering the highest-quality service during early stages and accelerated growth.

Colliers

CASE STUDY:

INTERNATIONAL

Surely you’ve heard of Colliers—they’re the international CRE giant that’s been slowly expanding to every corner of the globe since 1976. It now employs nearly 16,000 people in 485 offices located in 63 countries, and it managed a cool $75 billion in real estate transactions in 2013, yielding $2.1 billion in revenue. A hugely diverse company in a myriad of ways, Colliers offers real estate services the world over, ranging from global corporate solutions and multimarket portfolios to property management, sales, consulting, and mortgage banking. Basically, if it involves commercial real estate, someone at Colliers probably knows all about it. As a company that’s been around since long before the word “Internet” was a household term, much less the concept of social media, Colliers has adapted better than many to the changing demands and opportunities of the digital marketplace. It was an early adopter of the social media “fad” (which, in fact, is proving to be more than just a fad) and has since branched out to include nearly every major social media platform into its marketing strategy in some form. Since 2010, Global Chief Marketing Officer Christine Schultz has helped develop Colliers’s approach to social media and guide its latest online and mobile developments. Asked what’s important about social media for Colliers, Schultz’s answer was “engagement”: “Social media—as a direct connection for people to engage with a brand, a way for them to provide suggestions and feedback and solicit personal interactions with a company, all of which simply wasn’t possible in the same way before the advent of the Internet—has provided a whole new landscape of marketing possibilities to companies like Colliers.” The way user engagement manifests itself in social media channels has developed over time and continues to evolve. In the beginning of its social media campaign, Colliers would broadcast the same information across every channel (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.), but over time has found that it’s important to consider the personality of each platform. For example, community-oriented events and articles are targeted for Facebook, while research reports and publications are highlighted more frequently on LinkedIn. And as a follower of the Colliers Twitter page, you’ll receive multiple tweets per day on a wide variety of interesting, industry-

“Social media—as a direct connection for people to engage with a brand, a way for them to provide suggestions and feedback and solicit personal

interactions with a company, all of

which simply wasn’t possible in the same way before the advent of the

Internet—has provided a whole new

landscape of marketing possibilities to companies like Colliers.”

related topics, while its eye-popping Instagram photos will only appear in your feed a few times a week. Though Colliers has a lot of momentum in the social media sphere, Schultz and her team continue to develop their portfolio of social media channels. They opened an Instagram account last spring, launched several mobile apps over the last year, and, most notably, introduced a new blog in mid(continues on page 10)

(continued from page 9) 2014. Schultz emphasized the importance of the design of the blog: “Our goal is to create a place with valuable content that has a great look and feel to it. We strive to cover a wide range of topics from interesting, educated perspectives. With more than 20 Colliers professionals from around the globe to collectively author the blog, we can showcase not just their expertise in their respective markets but also their personalities.” Over the years, Colliers has polled its clients to discover their specific needs. Again and again, clients say that, in addition to great service and CRE expertise, they’re looking for an edge on trends, economics, and street-level information for a given city or region. In short, they want their real estate specialists to predict the future (indeed, don’t we all), and Colliers works very hard to be clairvoyant via its skilled team of trend-spotters and analysts. Social media gives Colliers an opportunity to strategically disseminate this information to potential clients while assisting existing clients in making confident decisions. So what’s next for Colliers and social media? It’s a bit of a secret, but Schultz assures us that they’ve got exciting things to come and that the first ones to find out will be their social media subscribers.

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About the Author Angie Sommer is a senior engineer at ZFA Structural Engineers, a medium-sized engineering firm with a broad range of expertise in the commercial, residential, educational, retrofit, and correctional sectors. In her spare time, she writes restaurant reviews for her blog and is part of a small collective of copywriters.

In 2012 CREW SF launched a new website that embodies our brand and highlights our members. Now the Communications Committee, with the guidance of our public relations consultant and PR professional Maureen Futtner, is bringing our chapter into the social media world. The team will be implementing a social media strategy that focuses on main platforms, including LinkedIn and Twitter. The goal is to increase CREW SF’s visibility in the local, regional, and national business communities. In addition, the strategy is focused on increasing public awareness of individual members and their notable achievements, as well as promoting memberto-member business. CREW SF has a strong LinkedIn members-only group (www. linkedin.com/groups/CREW-SF-130143), currently numbering 177, which all of our members are encouraged to join. This group provides an online platform to facilitate memberto-member business. In addition, it is a great place to share knowledge and trends that support furthering our mission to “develop and advance women as leaders in the commercial

real estate industry.” This platform also allows us to connect with the CREW Network through their members-only group (www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=5071738) and public company page. This is one way to access some of network’s white papers and research. If you are active on Twitter, be sure to follow us (@CREW_SF). Through Twitter, we are able to connect with other CREW leaders and chapters, as well as relevant industry organizations, through the effective use of hastags (#) and handles (@). Twitter enables us to share our CREW SF–generated content, whether from the VIEW, our blog, or our programs. It is also an information mecca for learning about real estate trends and best practices.

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We are just embarking on our journey into the social media world—see you there! About the Author Kristina Owyoung is corporate communications manager at Charles Pankow Builders, Ltd., the 2014 CREW SF Communications Committee team lead, and the 2015 CREW SF Membership Committee board liaison.

Donna Schumacher, managing editor of the VIEW, sat down with Amanda Walter, creative director and founder of Walter Communications, a communications strategy firm focusing exclusively on the built environment professions, to talk about her insights about social media. Walter is coauthor of Social Media in Action: Comprehensive Guide for Architecture, Engineering, Planning and Environmental Consulting Firms.

DS: Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to specialize in social media and thought leadership for built environment professionals and to write Social Media in Action? AW: I started my career working in PR for the technology in-

dustry, coming from a background in journalism and communications. After the collapse of that industry in 2001, I realized that, with my husband also in technology, it was time for one of us to diversify. I had a minor in art history from college and a longstanding interest in the built environment, so I chose to work for EDAW, which is headquartered in San Francisco. It was an exciting opportunity to be a significant part of the branding effort for the firm. My particular focus was the development of the firm as a recognized expert in the field, and social media developed as a natural extension of that emphasis.

DS: In your book, Social Media in Action, you list some rather daunting statistics that can only have been surpassed since its publication: “By the time you read this sentence, there will be 700 new posts on Facebook. By the time you finish reading this article, there will be 1 million new tweets.” How does a firm carve out some sort of visibility for itself in that relentless sea of information? AW: From my perspective, social media is only one of many

tools, albeit a very strong one, in the larger kit of publication possibilities. As such, it is first of all important to establish your goals and target audience. Who is your primary audience specifically? What do you know about them? What is your area of expertise and best potential for thought leadership? What are you trying to say, and what is the best way to communicate to them? There are three types of social media interaction, and you will want to engage them all to use their full potential. “Earned” is a posting by someone else about you. “Paid” is posting for which you have

paid a service, such as Facebook or Google listing your firm ahead of the others in a search. “Organic” is a posting that takes on a life of its own. The trick is to get all three working in harmony.

DS: After creating a website, how would you rank the different social media platforms in a hierarchy of importance for built environment professionals in particular? AW: It is highly dependent on the individual strategy but as a starting point, try this: 1. LinkedIn is an easy first step, for both the company as a whole and for the individual. When you post something of interest, you instantly connect with a group of like-minded professionals who are naturally quite interested in what you are saying. After you meet someone at a networking event and form a personal face-to-face connection lock it in place by sending a message via LinkedIn, and you quickly broaden your network. The attached Social Audiences chart illustrates how LinkedIn is by far the most common social media strategy. 2. Twitter is an interesting possibility for individuals within the firm to establish their own voices as thought leaders. While standing in line for coffee, set your smartphone to synch with your account and repost relevant tweets. 3. Instagram is an exciting, expanding venue for publishing images and will likely be growing in importance for firms centered in the visual world. 4. Industry sites such as Houzz for residential architecture can connect your firm to a broader net of potential clients. The site collects images that nonprofessionals browse for ideas and inspiration. Compelling photographs of your projects posted on the site can be shared and reshared, expanding out to Facebook and Pinterest and creating the organic postings (continues on page 12)

(continued from page 11) mentioned above. This recently happened with great effect to a client of mine—completely unexpected and wonderful! 5. Facebook and Google provide platforms for paid ranking, which may have applications for larger firms by targeting to specific audiences. As your firm gets more and more sophisticated in its social media strategy, test out different approaches and see what works for your specific audience. Each one is slightly different, and your social media strategy should respond accordingly.

DS:

How does one evaluate what is working and what is not working, given that each audience is different and each social media strategy must be tailored to the particular firm? It is challenging to find a direct relationship between social media and a promising lead or new project, so how can you know if all this time and energy is leading somewhere?

Women-owned businesses have the capacity to forge significant changes in these relationships from the top down rather than trying to change existing firms internally. I believe that women-owned businesses are where the major changes will be taking place in gender relations in the work environment.

The more social media is seamlessly integrated into the way we do things, the easier it will be.

AW: Yes, in some ways that is true. A colleague of mine once said “measuring the ROI of social media is like measuring the return on your cell phone.” But one of the fascinating aspects of social media is how specifically one can track changes made and quantify the effects of those changes. There is the potential to correlate individual connections between actions and results if you are working with the right professionals who are familiar with the tools. DS:

What is the importance of representing yourself as an individual separate from your firm? How does that relationship (between an individual and her firm) work? It often feels blurred and confusing. Does this differ depending on your role in the company as CEO or employee?

AW:

You always want to maintain a branding of yourself as an individual even if you are the owner of the firm. On Twitter, it is important to have your face as the image, even if it is the firm name; this maintains a flexibility for the future. Instagram is similar for the visual set. On LinkedIn, ideally you have both a company page as well a personal one. Encourage your employees to do the same and to post frequently on their area of expertise on the company page. Facebook is typically more personal, but you do want to maintain a certain decorum, because potential clients can certainly find you there.

DS: How has being a woman influenced the trajectory of your career, or has it?

AW: In this business, being a woman can be a challenge at times.

Like so many other fields, the higher up I went, the fewer women were there with me. At EDAW, initially I had amazing opportunities, but when I got pregnant, I truly felt an instant change, a narrowing of my options due a perceived sense of my inability to be

there 24/7 for my career. This was an important part of my decision to start Walter Communications. I wanted to create a work environment where an employee’s choice to become a parent would be supported and understood. Parents can make terrific employees because they know the importance of efficiency.

Creating my own firm was the best way to be in control of how far I could fly and where I wanted to land.

DS:

The continuous nature of social media engagement takes time on a daily basis. Most of us are already quite busy, and the day is still just 24 hours long. If we are following up on our social media strategy, we are not doing something else, such as blast emails, writing articles for professional journals, and real-time networking.

AW:

Time is always a challenge when it comes to adding something to your routine. The “something else” examples you give are equally important, and you certainly shouldn’t look at this as an either/or. Social media is more like an amplifier for all of these communications tools. If you have written an article for a journal, you should be using your social media channels to drive traffic to that article and to address any comments that arise from it. Email blasts should be made with social sharing in mind. Each snippet of content and the newsletter itself should be made shareable with the click of a “share” icon. And your new connections from your in-person networking should be followed up with by inviting them to link with you on LinkedIn. It sounds like a lot, but if you can give yourself 10 minutes each day to peruse what is being put out there from others in your network and to schedule your own social media posts, over time you’ll notice an uptick in your network’s growth and interaction. Try to do this daily. Set a timer to keep yourself from getting distracted, and use a tool like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to streamline your efforts. The more social media is seamlessly integrated into the way we do things, the easier it will be.

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About the Author Donna Schumacher is the founder and creative director of Donna Schumacher Architecture (DSA), a boutique architecture practice for small-scale commercial and residential work in the Bay Area. DSA uses Donna’s background in the fine arts to specialize in one-of-a-kind signature elements for interiors, as well as complicated permits requiring in-depth knowledge of the building code and a calm, patient demeanor.

restaurant

REPORT

Before 2010, the best you could hope for from a roving food cart in the great city of San Francisco was a hot dog or perhaps the sporadic tamale. When Off the Grid’s founder, Matt Cohen, set out to start a ramen cart of his own, he realized just how difficult it was to do such a thing in San Francisco. As he navigated the city’s then-antiquated rules regarding mobile food retailers, he stumbled upon a greater purpose, from which was born Off the Grid (OTG), a “pop-up” food festival comprising a variety of mobile food trucks. After four years in operation, OTG now oversees 40 weekly food truck markets and coordinates over 200 vendors all around the Bay Area. The company’s headquarters, still stationed on the grounds of its original market at Fort Mason, employs nearly 60 people and is still growing. The lead of their marketing team, Patty Prislin, who joined the company in mid-2014, described the significant role that social media has played during the explosive birth of OTG’s food truck movement: “The use of Facebook for real-time updates to our followers regarding which food trucks were going to be where and when, along with the frenzied wordof-mouth spread, got OTG off to a formidable start.” She explained it as “the perfect storm of availability of new, interesting mobile food vendors paired with curiosity and enthusiasm from the public that culminated at just the right place and time.” Prislin notes that it would not be possible to go “viral” using Facebook in 2014 in the same way they did in 2010. When Facebook changed its al-

Photos by Gamma Nine Photography

gorithms, picking and choosing what to show to followers, it became less effective for OTG to post real-time updates to its nearly 75,000 followers. While OTG still uses Facebook for announcements and promoting markets, and indeed still creates a virtual “event” for each upcoming market, it now largely uses Twitter to fill the void left by Facebook. Twitter’s short-

and-sweet posts allow condensed messages to reach followers in real time. OTG tweets multiple times daily to update its over 31,000 followers regarding markets they may be interested in for lunch or dinner, or to showcase photos from vendors that are currently serving picturesque dishes to entice patrons to stop by. (continues on page 14)

Facebook

While Facebook enables shopping centers to fully establish a presence through the creation of brand pages that allow for almost as much content and information as a website, less than one percent of Facebook users interact with brands. This is because consumers primarily use Facebook to socialize, not to shop. In this social medium, you’re not competing with the mall down the street; your competition is even tougher—your consumers’ friends and family. Forrester Research’s Sucharita Mulpuru once said that trying to sell your brand on Facebook is “like trying to sell stuff to people while they’re hanging out with their friends at the bar.” However, Facebook can still be a useful engagement tool when used with the right strategy.

Twitter

Twitter is the most time sensitive of all social media platforms, but it can also have the broadest reach. Twitter is all about what is happening “right now,” what is trending “right now,” and what should I be doing or talking about “right now.” Timely and engaging promotions and campaigns go viral instantaneously on Twitter and reach far beyond any marketing campaigns of the past. More

than on any other medium, marketing messages on Twitter are no longer dictated by the brand, but by the consumer.

Instagram

Instragram’s role and potential as a social media tool is still being written. But what is clear is its significant and growing popularity as more than just a photo enhancement tool. Similar to the initial launch of MySpace, Instagram is rapidly becoming a preferred communication tool for younger generations. This audience is using photos as a medium to share experiences, tag friends (and brands), comment, and engage in dialogue. Numerous brands are successfully navigating Instagram by posting compelling images that tell the brand’s story, take consumers “behind the scenes,” and otherwise demonstrate the brand’s “personality.”

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About the Author Lori Coleman, VP of Management Services for Madison Marquette, has 23 years of experience in the real estate industry. She oversees the California Portfolio of over four million square feet of retail property and is responsible for growing client relationships. Lori has been a CREW SF member since 2013 and is an active member of the Program Committee.

(continued from page 13)

More recently, Instagram has also been adopted as a venue for OTG to post pics of the day’s food sightings. Posts on Instagram are also used mainly to draw followers to current markets or advertise upcoming events, but Instagram has its own set of groupies who appear to prefer a picture to a thousand words (or 140 characters, as it were). Adding yet another tool to its social media toolbox, OTG also launched a free smartphone app in 2013 to help people further organize their market preferences and attendance. With nearly 20,000 downloads in just over a year, this has provided OTG yet another way of reaching out to its supporters.

While Off the Grid is certainly a social media success story, it’s clear that there will always be more to master in the everevolving art of social media campaigns. But at least we can now sit on a lawn chair enjoying a Korean burrito surrounded by bustling food trucks while we contemplate.

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A WORD FROM OUR SPONSORs

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Through third-party certifications, we can illustrate our commitment to sustainable products and methods. We offer a comprehensive selection of products that meet the rigorous NSF-140 standard, as well as environmental product declarations (EPDs) for our Ecoflex ICT modular carpet platform. EPDs help customers better understand a product’s sustainable qualities and environmental repercussions so they can make more informed product selections. As one of the Transformative Sponsors of the International Living Future Institute (ILFI), Mohawk Group is working with ILFI to promote the Living Building Challenge, a green building certification program that defines the most advanced measure of sustainability for architecture and interior design. In addition, we’re participating in the ILFI’s Declare program, similar to a nutrition label for building products. The Declare label program is the Institute’s signature program related to product disclosures or “ingredients” for building products. Challenging ourselves every day to do more, we’re using important industry certifications and beyond to help us communicate what we’re doing. So, when we say “green,” we mean it.

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