Diana Podaski, Linear Retail PropertiesToday marks the day of my 50th Dishing Social Media column published by the New England Real Estate Journal. Each column is hand written by me - chalk full of my wittiness, strong opinions and life experiences. Many predictions I’ve made over the years have been on-point and others I’ve discovered to be simply hot topics or trends that never came to fruition. Here is a compilation of the greatest of the last 50. As always, thanks for reading, believing in me and inspiring me to keep writing.
Column 1: Social Media & RECon - iPads are the new binder, Facebook is the number one ranked website, we get our news via 140 characters and conducting business is now largely handled on a 4 by 2 inch device. With social media being the number one activity on the web it’s time to dive in or get media swept away.
Column 2: Social Media Follow-up - With over 160 million users, this is one social network you don’t want to overlook - LinkedIn. Use LinkedIn as a sales lead generation system. Update your personal profile and your company profile, build your network, keep track of competition, work with people you already know to make introductions to others and let clients see with whom they’re dealing.
Column 4: Mobile Trends in Retail Real Estate - Have you ever poked fun at a colleague, friend or family member that turned red and frantic after realizing they don’t have their smartphone? Well, we now live in an era where this is a medical condition, and it’s called Nomophobia. Ridiculous? Absolutely, but the truth is, we most likely have all been there.
Column 4: Mobile Trends in Retail Real Estate - The growth of mobile websites and apps, integration of food review sites, mobile payment, Geo-fencing, QR Code scanning and NFC.
Column 7: Facebook Posting Tips - Are you a Neutral Nelly? Sometimes it can be challenging to pick sides but you’ll be thankful you did on Facebook. Studies have shown that posts that are either positive or negative get more shares.
Column 13: How To Speak the Tweet - Your profile is extremely important – it will identify you to the Twitter universe. However you identify yourself here will shape the conversations you have on the social network.
Column 14: Revisiting LinkedIn - Step #1 to revisiting LinkedIn is editting your profile. Be sure you have a professional photo - this does not include a logo, a glamour shot by Deb, or a picture of you and your son, simply a business photo of yourself displaying a clear headshot.
Column 15: How To Utilize Video in Retail Real Estate - Other than video being “kind of a big deal,” the best part to note about video is that it’s the easiest way to create an emotional connection with your audience. Testimonials are just one way to utilize video in our industry. Other ways include leasing, announcements and events, informational, showing your company culture, news releases, blogging and How To videos.
Column 16: Is Email Marketing Dead? - In our industry, email remains a constant, something that most of us are doing all day, every day. For now, my best advice is to come up with creative subject lines, invest in good design, be sure your email blasts are mobile compatible, and always have quality content.
Column 17: Why Your Company Must Be Transparent - Revisit your corporate messages. If your CEO reads it and doesn’t know what it means, you’re in trouble. Make your mission a clear simple message (and don’t use the word “solutions,” please).
Column 23: 3 Ways to Strengthen Your Corporate Culture Online - 1. Custom Photography 2. Bio Pages 3. Get Social
Column 24: New Digital and Social Terms You Should Know – Omnichannel Retail, Digital Native, Webrooming, Socialnomics, a Blended Sale
Column 27: All About Apple Pay - According to a recent Forrester Research report, the U.S. mobile payment market will go from $52 billion in 2014 to $142 billion in 2019.
Column 29: 50 Shades of Social - Sites and apps that will make your life easier and more social, and you – more suave: Snapchat, CitizensConnect, PhotoToaster, Paperless Post, TurboScan, Venmo, Waze, Tablelist, Vivino, Hotel Tonight, Duolingo, Pandora, Etsy, Houzz, Find My iPhone
Column 31: What Happens in Vegas Stays on YouTube - Remember, what happens in Vegas lives forever on social media so be smart and have fun.
Column 32: Building Trust on Social Media – Update your profile, create content that people find useful, use geo-targeting to uncover nuances with new markets, identify who your brand advocates are and listen, have good ratings, have referral programs.
Column 34: The Right Social Media Platform for Your Role in CRE - Architects should have a presence on any social media platform that focuses on photography. The best are Instagram, Facebook and Houzz. Be sure to tag your content appropriately by scene/space/retailer, product and region so that people can find you in searches.
Column 37: Understanding Snapchat - So why are people using it? The app only allows you to take photos and videos in the moment so there is an element of authenticity. They are automatically deleted unless the user adds it to their “story” which then lasts for 24 hours. It also does not show how many friends you have, so for many people there is less anxiety around using it where just about every other social media platform shows how many friends, connections or followers you have.
Column 38: Projected Trends in Retail Real Estate for 2016 - In an age where people care more than ever about what they put into their bodies, grocery has changed dramatically. Not only do we now have grocery stores with local farm bios next to produce, curb-side pickup, stores with coffee bars and spas but now have price accounting guns, store apps with recipe suggestions and mobile payment. Some stores even have Panasonic Powershelf, a technology that works on a weight system. When the last product is taken on a shelf, PowerShelf alerts a store employee via text that the specific product needs to be refilled.
Column 39: Google Photos App - Google Photos will ease your photo organizational pain by bringing an automated search tool to your photos. With the Google Photos app all your photos are automatically organized by date, people, places and things, no tagging necessary, it’s magically internally organized by Google’s algorithm. Search by what you remember about a photo, whether that’s a building, a color or an object in the photo. It also supports face grouping technology which will automatically group together photos with the same face.
Column 40: 10 New Year’s Resolutions – Marketing, Tech and Social Media in CRE - Go on a phone diet – When a new year is upon us everyone is back in the gym (for a few months anyway) and trying to slim down. Why not try going on a phone diet? By this I mean limit your phone usage when you get home. Put it in your bedroom to charge and don’t touch it again until you go to bed and set your alarm. This will make for a happier family and a happier you, I guarantee it.
Column 43: How To Leverage Social Media at ICSC RECon To Build Connections and Make Deals - Once Vegas has chewed you up, given you blisters, dark circles, and spit you back out to your home town, it’s time to do your post show follow-up. Go through your collected business cards and find your new contacts on LinkedIn and Twitter. Next, create new contacts in your CRM of all your new digital contacts. Continue to engage with these new connections and businesses over the course of the year.
Column 43: The Newest in Retail Real Estate Technology - Sensity – A company that embeds sensing and networking technology in retrofit and LED lights in shopping center parking lots. The technology provides real-time parking availability to shoppers, property-wide retail analytics to the owner and an overall increased sense of safety and security for all. Sensity was noted in: The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, CNN and Newsweek.
How To Kill It on Social Media with a Team of 1 - There are only so many hours in the day and social media is demanding, you need to work on it every single day to really create an impact yet you can’t be on all social sites throughout the entire day. I personally discourage outsourcing social media for your brand as so many companies currently are doing in our industry. You can buy followers but keeping them engaged is all on you.
Column 45: The Best Social Media Report Card for Management with Digital ADD - It’s important to understand your audience and figure out what your CEO cares about. You may want to share all insights you’ve gathered but you must narrow it down to a quick and easy-to-read snapshot.
Column 48:Today’s Answers Don’t Even Require a Click - Moving from the keyboard to voice commands, search is incorporated into AI (artificial intelligence personal assistant) home devices like Amazon’s Alexa controlled Echo Speaker and Google Home powered by Google Assistant. No clicks!
Column 49: Social and Tech Predictions for Retail Real Estate in 2017 – After watching seven episodes of Black Mirror, the incredibly addicting yet terrifying futuristic techno-paranoia Netflix TV series, I can’t shut my mind off to AI (artificial intelligence). The British TV series, scoring a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, focused one episode around extracting part of your conscious from you and putting it into a bot and uploading it to a computer. It’s essentially a copy of yourself as your own personal assistant that knows exactly how you would respond, can control all your kitchen electronics and cook the way you like etc. It was pretty wild. On a much smaller and trivial scale, we have the Chatbot – this is AI that can answer common questions people have and provide better customer experience – leaving the tougher, longer answers to leasing reps.
Diana Podaski is VP - marketing and social media at Linear Retail Properties, Burlington, Mass.