Example: Real Estate Industry

The recent turbulence in the housing market demonstrates how social media can benefit and empower users. Of course, the impact of social media is not limited to this particular industry, but it makes a good example because of its relevancy to today's world and because many people have bought/sold a home, or are at least considering it. Also, given the importance of trust in the industry, social media is an obvious choice for building relationships and establishing credibility: key assets for the agents who must now compete in a social media environment.

Several online tools emerged which provided buyers and sellers with the knowledge they needed to make better decisions with realtors. Trulia Voices, as one example, is an online community where buyers, sellers and agents can get advice and share knowledge with other experts. These kinds of tools empowered buyers and sellers by providing them with information that was previously non-existent, unknown or not as useful.  For example, users could get appraisals on homes, learn which real estate agents were the best to work with, and list properties to maximize their exposure to the market. These tools changed the role of the real estate agent as buyers and sellers became smarter and more resourceful. A new generation of empowered home buyers arose from the rubble of the housing collapse.

The following quote by Peter Kolat from Real Estate Black Book reinforces this argument:

"In today's world, every real estate agent, real estate investor, house buyer, house seller, distressed property owner, and everyone else in between can just jump on the internet and find what they are looking for.  People are no longer restricted to working with real estate agents and relying on MLS listings to find a house. They are not restricted to working with their bank to get an approval for a mortgage, running around from one open house to another, being swayed by pressure tactics and relying on other people to purchase or sell a home. Not anymore..."

Recognizing this trend, real estate companies were early adapters of social media and are enjoying their benefits as well. According to Mashable, realtors are using photo sharing to enhance listings, along with professional networking sites to hone their sales skills. They share videos, listings or advice with their communities and prospective buyers or sellers.

WellcomeMat is a good example of social media being used by realtors, as it hosts videos which show potential buyers what a property looks like without requiring them to leave their home. Video with commenting is a particularly advantageous social media tool as it may eliminate the need for an open house and provides a platform for discussion.

Another example of a functional social media tool is Coldwell Banker's On Location which takes users' IP addresses to determine the closest available video listings and then displays those listings for easy viewing. Coldwell Banker's 5,500 Twitter followers and 9,500 Facebook followers suggest that their social media strategy is working and their decision to redevelop their website (and incorporate social media links into the homepage) was a good one.

Yet another example is Corcoran Group, a New York based real estate firm, which effectively utilizes different social media channels (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Foursquare). Their Facebook fan page personalizes its posts in a way that lets followers see the success stories of real people that used the organizations' services.

Lessons Learned

By looking at a few examples in the real estate industry, we can learn valuable lessons about social media on the whole as well as their impact on other industries.

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What's your plan?

"That's all good, but keep this in mind," Dave cautioned. "While technology offers new ways to share information, it doesn't increase the capacity to receive information so you should proceed with caution and a plan." There are a number of reasons driving the need for caution, not the least being the risk of piling information on employees and taxing their already diminished time and attention spans.

For communicators, the plan should start with an understanding that digital technology does not change the road along which they will travel, but it may entail new rules of the road. Dave has developed the following table as a guide:

Same Road	New Rules
Employees need certain information to do their jobs	We must have discipline to prioritize information
Employees want to share their opinions and be heard	New tools make it easier to give employees a voice
Managers are the most credible communicators	Easier to equip managers as communicators: do it!
People want information in different ways	Use all the tools at your disposal, wisely

Communicators should also remember that high tech should not replace high touch, suggests Dave, and encourages them to understand that:

• New channels and technologies can allow for more tailored, two-way discussions with employees
• You shouldn't just repurpose offline materials
• Integration works: digital channels are most effective in concert with offline media and in-person interaction
• You shouldn't let automation replace interaction.

The plan should then continue with an assessment of whether or not to move ahead with 2.0. To help with this decision, Dave suggests considering the following:

• Are my employees online at work? To what degree?
• Who are my employees: young, aging, blue or white collar, retirees, new hires, families?
• Am I reaching all my audiences?
• How many languages do my employees speak?
• What will my employees need to do with all the information I provide them?
• Have I asked my people what they want?
• What is my budget?
• What are my existing resources?
• What's the appetite for change?

Understand the social intranet

If you are ready for 2.0, and preliminary results from Prescient's 2010 Intranet 2.0 Global Survey suggest many companies are, that means you will be working with the social intranet. Even if you've not come across the term before, you are probably familiar with the concept of the "social intranet." As defined by Toby Ward, President of Prescient Digital Media on his Intranetblog, it is:

An intranet that features multiple social media tools for most or all employees to use as collaboration vehicles for sharing knowledge with other employees. A social intranet may feature blogs, wikis, discussion forums, social networking, or a combination of these or any other Web 2.0 (intranet 2.0) tool with at least some or limited exposure (optional) from the main intranet or portal home page.

In other words, the social intranet is based on social technology that millions of us use every day, enabling an often neglected resource to address business challenges common across all sectors, including knowledge worker productivity, collaborating across silos, recruitment and retention of talent.

The increasing familiarity of the tools described by Toby is essential for driving adoption of the social intranet. As the following numbers demonstrate, the spectacular growth of social media stems from the intuitive usability of the tools and their ability to enable us to interact with one another naturally. When combined with seismic demographic shifts and a compelling cost-benefit equation, "social intranet" is a term you can expect to hear in boardrooms across the world.

Explosive growth in scalable, intuitive technology

Throughout 2009, according to comScore, Social Networking continued to gain momentum with 21.5 million unique visitors in Q4, up 5% from Q1. With a reach of 88%, the category accounts for 2 out of every 5 visits over the Internet in Canada. The category now accounts for 15 percent of all time spent online and 19 percent of all pages viewed in Canada, making it one of the most engaging activities across the Web. In addition,

• 75% of Americans use social technology (Forrester)
• 66% of the global intranet population visits social networks (Nielsen)
• 1,382% monthly growth rate of Twitter users from January to February, 2009
• 5 billion minutes spend on Facebook every day.

With social media now an integral part of our day-to-day personal lives, we will expect it to play a role in our professions.

The Next Generation is in your building

According to Neilsen, 93% of social media users believe a company should have a social media presence, and that includes within your firewall. Millions of people are spending billions of hours on social networking sites because they want to share the OMG cat meme with their friends. But they are also doing so because it enables efficient, productive collaboration with communities around the globe. The Economist reported that Facebook has one engineer for every 1.1 million users, enabling the company to scale extremely rapidly to manage the explosive growth of its platform. And have you ever heard of a suggestion that Facebook needs a help desk?

The intuitive performance of social media technology creates the expectation that companies will make it available to employees. As one client heard from a new hire, "I have better technology in my living room than you're giving me here."

Demographics are an obvious driver for the social intranet, given that a generation that has grown up with digital technology is now on most company payrolls. One Canadian financial institution, for example, has seen Generation Y grow from 10% to 34% of its workforce in six years. At that growth rate, Generation Y will account for over 50% of its workforce in 2012.

How does that affect the workplace? Research suggests that young people may perceive inadequate technology as an indicator of an organizational culture that does not offer them interesting opportunities. Consider a study conducted by IT services firm Telindus, which found that:

• 39 per cent of 18 to 24 year-olds would consider leaving if they were not allowed to access applications like Facebook and YouTube.
• A further 21 per cent indicated that they would feel 'annoyed' by such a ban.
• The problem is less acute with 25 to 65 year-olds, of whom just 16 per cent would consider leaving and 13 per cent would be annoyed.

But don't expect these concerns to only come from young people. The stats are in, and essentially every demographic within your organization is participating in social media.



To learn more about how to develop a plan for an effective social communications strategy based on the social intranet, check out Prescient's Social Intranet Success whitepaper.

Combined with the planning framework provided by Dave, and the compelling numbers that demonstrate why the social intranet is concept rapidly gaining in prominence, the matrix will assist communications professionals to harness the power of the new technology to enhance their contribution to their organization's performance.

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The Social Intranet
Social media tools: the best for your intranet 2.0 strategy

• Version 1.0:  Welcome page (a welcome message and a phone number)
• Version 1.1:  Bulletin board (simple communications)
• Version 1.2:  Corporate newsletter (structured news & limited document management)
• Version 1.3:  Help Desk (simple transactions like the employee directory)
• Version 1.4:  Corporate Store (more complex transactions such as e-HR and self-service)
• Version 1.5:  The Portal (authorization, authentication, application & database integration)

Though not every intranet has followed such a clear evolutionary path (in fact, only 15% of organizations have a full portal solution, according to the 2010 Intranet 2.0 Global Survey, conducted in the Spring of 2010 by Prescient Digital Media), the technology itself and many leading organizations (IBM, Cisco, and Verizon to name a few) have blazed this enterprise trail.

The trail has lengthened considerably as of late with the advancement of social media, and the intranet has made an evolutionary leap to version 2.0 - the social intranet.

The Social Intranet

The phrase social intranet has only appeared in recent months (late 2009) to describe an intranet with social media features. Although with any emerging technology there is likely to be disagreement on the precise definition of a new term, I describe a social intranet as the following:

An intranet that features multiple social media tools for most or all employees to use as collaboration vehicles for sharing knowledge with other employees. A social intranet may feature blogs, wikis, discussion forums, social networking, or a combination of these or any other Web 2.0 (intranet 2.0) tool with at least some or limited exposure (optional) from the main intranet or portal home page.

However, a few employee or executive blogs do not make a social intranet. A social intranet requires wide participation, or at minimum, opportunity for participation, by most or all employees that have intranet access. Social intranets require social media: blogs, wikis, and user comments, to name a few. More advanced social intranets may incorporate multimedia, user-tagging, and social networking that are integrated into multiple channels including user profiles.

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John Chamber, CEO of Cisco, is recognized as having one of the leading blogs for employees. He's also famous for his relentless drive to gather data about his business, and never missing an opportunity to interact with employees and understand their thoughts on the business. There are stories about Chambers asking: "If Cisco could do one thing for you, what would it be?" Chambers typically follows up on the response within weeks, and posts the story to his blog.

In doing so, Chambers shows a grasp for the fundamental principle of social media: success requires participating in a conversation; not trying to shout at your audience.

Participate in the conversation

One of the reasons why social media technology has enjoyed such rapid adoption is that the tools are inexpensive and intuitive to use. As indicated in Presient's Intranet 2.0 Global Survey, the main barrier to adoption is not technology; it's gaining buy-in within the organization.

A key source for the difficulty of gaining buy-in is that the concept of participating in a conversation with employees can be at odds with the hierarchical, command-and-control culture that has dominated some organizations. Adapting your organization to become more listening-oriented is an important first step for preparing for Intranet 2.0 success.

Bernie Charland from Thinktwice Communications, for example, gained valuable insights into how to manage an internal communications strategy based on listening to employees through his experience working for Dell and IronMountain. Bernie has collaborated with Prescient on a number of projects, and based on his experience has suggested the following tips for adapting a communications strategy so it joins the conversation and is well prepared to benefit from Intranet 2.0.

• At minimum, find a way to listen to the conversation. If there is no logical or accessble forum, create one to drive efficiency (and avoid folks going to a bunch of rogue or scattered platforms).
• Ideally, organizations should find a way to contribute to the conversation through information, comments and content. There is no real way to manage the conversation, but they can go a long way to influence it and direct it in productive ways.
• Building on the point above, establish simple rules of engagement (policies) that screen out abuses but supports vibrant, transparent conversation.
• Finally, the ultimate goal should be to leverage/foster the conversation to support the company's goals - for example by promoting relevant topics/issues, or supporting collaboration and innovation via crowdsourcing.
  

How fast can you move?

In addition to understanding how to adapt your business to participate in conversations, it's also important to assess how quickly you can adopt Intranet 2.0 technology.

There's no doubt that social media introduces new technology into the organization, requiring communications professionals to rethink some fundamental issues about their job. These fundamental questions can cause confusion about how to introduce social media into the mix and how quickly you can move.

When trying to answer these questions, remember that there are things social media doesn't change: such as employee engagement and the connection the organization's leadership have formed with employees. Prescient's colleague Ralph Beslin of the Beslin Communication Group, prepared the table below for our joint social media readiness seminar in 2009. Ralph based the table on a white paper he co-authored for the Ivey Business Journal called How leaders can communicate to build trust.

The power of the table lies in its familiarity. Ralph's white paper lays out sophisticated techniques for measuring these factors, but the underlying concept is well established and intuitive: the leaders who win are those who communicate openly and often, have a clear and committed communications policy, initiate formal and informal programs and assess their own performance. These leaders, as we saw in the example of John Chambers, have always communicated openly and authentically. Social media simply enables them to do it more effectively.

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Despite the lack of blogging, IBM knows there are many benefits to employee blogs. "Employee blogging has benefits both for individuals and the organization," say Werner Geyer and Casey Dugan of IBM's T.J. Watson Research. "In order to inspire the creation of blog posts, we developed a novel topic suggestion system that connects blog readers with blog writers through sharing topics of interest."

IBM's Blog Muse is a new employee social media tool that connects blog readers and blog writers by allowing readers to make blog topic suggestions and requests of employee subject matter experts who blog at IBM (see below).

Employees can "Ask for a blog post" online and Blog Muse will automatically route the topic to those bloggers that are most likely to write about it. If a blog post on the requested topic gets posted then the requester is automatically notified by Blog Muse.

Blog Muse also encourages employees to take up blogging via a prominent tab called "Get inspired to write" which recommends topics to readers and potential bloggers. Employees can also search out content by topic and vote on blog posts.

The preliminary results (300+ respondents) and data of the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey 2010 reveal that 55% of organizations have employee or executive blogs on their corporate intranet. However, the challenge for these organizations and the owners of the blogging platforms is no different from IBM: you can lead an employee to a blog, but you can't make him or her write.

Ensure you get a free copy of the Intranet 2.0 Global Study Report and analysis by spending 5 - 10 minutes taking the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey 2010.

Related Articles:

Executives should blog, not employees
Do employees want to blog?
Change management for Intranet 2.0

Related Event:

Webcom Toronto 2010 for a number of presentations on Intranet 2.0