1st Quarter 2015

Getting to
social media

inside

KIMCO BAY MEADOWS OFF THE GRID

I N SIDE THIS ISS U E

Inspired by a topic for a future

issue of the VIEW?

CASE STUDY: Bay Meadows

If you have an ideaeven a tiny gem of oneplease 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.

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

10

Amanda Walter Interview

11

Restaurant Report: Off the Grid

13

The Social Media Tool Kit

for Retail Shopping Centers

14

A Word from Our Sponsors

15

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

2015 CREW SF. All submissions are subject to editing for clarity and brevity, unless
otherwise noted.

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.

CASE STUDY:

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; were 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 NGE 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 dads 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 Peets on California
Street. Dozens of friends called that night
to say they saw me on TV.

Bay Meadows:

Social Media Use and Strategy

2015 Stacie Goeddel, Holland & Knight LLP

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 populationseither
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 BMs 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 IIs 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, BMs 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 teams 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 reciprocitysuch as Movies in the
Meadow, a movie and night market in the park, and Momdays,
Monday afternoon playdates for toddlersand 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?

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.

Social
Media for the CRE Professional
2015 Maureen Futtner, PR for the People

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, Youre 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.

Dont talk about yourself too much.

Historically, marketing meant pushing your message out to
4. Social media is a communication tool. It shouldnt 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 rsum. 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 thats the key element of social media: its 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 thats a great
ary 2015), its 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. Facebooks 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 dont, dex. Keep your profile updated. Additionally, you can gain indusyour clients or potential clients do. So theres a world of net- try knowledge by belonging to groups on LinkedIn. Posting rel(continues on page 6)
working going on that doesnt 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

CASE STUDY:

The Coolest Way to Show a HOuse Ever

2015 Barak Kassar, Rassak Experience

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

coaster . . . I dont think the roller coaster is a promotion

for an actual house (its 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 Rassaks 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

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.

Kimco Realty Corp.

Social Media: Where Brick-andMortar Meets the Digital World

2015 Jennifer Lynch, 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

(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 companys 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.
Twitters 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, heres 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 youll enjoy using
the most.

Dont be just a social media stalker. Jump in and

tweet, share, and update, or youll 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.

If these numbers prove anything, its 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 Americas 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 industryand these funnies became an instant hit! Nationally syndicated cartoonist Mark OCollin 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, weve 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 Kimcos second-annual REIToons wall
calendar, accompanied by the 10 most popular REIToons from
the past year. For the past two years, weve developed copies of
these calendars to hand out to industry peers during the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) National Conference,
but well 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.

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 Americas 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.

Colliers

CASE STUDY:

INTERNATIONAL

2015 Angie Sommer, ZFA Structural Engineers

Surely youve heard of Collierstheyre the international

CRE giant thats been slowly expanding to every corner of
the globe since 1976. It now employs nearly 16,300 people
in 502 offices located in 67 countries, and it managed a cool
$97 billion in real estate transactions in 2014, yielding $2.3
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.

The Sharing Economy Potential

of Commercial Real Estate

As a company thats 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.

2015 Nanci Anderson, LiquidSpace

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-demandin 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

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.

Since 2010, Global Chief Marketing Officer Christine Schultz

has helped develop Collierss approach to social media and
guide its latest online and mobile developments. Asked
whats important about social media for Colliers, Schultzs
answer was engagement: Social mediaas 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 wasnt possible in the same way before the advent of the Internethas
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
its 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, youll receive multiple
tweets per day on a wide variety of interesting, industry-

Social mediaas 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 wasnt possible in the

same way before the advent of the

Internethas 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)

IN CONVERSATION With Amanda Walter

(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, theyre 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, dont
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 whats next for Colliers and social media? Its a bit of
a secret, but Schultz assures us that theyve got exciting
things to come and that the first ones to find out will be
their social media subscribers.

2015 Donna Schumacher, Donna Schumacher Architecture

Amanda Walter,
Walter Communications

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.

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.

Tweet & Follow & Join CREW SF

2015 Kristine Owyoung, Charles Pankow Builders Ltd.

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 SFs 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

10

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 networks 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 SFgenerated 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.

We are just embarking on our journey into the social media

worldsee 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.

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 industry, 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)

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(continued from page 11)

mentioned above. This recently happened with great effect to
a client of minecompletely 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
12

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 employees 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 shouldnt 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 youll notice an uptick in your networks 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.

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 Donnas 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

Off the Grid

2015 Angie Sommer,
ZFA Structural Engineers

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 Grids 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 citys 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 companys 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 OTGs
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. Twitters 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)

13

THE Social
Media TOOL KIT for Retail Shopping Centers
2015 Lori Coleman, Madison Marquette

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, youre not competing with the mall down
the street; your competition is even tougheryour consumers
friends and family. Forrester Researchs Sucharita Mulpuru once
said that trying to sell your brand on Facebook is like trying to
sell stuff to people while theyre 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

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.

14

AND THAT WORD IS...

than on any other medium, marketing messages on Twitter are no

longer dictated by the brand, but by the consumer.

Instagram

Instragrams 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 brands story, take consumers behind the scenes,
and otherwise demonstrate the brands personality.

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 days 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).

A WORD FROM OUR SPONSORs

While Off the Grid is certainly a social media success story,

its 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.

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.

Innovation

Performance

Service

Transparency

SSL Law Firm LLP offers a full array of real estate, land use, and
environmental legal services to a
wide range of clients throughout
California and the nation, with offices in San Francisco, San Rafael,
and Seattle. From our inception,
SSL has embraced an innovative
law firm model that has enabled
us to provide extraordinary service to our clients at economical
rates and, where appropriate,
incorporate flexible and creative
fee structures. Our model has
been largely influenced by our
partners experience as in-house
counsel for large real estate investment firms, home builders,
and technology and finance companies, through which we gained
an important understanding of
our clients need for smart, flexible, and value-providing counsel.

Our name is a family, and so are

we.

R.N. Field Construction, Inc. strives

to be the industry leader in providing
exceptional service in the construction industry.

Mohawk Group is a designer-focused floor covering resourceone

where you can specify with confidence. Using an innovative sustainability strategy, every product and
collection is designed with the environment in mind. As manufacturers, we talk a lot about our impact
on the environment. Even more
important is showing our clients
exactly how those actions affect the
environment.

Our attorneys many years of experience enable them to identify

and advise clients on issues that
warrant expertise beyond that
of a typical real estate attorney.
Our understanding of our clients
business and broad expertise in
all areas primarily related to real
estate allows us to structure, negotiate, and complete a transaction or proceed with a case more
quickly and efficiently, avoiding
delay, allowing for issues to be
addressed appropriately from
the outset of the transaction or
case, and enhancing our ability
to further our clients goals.
SSL views its relationship with clients as a partnership, and we are
committed to the success of our
clients. SSL also is very proud of
our achievement in sustaining a
truly diverse workplace. We are
certified as a Womens Business
Enterprise by Astra Womens
Business Alliance, the Supplier
Clearinghouse, and the California PUC.

Haworth, founded in 1948, has

been led by three generations of
the Haworth family. The founder,
G.W. Haworth, borrowed his
parents life savings to expand
his woodworking operation in
the family garage. Engineeringminded son Dick devised a way
to prewire partitions from within,
making Haworth the pioneer in
creating modular power for the
workspace.
Haworth has continued to innovate, developing a kit-of-parts
that allows the freedom to accommodate work styles and
cultures. Haworths Integrated
Palette is a result of extensive
research, vast knowledge, and
global influences.
Our logics strategy encompasses
everything from the building architecture to product materials.
This includes movable walls, access flooring, and modular power
units that plug and play from the
utility closet to the work surface.
This strategy will continue to ensure that todays Haworth products and those developed in the
future can easily adapt and integrate.
The ultimate result: more sustainable interiors.
Partner with us. Get to know us.
Your interior space is an important investment in your people,
productivity, and image. Together, we can make your environments work harder for you.

R.N. Field Constructions commitment to excellence is unsurpassed

in providing our clients with focused,
solid experience in tenant improvement construction, coupled with creative solutions to planning and problem solving that results in a seamless
process and final product.
In celebration of our 40th year in business, we have renewed our commitment to providing the highest level
of collaboration in our industry. We
work side by side with our clients to
continuously provide them with the
most up-to-date and innovative approach to their projects unique set of
requirements.
We provide the focus and creativity necessary to keep your project on
track and ultimately provide you with
the built environment you envisioned.
Our commitment to education and
continued opportunity for personal
growth for our team has resulted in
average employee tenure of over 12
years. This, in turn, insures you that
we can provide the appropriate team
members and expertise necessary to
help achieve your goals.
We look forward to the opportunity
to partner with you as a member of
your project team.

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 products 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, were participating in the
ILFIs Declare program, similar to
a nutrition label for building products. The Declare label program is
the Institutes signature program
related to product disclosures or
ingredients for building products.
Challenging ourselves every day to
do more, were using important industry certifications and beyond to
help us communicate what were
doing. So, when we say green,
we mean it.

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cb2 Builders
GCI General Contractors
Grosvenor
Holland and Knight
Hudson Pacific
Kilroy
Langan
MBH Architects
Page and Turnbull
Pankow
Paradigm
Prudential
Richlen
Sheppard Mullin
The Swig Company
WRA

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