Introduction
The purpose of this essay is to discuss the history of real estate and social media, the position of social media over the last years, importance of technology to improve business, the best ways to develop business, the ways by which social media can develop real estate and commercial building, the process to improve website and so on.
History of Real estate
The Times of India (5) pointed out that although the word ‘real estate’ has found in the dictionary for the last thousand years, but the history of ‘real estate’ is an integral part of human civilisation for more than ten thousand years. History demonstrated that concept of private ownership of the property has evidenced during the 17th century onwards that generated huge psychological impact on the possession of ‘real estate’ that sowed that seeds to the preface of the real estate market (5).
Archaeologists traced differentiated lifestyle among the ancestors where cave and cave painting on the stone point to the ordinary and luxurious living place, although the humankind is in scares of dwelling place from the hunter-gatherer. During 1066 AD, the origins of real estate law were established while King William conquered England and declared himself as a titleholder of the territory, the British Monarchy brings them into practice through ‘tenure’ ‘tenants’ and their concerned ‘rents’ globally (12).
The Times of India also added that the industrial revolution has enhanced the opportunity among the middle class to buy land and built the own home, but most of them were eager to buy home from the real estate ready for at once living without experiencing the hazards of construction. The financial institution extended their hands to the real estate industry to address the needs of middle class through debt financing; it flourished the market and turned real estate as a booming industry all over the world (15).
At the same time, accretion of democracies, turned to safeguard the buyer and seller by establishing Real Estate Law, the extensive colonisation of British monarchy was aimed to establish same legal domain across the world through mixed ownership while the model of communism stands against private of ownership of real estate (14).
Shiller studied with the historical evidence of US real estate market and argued that the exploration of housing finance and incorporation of real estate corporations in the stock market has bought a revolution with historic turning points in real estate.
Starting from 1957, in context of Stock Price Index, the aggregate stock price of real estate has extensively risen for single-family homes up to 1988, reached it historic pick points in 2000, and evidenced rapid fall in 2003 (5). The changing nature of real estate has strongly associated with the high risk of credit crush due to extra burden of loan in this sector (Shiller 5).
Barth et al. mentioned that the financial institutions amplified their cash flow for real estate from US$ 500 billion in nineties, while it jumped towards US$ 2.4 trillion in 2007 and during the global financial crisis in September 2008, the total outstanding loan volume elevated up to US$ 11.3 trillion that seriously hampered global economy causing banking sector collapse (11).
Due to the growing significance of private sector for real estate mortgage funding, the adaptable rate of mortgage financing has tripled, at the time of diminishing towards US$106.7 billion during the second quarter of 2008 and demonstrated sharp boost throughout the boom, but huge drops in the shares price of real estate corporations at bubble burst.
History of Social Media:
The history of social media has developed from 1980s, but the major development in this sector has enhanced from 1990s, for example, First dial-up BBC continue to grow at the initial stage of development, but World Wide Web started its operation in 1991 to serve the purpose of military, government or university.
Hershey (5) and Morrison & Foerster (1) stated that WWW became available to the US people in 1995; in addition, Beverly Hills Internet (BHI) started operation of Geocities in 1995, which was purchased by yahoo by $3.570 billion and it closed in 2009.
At the same time, Hershey (5) stated that first social networking site Forums launched in the late 1990s to share opinions on some issues, but it criticized as a non-social media Internet tool because of many decisions and operating system of the top management level. However, Morrison & Foerster (1) pointed out that SixDegrees launched in 1997 and it was famous to more than one million users as it functioned much like Facebook, but this site closed in 2001.
Morrison & Foerster (1) and Hershey (5) reported that the concept of social networking sites mainly developed from 2002, for example, Friendster started operation in 2002 as a network-expanding social site to share personal profiles with online friends and Photobucket launched in 2003 and became the first leading photo-sharing site though it followed data protection acts.
Curtis (1) and Hershey (5) argued that LinkedIn founded in 2003 and it was the first business or colleague based social networking site, which established to prompt users to create a profile to connect with colleagues, accept recommendations, and introduce with other professional network.
MySpace
Morrison & Foerster (1) and Hershey (5) stated that MySpace launched in 2003 and it became the largest social media site within next three years; however, most of the features of this site have designed considering the users’ demand and it provides the opportunity to the users to generate unique backgrounds, embed slideshows, music players, and photos and so on.
Hershey (5) stated that Facebook started its operation in 2004 and it was only available to Harvard students, but within two years, this site became popular to the students of other colleges. However, Hershey (5) further pointed out that
However, key characteristics of Facebook are –
- It is a social directory, which enables individuals to share information; for instance, it uses personal profiles and fan pages to attach individuals all over the world (Hershey 5);
- According to the annual report of Facebook 2011, it is largest and most popular social media site in the world since more than 70% of the users are outside the US;
- Facebook has integrated thousands of applications including online games and music (Facebook 18);
- In addition, Facebook gives a great chance for users to stay in contact with old associates and keeping up with new friends; therefore, the average Facebook user has 130 friends and each user creates 90 pieces of content every month;
- In 2008, it surpassed MySpace as the leading social media site;
- According to the annual report of Facebook 2011, many renowned multinational companies tried to acquire this site considering the continues growth and financial prospect of this site, for example, Yahoo offered $1.0 billion to purchase Facebook in 2006, Microsoft attempted to acquire a stake in Facebook at a $15 billion valuation in 2010, Viacom bid to acquire Facebook at a proposed deal value of around $1.45 Billion, and so on
YouTube
Cheng, Dale & Liu (3) stated that the most popular and successful video-based social site and search engine YouTube started its journey in 2005, which provides users the opportunity to upload, download, view and share videos; however, it featured about 40.0 million videos and enjoyed 2400 million visitors in 2007 and it was the second major search engine after Google.
In addition, Cheng, Dale & Liu (3), and Hershey (5) stated that YouTube offered the users to create profiles and upload videos along with other opportunities that provided by all the other social media sites; therefore, the actors and musicians have the chance to become successful using this site.
Hershey (5) and Morrison & Foerster (1) pointed out that status-based social media site “Twitter” founded in 2006 to communicate with people; however, the celebrities use this site to communicate with fans and news agencies monitor this site for breaking news.
The social media over the last years
Nowadays, social media servers multi-purposes in order to develop strong networking, for example, Facebook and other social networking sites have changed their policies to make it easy for the users to communicate with other and they also concentrate on the data protection though there are many controversy in this regard.
However, the numbers of the users of the largest social media like Facebook and Twitter have increased dramatically, for example, Facebook user hits 350 million in 2009 while it has 955 million Monthly active users and 552 million Daily active users in 2012. According to the annual report of 2011, Facebook generated $3.825 billion and Yahoo finance reported that it earned $4.330 billion in 2012, which demonstrated that the earning of social media is increasing day by day.
On the other hand, Google + launched in 2011 with intent to provide outstanding opportunities using digital technology to share documents, personal profiles, videos and so on; however, Morrison & Foerster (2) reported that it is sharing more than one billion items per day. However, the following table shows the direct competitor comparison –
Table 1: – Direct Competitor Comparison. Source: – Self generated from Yahoo Finance (1).
According to the above-mentioned data, the necessity of social media is increasing to improve business, which help social networking sites to expand their business; besides existing renowned sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter, etc., some other social networking sites has started operation to serve the people over the last years and these are –
Loopt
Hershey (10) pointed out that location-based and cell phone-based GPS sharing network site “Loopt” established in 2005, which is integrated into Facebook and Twitter to update status with a location link; however, it is the best geo-social networking site, but it has only three million members.
Groupon
According to the report of Hershey (10), purchase-based and coupon Website “Groupon” founded in 2008 to socialize the economical world by separating local markets to share offers with their communities and to reach target audience; however, the users of this site have to create new accounts to get its services.
Blippy
Hershey (10) argued that purchase-based social networking site Blippy started its journey in 2009 and gained a large number of users within short period, but this site authorized Google to index detailed transaction information, which was main cause to decline users dramatically though the management apologized for this inconvenience; as a result, this site was shut down in 2011.
FourSquare
According to the report of Hershey (11), location-based (GPS hardware in the mobile device) social networking site “FourSquare” started its operation in 2009 by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai; however, it has more than 20 million registered users and it provided the opportunity to the people the mobile devices to interact with their environment.
Google Buzz and Social Television
Hershey (11) and Morrison & Foerster (1) stated that Status-based Google product “Google Buzz” founded in 2010, which provides same service like Facebook and Twitter; in addition, members of this site can comments about vendors and locations on Google Maps; however, social media company Plaxo had worked to invent Social Television for the users.
Whether technology is the best way to improve business or not
In the changing pace of globalization and the drastic development in the innovation of new technologies in the 21st century, suitable application of technology is indeed a lucrative way to improve any business. Today, it is almost impossible to find even a small business that does not make use of technology for day- to- day operations. Technology has embraced the corporate world so crucially that entrepreneurs could not even imagine a single hour without its help.
According to Kooser (1), when it comes to improving a business from all spheres, certain uses of technology are highly essential. Efficient communication, for example, is one of the most crucial needs to fulfil the demands of the leaders and workers in an industry, and today, cell phones themselves have turned into small businesses; to be specific, such devices are linkages for any corporate personality to remain connected while on the street and replying to consumer enquiries in a timely manner.
Smartphones raise the bar with access to Internet, email, and business applications in a small hand-held device, which also work as personal-organisers with electronic-diaries, contact lists, and automatic reminders; in addition, text-messaging, social-networking and e-mails are other uses of technology in communication that assist to improve businesses by linking them to their customer-bases and enhancing in-house communication inside the corporation.
Technology has liberated many businesses from the limitations of advertising in print or electronic media when it comes to attaining new and existing consumers because today Internet marketing ranges from an easy informational-website, to advertising on search engines, to online-product sales; moreover, email-marketing is an effective and cheap way to reach mass people merely with newsletters, coupons or business updates.
On the other hand, Kooser (1) also stated that technology becomes essential during production processes, as most companies require compressing every bit of productivity out of their operations and technological kits aid workers to get works done more rapidly – this could vary from printing out marketing materials to supplying clients the best service by email or online chat.
The key is to keep workforce determined while utilising technology and to use it properly with the aim of saving time; moreover, it is arguable that sometimes, a phone call may be more efficient and fruitful than an email; additionally, in order to ensure continuous improvement, many businesses provide workers with efficient-hardware and updated-software to bring out the best adroitness.
In addition, teleconferencing or web-conferencing could accumulate collaborative-online-meeting spaces to generate tremendously interactive-environment, where people can work together on documents and rebuild the physical meeting experience; as a result, like all other businesses, in real estate industry also, it is impossible to imagine an improvement without the use of apt technology.
The best ways to improve your business
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission of the United States pointed out that the mortgage and real estate markets aligned with the most risky loans and the financial institutions overloaded with bed debts, giant players like Lehman Brothers burdened with US$ 111 billion real estate loans, which were four times above its entire equity (FCIC 21).
The collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 had brought into view a series of falls in the baking sector in the US and Europe and gradually turned the global financial crisis that shaped worldwide recession, the bailout and rescue packages has failed to stabilise the global economy.
Although the real estate booms had engendered the economy through accelerating cash flow in the share market, a lot of new jobs creation in this sector, the regulatory authorise were reluctant to take control over the profitability financing firms, but after the economic down turn all they blamed real estate and housing sector for credit crash (38).
Thus, under this scenario of the present economy it is very difficult to recover the investor’s confidence in the real estate industry and to improve real estate business it would an integrated strategy.
Billingsley et al. added although the real estate industry has demonstrated a steady growth in recent years, there is no chance for quick recovery, or there is no chance to flow public debts in this sector that would provide quick raise, even the US Congress may not allow any financial package for economic recovery during the upcoming general election (3).
The European financial institutions are worry to generate further cash flow in this sector and it is expected that the global economy would take up to 2014 to come out from the recessionary impact, thus it would be wise for the real estate and housing sector to sustain in the market with a moderate growth up to 2016.
It would not to be wise to take any further risk of new product development or new supply in the real estate market with heavy investment and the industry players are suggested for highly defensive strategy for the next few years (3-4).
From the strategic outlook at this point, the improvement of real estate business would possibly aim to reduce cost and investment by integrating the Information and communication technology at all levels of the operation, advertising budget would be reduced by using the internet based advertising rather than the print and electronic media.
Integration of e-commerce would defiantly reduce sales and marketing cost of the traditional marketing process, web based customer relationship would also reduce the public relationship maintenance cost in the traditional process by providing quick information flow. At the same time, B2B or B2C mode of e-commerce would improve the sales and online payment without any hazard of tradition banking, enhance online product promotion and noteworthy reduction of cost with enhanced proficiency of business operation.
The ways by which the social media improving real estate and commercial building
Social media is one of the most effective marketing tools to the real estate agents in order to develop and enhance relationship with potential and target customers; moreover, this system would assist the markers to increase traffic and create new opportunity of the joint venture business.
However, it becomes now easy for the real estate agents to reach the message to the customers though they may deny to purchasing home from that particular company, but they can be potential customer for the future; therefore, it is important to the investors and the agents to make a plan to use the opportunities of these sites. However, the marketers of this sector should concentrate on few important issues, such as –
- It is necessary to define the nature of the business along with current projects in order to attract target audience and get positive feedback from them though different audiences respond to different things. In addition, the marketers of this sector have to design a questionnaire to know the choice of different customers to provide the best service of the customer considering their views, for instance, agents may ask what types of home they need, whether they are the first time buyer or not, and which place would be suitable for the customer and so on;
- Real estate agents have to find out the strongest point of the projects to increase customer base because selection of right offerings can hit the target audience to take service from any particular company. However, the marketers must try to find out the demand of the customers to segmenting target audience to offer best services, so, they need to produce free reports, weekly property lists, video tours along with other helpful marketing mechanisms;
- Drive traffic to the web pages of the real estate company can bring fruitful and direct results, for example, the options like inform friends about website, or about the business can develop strong social network, which would help the marketers develop distribution channels;
- After connecting people, the concept of cloud computing can play vital role to provide valuable information to the target audience and gain cultivate trust to sell products and services;
- The real estate agents need to build own email database and make sure that agents would fare with social media though the success of the business is depend on some other external and internal factors
Trower (6) stated that Active Rain, WordPress Blog, Facebook and Twitter are the most powerful social media for the real estate and mortgage business because Active Rain designed considering the importance of real estate business, WordPress Blog designed for professional niche, Facebook is the leading social network with maximum number of members, and Twitter is the fastest growing social network.
However, different sites provide different services and facilities for the real estate professionals; as a result, the marketers of the companies have to use the offers of the sites to get fruitful results by using these sites.
Rodriguez (1) stated that near 60% of the US citizens use social media and most of the time, they interact with the companies to purchase products and services; moreover, social media expenditure would increase from $716.0 million to near $3.10 billion by the fiscal year 2014; therefore, the importance of social medial is too high to the real estate professionals.
The purpose of this report is to analyze the ways to improving real estate business by giving importance on the social media and its potential role in the real estate sales chain. However, Rodriguez (2) and Trower (6) stated that the real estate professionals have to design their own social media strategy to make a strong network, which will give opportunities to create new relationships, develop brand awareness, and gain a competitive advantage from the competitive market.
Moreover, Rodriguez (2) and Trower (6) stated that real estate professionals have to concentrate more the development of brand awareness as brand awareness can increase loyal customer base and maximize profits as well; in this context, Facebook and LinkedIn can play prominent role to create quality followers and move the conversation to their specific website. However, Rodriguez (1) provided a pathway to describe how Social media works to increase customer base and to develop the position of the real estate professionals
At the same time, Rodriguez (1) argued that the proper use of YouTube could increase customer base, for example, the real estate professional can upload information based monthly report to aware people and change customer behaviour and test.
The Process to improve website
Sawyer et al. (13) conducted a survey on the IT integration of the real estate companies and argued that the real estate industry has facilitated with a remarkable advancement through their web presence were the real estate companies are capable of exchanging their information, options and exchange their views with the sellers and marketers.
In fact, real estate industry has going through a revolution, being an information-intensive business sector the website of a real estate company is a vital tool that easily control and distribution information for buyer seller and agents without any hard efforts (13).
Thus, the website of a real estate company may not be a static website, but must be dynamic with customised tools applicable for that company and the executives working with information level must possess minimum IT skills to listings sales leads and providing feedback to the all groups of users.
Information is power or in the real estate market, customer always looks for competitive study regarding the price, location, and other features of the property, thus the existing static web should be re-engineered with customer relationship management tools long with e-commerce and payment gateway.
Lin et al. (3) presented an expert website model for real estate companies with a practical implementation of dynamic tools, secured database integration, and speedy hosting server requirements that would ultimately resolve all requirements of the real estate industry in the digital dynasty.
The model has delivered realistic proficiency and understanding of the real estate business for successful integration of e-business serving the benefits of all parties in this sector along with the scope of lead generation, real estate accounting opportunities, financial transaction gateway, land or ready apartment listing, auction listing, customer relationship management, and membership management and so on.
It also incorporated other valued tools required to complete e-business solution with basic three categories of user groups where real estate companies at the top linking with property sellers and individual buyers; agents and referees are sub-categorised through application development for revenue sharing.
The suggestive we solution of Lin et al. has aimed to adopt the e-business model integrating PHP and MySql database driven come within reach of easy design that assist implement the multi-organisation data sharing where the services for real estate companies could be considered a four layer website demonstrated in the following figure –
The first layer presented the most common website configuration generated HTML and XML language to furnish lucrative web graphing of the site integrating the style-sheet, where specialized PHP or ASP would endow with cost-effective solution small and medium sized real estate companies with minimum efforts (5).
The second layer would generate membership databases for the website at MySql or ASP backend as an integral part of the first layer services, where the membership database plays a significant role for the real estate companies and their clients to promote their properties along with value added services without any extra cost or efforts. All users would be capable to get entry in the database through their username and password and would be facilitated to edit their existing data and listings.
The third payer of the website would endow with the product database that preserves the image of the property instead in the website, their location, price, financing terms and all other necessary features that help the customers for their decision making. This database would be interlined with the membership database by which the clients would be traced and capable to interact with each other to commence a successful transaction.
The fourth layer presents the networking opportunities that allow users to personalise and standardise his product and services linking with the social media and search engine optimisation, at this stag the users would be capable to get support service form the technical support team at the backend of the website.
The linkage with the social network sites would provide extra strength to the website where the stakeholders of real estate industry and the members of the concerned site would get additional scope to maintain relationship with one another. This is the way to improve the website of a real estate sector; however, there are also some customised web based software in the market specially designed and developed for real estate companies, which are also suggestive to improve the web presence of this industry.
What does a commercial developer do
Porter argued that real estate industry could not run any longer with traditional viewpoints for which this is the time for the commercial developers to make their future strategy with the reality of concurrent financial downturn, market potentials, ecological factors and so on.
To adopt an effective strategy, the commercial developers would consider two vital factors firstly real estate industry is not just an industry, but also an economic sector that consists other different industries like commercial space, brokerage, construction, steel mills, break fields, and land development where profitability changes dramatically.
Secondly, the commercial developer would identify its present position in the industry, attractiveness of that industry, nature of the change over time and then set the target where it would like to with a particular span of time and then design its strategy (1).
Porter also added that to develop its business the commercial developer then try to understand its industry as a whole, point out its competitive advantages within the industry, conduct a five-force analysis pointing to the forms of rivalry amongst competitors, threat of new entrants, bargaining power of the suppliers power and buyer, and substitute products and services (3). With this analysis the commercial developers designs an effectual strategy to bring successful operation of their organisation in the market.
Guma et al. (5) explored that in the changing nature of profitability of real estate market, the commercial developers nowadays put into practice of vertical phasing as a most popular strategy and business development option in their regional markets.
Vertical expansion provides momentous opportunity for profit maximisation with logistical advantages for the commercial developers they consider it as an efficient tool to minimise the risk of economic downturn and recessionary impact by scaling back designs with little efforts. The vertical expansion of buildings is the technical course of action by which a totally an absolutely new building built upon an existing occupied building without using new land in the busy area (5).
Although it is a highly technical process to keep, the original design of the building unchanged and add additional strength to the structure, but the commercial developers choice it to gratify the broad-spectrum market demands for space in a cost effective process (7).
Vandell and Green pointed out that continuous development of technology and to integrate them is a common feature of commercial real estate firms; while modern construction equipment would assist them to reduce excessive burden of labour force, the information technology facilitate to manage and administer employees and ease marketing efforts (5).
At the same time, the information technology has opened a new door for the commercial developers to communicate with their potential customers and facilitate to commence online transaction in a secured way. Podor (6) added that location of the real estate is a vital consideration for the customers of commercial developers while GIS technology assists them to show their location through online presence and manage required data that would help them for their buying decision-making.
Whether the business is making the best use of technology or not
Being the owner of ‘ABC Housing’ a commercial real estate developer, this author thinks that his business has always aimed making the best use of technology; adoption of right technology and effectual strategy, the company was able to sustain with less impact of global financial crisis. The management of the company is always eager to confirm the right use of technology within the organisation, rather than dynamic e-commerce website, it has already adopted ‘Smart-Phone’, iPad, and high-speed WARP.
By using such ever-evolving technologies, staying at office the company management has enabled to monitor and manage employee’s activities at site, capable to navigate different site and at once calculate the value proposition more accuracy than the traditional analysis (ULI 12).
At the same time, the company has upgraded its all projects with security alarming system for heating, fire, and thief protection, for such technological development the customers are willing to pay more than the other projects beside ‘ABC Housing’.
The company also facilitated with solar system for power supply in the new project, where there is also stand by generators to encounter with any sorts of power failure, all the projects are composed with warless connectivity for the customers with less expenses. As a result, the company has turned as a pioneer in its region with rising market prospects with fully integrated online options to get customers’ feedback.
The Way by Which Technology Can Improve Real Estate Business
Vandell and Green (23) stated that technology has impact on the production of real estate and it can influence by three ways on the real estate business, for instance –
- It may act “upstream” to affect the effectiveness of production or quality;
- It can influence the construction along with operation of the real estate structure itself, such as, critical path method developed production capacity in 1960s;
- It could persuade the “downstream” tenants of the property, such as, the people of certain place may not be interested about the commercial building, but technology can change the external or internal environment to attract the customer.
On the other hand, technology can play vital role to improve real estate business by increasing productivity, decreasing cost of the production, and escalating the demand for real estate stock and services; however, there are six other ways to develop this sector, such as
- New/ cheaper consumer goods: Introduction of new electronic devices and low cost raw materials had created the demand to develop real estate sector in terms of production, distribution, and marketing;
- Transportation development and the development of cities: Transportation development and the development of cities: the transportation technology developed real estate business, for example -manufacturers need suppliers, but if the suppliers had to pass long distance, then the cost of communication would become high; however, the reduction of 12 minutes distance can save $7.2 in the US (Vandell and Green 24);
- Construction technology: Improvement of steel frame construction, the invention of the elevator along with the introduction of mass manufacturing systems to building construction were the prime factor to develop this sector (Vandell and Green 27);
- Financial Engineering: Development of technology and legislation in order to change financial transaction system;
- Manufacturing systems: Development of supplier-producer relationships and just-in-time inventory methods, downsizing and outsourcing for specialization, building tenant improvements, and Deming total quality management techniques;
- The Internet revolution: Most prominent and significant technological innovation, which helps many ways like websites, and market data provision, data, the facilitation of real estate transactions online, The development of a real-time online auction;
At the same time, information and communications technologies (ICT) reshaped this sector and enhanced individual knowledge to develop functions, and provided new ways for purchasers and sellers to find one another; however, development of ICT has also increased competition among the real estate professionals; therefore, they need to take the advantages of the technology to compete each other.
The way to improve business
Porter (1) stated that the environment of the real estate industry is unpredictable as past modes of behaviour may not bring success in the present position; therefore, the decision-makers must have to change strategy over time to become successful in this field.
In addition, Porter (1) pointed out that the decision-makers of the company should understand the nature of their business in the real estate industry before taking alternative strategies because different techniques are useful to different businessmen in this sector, for example, the person who is developing shopping malls need to putting up prime downtown commercial space.
For that reason, Porter (1) argued that it is essential to the real estate professionals to select an effective strategy considering different economic logic, fundamental attractiveness of the business, competitive position within the real estate sector, and threat of new entrants, the bargaining power of the suppliers, financial position of the entrepreneurs, and so on.
At the same time, the management of team should consider about the historical perspectives, superior market intelligence, real skills of the human resources, and kinds of projects, proliferate projects, identify the objectives of the business, implementation plan of the strategies, and finding economically attractive locations.
However, the growth of the real estate business dropped in the current year due to the adverse impact of global financial crisis; as a result, it is important to find out a simple, but effective strategy, which will help the real estate professionals to attract customers because the success of the business depends on the customer’s behaviour.
On the other hand, customer relationship management is a strategic tool or a managerial philosophy and it seeks to develop long-term relationship with customers along with the different markets to increase sales by integrating proper management of customer’s knowledge and information and relation with them (Berndt, Herbst & Roux 2; Rodriguez 2; Trower 6; Hershey 5, and Morrison & Foerster 1).
However, most of the owners of small and medium sized company believed that investment to develop CRM practice failed to bring expected result and there is a chance to face lose using traditional CRM system; as a result, the marketers of the real estate business are seeking alternative strategy, which upholds organizational aims and purposes towards amplification of consumer satisfaction.
In this context, the marketers of the real estate business has concentrated on the implementation of social media strategy and it has already enhanced the opportunity to the practice of CRM to achieving and retaining loyal customer base in the real estate business; however, SCRM primarily encompasses of a plan together with a corporate policy, backed via IT-platform, business policy, process and communal-characteristics.
At the same time, smart use of social media can lead to successful involvement from the part of the customers; however, the following table shows the schedule of social marketing plan –
Table 2: – The schedule of social marketing plan. Source: – Self generated.
The use of social media to improve own business
Yes, the use of social media will improve the real estate business –
Table 3: Particular social networking sites, main advantages, and rationales for selection. Source: Self generated.
The process to keep up with business:
In order to keep up with the real estate business, it is highly essential to ascertain proper communication between owners, workers, and customers as well as the suppliers to ensure well- organised operations.
This can be done by the use of cloud computing, which is a great technological aid to sustain the business for long- term; so, a good idea is to adopt hybrid cloud computing for data storage, which will give the business a chance to make use of both public and private cloud at the same time.
In this way the real estate business could sustain by sharing data with the communities for advertising themselves and with the stakeholders for efficient management, lowering costs of sharing information externally and internally and ensuring higher capacity utilisation because of the elasticity/scalability that it offers:
However, it is important to select the hybrid cloud provider carefully, as it is necessary for the providers to be highly flexible in order to make sure that the system can be updated any time at request; moreover, they should be capable to quickly recover from potential hacking and ensure cyber security.
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