Communications, Media & Strategy Gavel

Social age is throwing up different nomenclatures. Life is interesting to live in this age. If you stay informed you will be able to follow the trend with your head standing tall above your shoulder. If you shaking stay aloof, n you will have your fingers to bite in no distance future.

In Real Estate or property  business, it is location, location, location. No matter how big and  beautiful your property is if it is not properly located,  you may not be able to charge as high as the other wise investor with  a small building located in the heart of New York. While it is true everyone will not build their own properties on the street of New York, it is important to target the best location in your geographical location so you can take advantage of the now and the future.

Like we know the mindset of  having or owning a property differs in different region. In Africa, having a property of your own before you die, which is also debt free, is considered a great thing. People do everything to own a building over their heads as soon as they can. The quality of design, space also differ, this is based on your financial capability. But at least you need to try. As a man, by the time you hit forty or fifty, people subtly ask if you have a house of your own. They counsel you not to use all your ‘ten fingers to eat’.

The essence of this piece is not about real estate in the real sense of it. But our focus is on major actors in the social media marketing industry. A disease we have noted in the industry is that many of our actors: individuals, corporate as well as institutional, had carried the issue of location too far in their professional practice.  In social media real estate business, we know some locations are worth getting a space if one does not want to remain in the dark side of the market.

No brand should avoid renting a place in Facebook, Twitter,  Pinterest, LinkedIn, Slideshare, YouTube among others. We all know the location of a business office should be influenced by the target market and the kind of profile one wants to build. But great and wise manufacturing companies of these world’s understand that locating your base in Countries where you can get cheap labour, owning a property in the right place still has its own advantage at the long run.

When it comes to social communication management, many have advised ‘put your egg in one basket and keep your eyes on it so it does not break’. We all know this is good,  it encourages focus, dedication to a course and a commitment that is not divided. The danger of this is that nothing is permanently static. Time actually and tides do change. If all you do in life is to borrow the fashions you wear everyday without investing on your own ward robe, a day may come when the owner goes bankruptcy.

That may require the owner of the clothes either closes down or call for all his clothes that are outside. At that point, what will you wear? The essence of this is that many brands are not investing on their ‘owned social media’ real estate. They have built mansion and took strategic position on social real estate like YouTube,  Facebook and Twitter among others.

The problem with this is that what happens if  the ‘price of these real social media real estate mogul crash’. That is very unlikely though we know. But there is always a possibility of such in life. What happens if Facebook, Twitter or any of this popular social media real estate location your brand is heavily investing on? Will your brand be able to sustain the immediate shock and move ahead?. Are you a ‘social media real estate tenant of landlord?’ Here is how you know where you belong and if your foundation is shaking or not.

Your land  is not cultivated:  Social Media real estate tenants mostly have a website (land) that has been abandoned for years. They actually have a portion of land somewhere which they might have forgotten. Sometimes some of them have great fence round it. The website design was great. But nothing has changed since it was hosted few years or month ago. When you get to the website, there is nothing new.

You invest heavily on known locations: There is nothing bad about investing on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube page design, as long as it points or strategically leading to building support, awareness for your own social media real estate. The moment you abandon your own platform outside known location you are missing the mark.

Most of your activities, campaign has no soul: the soul of every social media real estate campaign must rests heavily on your brand’s central hub. The soul of your activities must not end in rented apartment. There must be a gradual transition to your own platform.

All your content machine are off your own website:  in this age, many still do not see reason to have  content machines that is specifically owned by them. They have YouTube Channel and power all their content sharing only on widely known  social media real estate locations. They have great content on LinkedIn,  twitter, Facebook etc. They have no helpful content on their own website. What if something happens to these platforms. They would have lost all their lifetime accomplishments, testimonials, data etc. .

A tenant has a right in law to ownership of the space he is paying for as long as the building, structure is still standing tall. If the building crashes, the wise tenant who has insured his goods have somewhere to run to- the insurer. The insurer then will pay money equivalent of the loss. Even at that the tenant will have to go to the market to repurchase the loss item. Can Google help you recover your lost data, information in these known platform?. We doubt this possibility in all its totality.

Photo credit: standard marking.com