Be a thought-leader - it works

Thought leadership is quintessential public relations. It is a discipline almost everyone in real estate marketing engages in on a micro or macro level. Thought leadership is the art of providing information and expert opinion to an audience or market with the intent of being helpful and influencing your readers, viewers, listeners or followers to learn more about you and possibly use your services, offer you a deal, or lease or buy property from you. Some of our most successful real estate marketers are recognizable thought leaders. You read about, see and hear them in the media, listen to their speeches and panel sessions, read their blogs and engage on social media sites and search engines. These real estate professionals did not become thought leaders by accident. They worked hard, often with professional help, to fashion a program and persona that make them easily identifiable. In becoming a thought leader, there are three factors you must own. One is the ability to express cutting-edge thoughts and opinions on real estate practice or trends, second is to create content that expresses your ideas and third is to understand the channels for communicating these views including newspapers, magazines, TV, real estate conferences and trade shows electronic newsletters, blogs, websites and social media sites. Thought leadership takes some thought and doing. But if you truly want to build brand awareness for your brokerage, office and residential buildings or deal making capabilities, then you or someone in your organization must tend to it. Harry Zlokower is president of Zlokower Company and immediate past president of the New York Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America, New York, N.Y.