PR tips for retail and shopping center owners and brokers

Marketing will be a major theme when owners, developers, brokers and lenders convene at the New York National Conference of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) December 9th - 10th. They will network with retailers, municipalities and vendors and amongst each other to find solid credit-worthy tenants, acquire the best sites and raise the financing to compete in the recovering retail sector. They will also get a crash course in social media which is becoming ever important for retailers seeking customers and now increasingly so for real estate professionals wanting to build relationships in a world more and more dependent on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to make contacts and communicate messages. Not to be overlooked in this whirlwind of marketing change are the more tested and traditional public relations strategies which are adapting and integrating with the new, exciting social media world. Programs that stress news such as shopping center openings and leases, audiences like brokers and investors and tactics such as creating events, identifying news trends, writing bylined articles, offering commentary to journalists, speaking and appearing on panels are still the foundation for all good marketing and public relations plans. The plan has to cover all bases from national and regional print, broadcast and digital media to web development, search engine optimization (SEO) and of course social media. What ties all of these strategies together are goals, messaging, audiences, and measurement of results. Each strategy has a different discipline and normally requires different experts who work with each other seamlessly as a team. 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, NY.