Live-Streaming is nothing new. With the way the world is evolving, I am concerned that commercial real estate professionals aren’t paying enough attention to some of today’s digital platforms driving change, especially when it comes to live-streaming. And by live-streaming, I don’t mean the concept of gaming, I mean the latest capabilities that the platforms such as Facebook, Periscope, Meerkat, and others have rolled out initially for celebrities and mobile users. I feel the engagement that commercial real estate executives could gain from new and existing clients and audiences isn’t an area to ignore, because doing so could impede on capitalizing on future long-term returns. And here is another tidbit that might further open your eyes: South Florida businesses are already live-streaming as a new normal. I believe that executives in our industry can benefit to leveraging a global audience, and live-streaming is less complex and costly than you might imagine, and more important today than we believe.

Let me walk you through some of the areas that live-streaming can serve as an invaluable tool for the industry. We can use live-streaming as powerful branding to build trust, access to communicating and transparency with our consumers. We have enterprise organizations already jumping on the bandwagon; we have live-streaming available to the mobile user; we all can leverage live-streaming through engaging our existing channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and more as a driver to your live-stream; and the opportunities just keep increasing. Now clearly, those of us who already come with a large social media audience or following are lucky, but they are not the only fortunate ones. There is enough mass in this market, and that makes it an ideal playing field for anyone. And everyone can jump in on live-streaming anytime, the temptation may even lead you to take action after you finish reading this post! Resist this for now, if you are able to. You may want to have a plan in mind first!

Now, you may be asking yourself, so where can livestreaming fit in with our commercial real estate firm? I mean, are you serious? Can companies capitalize using live-streaming? The answer that may surprise you is yes. In commercial real estate, investors and decision makers could be anywhere in the world and lack access to view properties all at the same time. I see this as a growing challenge as more firms desire to expand staff and their markets worldwide.

Ready to get your commercial real estate firm live-streaming? I like it because it there are obvious advantages to incorporating the model. I bet you can’t wait to get started on hosting a Q&A for your firm or take a global audience on a real-time property tour. But what I really like about it is that it reminds me of a quote from a recent creativity festival which took place in India. Florian Klaass of Red Bull said, “The niche of today can become the mainstream of tomorrow.”