To use Facebook to promote your business, you first have to create a “page.” A page is like a public Facebook profile for a business. You add the name of your business, categorize it, and post other information like the company overview, description, mission, awards, products, website, and contact information. Don’t forget to upload a picture to represent your business in the Facebook community. Once you’re done, Facebook will allow you to suggest the page to anyone you’re friends with on Facebook—suggest it not only to the people who might or do use your services, but also those who might help get the word out. You can also invite email contacts to join Facebook and like your page. Word of mouth is one of the most effective advertising strategies, even if it’s electronic.

Creating the page is only part of the process—you have to determine the best way for you to update and use the page. First, figure out how often you want to post based on your customers and potential customers. Will you have enough interesting and relevant information to post multiple times per day, or would it make more sense to post less often than that? Only you can decide.

In addition to figuring out how often you can and should post to the page, you should also schedule time each day to check the page and respond to wall posts, comments and questions. In order for your Facebook page to be as useful to you as possible, you need to make sure that you are active on it and that it’s helpful for you clients.

To keep your page interesting, post links, photos, and videos that relate to your business and your clients. Your page will get the most attention if it’s both helpful and entertaining. To increase this aspect, you can also post any news about your industry, business and possible special offers.

One way to get more attention is to encourage your fans and followers to contribute, too. Ask for suggestions, experiences, opinions, or any information that they can post on your wall or comment on your updates. The more interactive you make it, the more likely people are going to want to follow your updates.

Once you’ve made your page interactive, interesting, and up-to-date, it’s time to expand awareness. One way to do this is by installing a widget on the homepage of your website that allows people to “like” your page. You can also link to the page on any newsletters or emails that you send out.

If you’re willing to spend a little extra money, another great way to get more traffic to your Facebook page is by investing in Facebook Ads and sponsored stories. Both will expose your page to more possible clients in a more visible location, usually in a sidebar or at the top of the page..

To keep your Facebook page professional and easy to find, you can reserve a vanity URL with the site. To do this, visit the “username” page, where you’ll find a “page” dropdown that will allow you to assign the URL. Keep in mind that once you’ve confirmed this URL, Facebook won’t let you change it, so make sure that it’s correct and reflects your business.

Facebook also offers a tool called “Facebook Insights” that allows you to see information like how many active users, likes, and comments, your page has had over the last month. Turning on this tool will allow you to know more about how your Facebook page is reaching people and whether you need to make changes in order to get the kind of exposure that you need. “Insights” appears beneath the admins bar on your page.

Because Facebook has more than 800 million active users, it can be a great place to create a base for and promote your business. As long as you stay active on your page and make it as visible, interactive, and interesting as possible, you’ll find new ways to get clients and hold onto your old ones.

Naman and Zoccola discuss trends shaping the industry

At the recent 2025: A Vision for Commercial Real Estate Symposium in Washington, DC, Katya Naman, CCIM, senior vice president, Lowe Enterprises, Inc., and BOMA International Chair Boyd Zoccola, executive vice president, Hokanson Companies Inc., presented an outlook on what the next five years hold for commercial real estate. They identified several trends, including an increase in density in office buildings, the rise of transit-oriented development and the need for green incentives. The program featured experts from academia and industry to debate key factors– technology, globalization, sustainability and demographic shifts—and how they will affect the workplace and the workforce over the next 15 years.

The Workspace
Naman moderated a diverse panel featuring speakers from government, architecture and corporate real estate advisory firms, who discussed workspace trends and the potential demand for office space in 2025. Mobility was at the heart of the discussion, with all panelists agreeing that teleworking will continue to gain momentum.

As teleworking becomes more prevalent, many companies will need less space per worker. GSA’s Chief Asset Officer Gavin Bloch spoke about the agency’s mandate to increase teleworking among employees and dramatically increase density in their buildings. James B. King, AIA, LEED, AP, principal, AREA Advisor LLC, discussed a recent thesis project on the impact of teleworking on demand for office space written by a student in Georgetown’s real estate program. “The thesis concludes that there will be no need to develop new buildings to accommodate workers in the future—the space already in existence will need to be reconfigured to fit future needs,” he explained.

The key to future success in commercial real estate, the panelists agreed, is innovation. Property management firms will also have to think carefully about how they can provide the spaces and services that future tenants will need. Commented Martha A. O’Mara, PhD, CRE, managing director, Corporate Portfolio Analytics, “To compete, landlords are going to have to think about what they do besides offer plain vanilla office space.”

The Workforce
BOMA President Henry Chamberlain, APR, FASAE, CAE, moderated a panel that looked at the Workforce in 2025. Chamberlain kicked off the discussion by noting that as productivity within companies continues to increase, developing and retaining a talented workforce is a core priority and challenge for commercial real estate firms. Panelists discussed how the goals and priorities of an emerging workforce are helping firms evolve to meet new expectations.

“Technology is critical and archaic systems will be a deterrent to candidates,” said Matthew A. Metro, principal, The Maison Group Inc., who also noted that companies should  empower employees to use new technologies and media to market their companies and attract the best talent.

Panelists also discussed how the concept of career development is changing with the incoming workforce. “The corporate ladder concept is starting to go away,” suggested Kristen Reese, director of talent acquisition, Bozzuto Group. “Satisfying careers don’t necessarily have to go up, but tend to go more in waves of different experiences.” Reese also explained that the hierarchy trickle down of information is being replaced by more collaborative experiences.

But what is ultimately going to attract and retain the best talent? Reese noted that it may come down to something very basic, “If someone is looking for a job, they are going to want to know if people are happy working there.”

AWS: From Indictment To Endorsement
Alternative workplace strategies such as teleworking began as a corporate cost-saving measure, and cost savings remains a primary driver, but two other factors have emerged to make the trend more compelling for employers, King noted.

“Companies are focusing on two things: employee satisfaction, and productivity and teaming. They are increasingly looking at their office space to help them attract and retain the best talent,” King said. One of the ways companies are changing their corporate environments is by combining the work environment with elements of a home environment preferred by new generations of workers, as opposed to baby boomers who prefer to keep the two separate.

Perkins & Will Principal Joan Blumenfeld agreed, noting that Gen-Xers and Millenials are more comfortable blending work and home life than their baby boomer parents. To appeal to key employee demographics, companies are increasingly changing their workspace design to reflect the younger worker values, incorporating more open floor plans and “common areas” with extensive seating and collaboration areas, while providing employees the technology to connect from anywhere.

Calling it the “era of the bench,” Blumenfeld said the focus on spatial efficiency is all about firms using enhanced mobility in ways to untether employees from their desks and improve collaboration across departments and disciplines, as well as to achieve cost savings and increase employees’ efficiency during the current downturn. “Layer on top of that the fact that all of our large corporate and institutional clients are embracing strong social responsibility and sustainability programs. Virtually all our work today is LEED accredited,” which holds important implications for new and existing space, she said.

Blumenfeld also noted a distinction in workplace trends among different types of firms. Large-scale financial services, consultants and other professional services firms place increasing value on supporting their employees outside the office to encourage more client-facing time. On the other hand, technology firms and other creative process-focused companies are seeking to make their workspaces more accommodating. They want to keep employees interacting together in the same environment.

“These type of firms want their people to co-locate, they don’t want them out there,” a distinction that holds important implications for property owners seeking to attract such firms.

Torch Passing to a New Generation of Workers
Corporate Portfolio Analytics’ O’Mara also urged the audience to consider major demographic trends in strategizing how to ensure that future buildings are places people want to work. By 2025, about half of the baby boomers will be out of the workplace, she noted.

The average age of employees at Goldman Sachs headquarters in Manhattan is 32, added King. “Half the people working there are Millenials.”

The next generation values family, relationships and home life more than previous generations. Instead of desiring to own an expensive car or large house, they derive status from experiences and sharing them through social media. They don’t value the big corner office and other corporate status symbols of older generations.

The lesson for companies (and the investors and building owners who want to have them as tenants) is that younger workers prefer to work in a more dynamic, experience-rich environment, such as an urban-type setting offering different entertainment, cultural and transportation options.

With technology supporting an increasingly mobile workforce, “people are not going to want to come in to a workplace unless it is an exciting environment,” said O’Mara. “The ideal situation may be where you go into the office two or three days per week and work remotely the other days, which reduces our carbon footprint by 20% – 40% and has a huge impact on improved quality of life.” It also makes people more productive when they do come into the office, she said.

“The lesson here is, never let anyone over 40 make a real estate decision for your business!” she joked. “They will make the wrong decision. [Younger workers] have a completely different vision of what the workplace should be compared to baby boomers.”

Telework will continue to expand for certain types of jobs, such as customer support, “But I think we will continue to see demand increase for these new types of workspaces,” she added. The key is to avoid the mistakes of the past, such as the early adopters of hoteling space, which eliminated personal work stations and assigned available desks or offices to employees when they came in.

“The problem was that workers didn’t use them,” said O’Mara. “People go to work to see and interact with other people. So just having a place available for them to work doesn’t work. The location and space itself has to appeal to them.”

A Mandate for Change
GSA’s Chief Asset Officer Gavin Bloch spoke about the agency’s mandate to increase teleworking among employees and dramatically increase density across the 370 million square feet occupied by 1.1 million federal employees in approximately 10,000 buildings. He said much of the space was state-of-the-art when it was built 30 years ago, but falls well short of today’s newer expectations.

“As an industry, we’re going to see huge changes in the amount of space per worker in the future,” he remarked. “There is an alignment of stars right now; between shifts in the workforce, ubiquitous Internet access, and mandates to reduce costs and improve efficiency, there is real impetus for change.”

Bloch said GSA is developing prototypes for “professional productive environments” designed to support collaboration, reduce energy use and use real estate more effectively. A typical GSA building uses 22% less energy than a comparable private-sector tenant, he said.

Bloch believes a mobile workforce that performs a large amount of its work remotely is an inevitable trend. “We can’t hold it back. People don’t want to sit in their cars, companies can’t afford for people to sit in their cars, and the planet can’t afford for people to sit in their cars.”

Other panelists agreed mobility will continue to play an increasingly important role as a driver in reducing demand for more space, but also said that different companies will pursue different workplace strategies.

“Salesforce.com is one of the most successful cloud-based computing firms today,” said King. “It’s all about empowering sales people to connect with customers digitally, but it wants its employees in the office at least two days a week, because it’s a new company and it’s still building its culture. Microsoft’s policy to get the best talent wherever they may be around the world. They have no problem with people working remotely, even teleworking from different countries. Google has a very different philosophy. It believes you never can tell when that next spark of genius will occur, that’s why they want you there with your colleagues in the Googleplex, even riding on their buses there and back.”

“It’s clear that businesses are thinking about their physical workspaces much more deliberatively and how they can be used to achieve a competitive advantage,” either through improved efficiency and cost saving, or attracting and retaining talent, said O’Mara.

“There is a lot of product currently out there that is not responsive to how people work, and perhaps isn’t even worth renovating,” she added. “We don’t see a lot of new net demand for space,” which she said are important considerations for long-term investors with big portfolios and mortgages turning over.

One area that is expected to see strong demand as a result of the trends explored during the BOMA Foundation symposium is enhanced value for effective asset managers.

“Cash is king, right now it’s all about the bottom line. Asset management has a much higher profile than when cap rate compression took care of everything,” noted Naman of Lowe Enterprises.

Skilled, knowledgeable asset managers are key to reducing expenses and maintaining tenant satisfaction, she added. “It’s a lot less costly to retain a tenant than to replace one, which is why it’s important to keep these trends in mind when investing and managing buildings.”

Without the being part of the space planning process, figuring build-out costs more specific than a general range is challenging because so many lease size strictures and building type options affect this estimate.

Ziegler Cooper Architects of Houston, TX, provide the Tenant Improvement Cost Guideline Matrix below for reference. The matrix is based on a single-floor 20,000-square-foot typical tenant that might locate in one of three building types – Class A, Class B and Class C. They may have finish requirements that range from Building Standard or slightly above, Moderately Above Building Standard or High Finish without being extravagant.

The matrix is offered only as a loose guideline, as your actual costs will vary based on the amount of reusable assets, the original space’s condition, the tenant size (full floor vs. half floor) and many other factors.  The matrix is based on an average of three different general contractors that specialize in tenant improvement work as well as historic experience in the market. The contractors indicate that costs should increase slightly throughout 2012.

Courtesy of Ziegler Cooper Architects, Houston, Texas

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Rewards vs. Recognition

One simple way of treating your employees well is by rewarding and recognizing them. Rewarding and recognizing employees motivates them. Now, rewarding and recognizing are two very different things. A reward is an external motivator, while recognition is an internal one. In other words, money is a reward. A pat on the back and a word of thanks is recognition. See the difference? Even though they’re different, they’re both vitally important. Below are some tips on how to effectively recognize and reward your employees.

Recognize

• Thank people often for their efforts and ideas. Do it privately and publicly. Don’t be stingy with praise, but don’t throw it around insincerely with an end in mind, because people will sense your ulterior motives. Remember that praise too freely given (“Hey, great job! You got out of bed today!”) loses its value.

• Write personal notes detailing your appreciation for your employees. Hand-written notes mean more than ever in this technology-saturated age. The effort and thought alone sends a powerful message.

• Celebrate special effort. If an employee goes above and beyond, make a big deal out of it. Write about it in the company newsletter. Send out an at-major email to brag on your employee. Put it up on the bulletin board. Your employee will feel like a rock star.

• Initiate a program where employees can recognize each other – i.e., a “I caught so-and-so giving outstanding customer service” form.

• Remember employees’ birthdays and buy a cake for all to share.

Reward

• Give people time off. Many people appreciate having time off to do other things, especially when their home and work schedules are normally hectic.

• If you don’t already have one, put together an employee of the month program. Build in a reward, such as movie tickets, or a restaurant gift card, or even a gift basket full of goodies.

• Surprise your employees. Throw an impromptu lunch barbecue, or take everyone out for lunch. Take them to an arcade for an afternoon of “hooky.”

• Give everyone the option of leaving at noon on Friday every once in a while.

• Contribute to your employee’s favorite charity.

• Take photos throughout the year and give out albums of photos at the end of the year.

• Throw holiday office parties. These don’t need to be expensive affairs, just festive and fun.

1. Be completely clear about the purpose of your call before you pick up the phone. Establish in advance your desired outcome and structure your questions around that outcome.
2. Be courteous but not phony. Try to enjoy yourself, because your voice tends to betray your distress and will be off-putting to your prospect.
3. Keep meticulous call records. This is to make absolutely sure you don’t call the same person twice with the same pitch.
4. If you dial a business and get trapped in an endless automated system loop, press zero. This will usually get you to the reception desk and a real, live person.
5. When it comes time to make phone calls, block out a period of time, and keep at the calls for that entire period. Don’t fall into the trap of  getting distracting or letting yourself be lured away by a more pleasant task. Set up a reward system if you need to, but keep at it until the block of time is up.
6. Always address prospects by their titles, i.e., Mr. Smith. Using first names on a cold call can seem overly familiar and intrusive.
7. Listen. Don’t get so caught up in your script or in anticipating when it will be your turn to talk that you miss an opportunity to answer an objection or understand what your prospect wants.
8. Don’t leave messages. If you don’t get the person you want to talk to, say you’ll call back later. Then do it until you get your prospect.
9. Be persistent. Vary your call patterns. The myth is that certain times of day aren’t worth getting on the phone.
10. Don’t waste your prospect’s time. Get your pitch out quick—but not too quick. Make sure you’re understandable, but be succinct and brief as possible.
11. Practice giving your pitch into a tape recorder and listen to yourself. How many times do you say um, uh, you know or like? Learn to give your pitch without these crutches, which are annoying and distracting.
12. Have your daytimer, PDA or appointment software open and ready. If  it’s not, you’re giving yourself the subliminal message that you don’t plan to get any appointments. Have a positive expectation of the appointments, how many and when you are going to schedule them.
13. Don’t take rejection personally.
14. When you close on an appointment, confirm the details carefully. You don’t want to show up at the wrong place or the wrong time. Also let prospects know that they can make any changes in time or place. This lets them know you are a professional and will keep them from feeling trapped.

If you’re working out of your home, using local SEO can be detrimental to business at best and downright dangerous at worst. But if you’re making use of an executive suite or shared office, publicizing your location can help raise your visibility, attract business and give you credibility.

Here are a couple of ways to make sure your business is visible to local web traffic.

• Log on to the various websites devoted to tracking the locations and profiles of businesses and verify the profile of your business. Often, these sites will have functions that allow users to recommend businesses to their friends and leave ratings, reviews, and other comments. Websites like Google Places, Bing Local, and Yahoo Local are good sites to start with. To verify, you may have to make a phone call or send a postcard to validate your address.

• Most sites that provide directories to local businesses include pictures with their profiles. The web is extremely visual, and it’s possible that potential clients will pass right over you if you don’t include a picture or if the service provides its own (sub-par) pictures. To make sure your online presence is as beneficial to you as possible, upload your own pictures. You don’t have to hire a professional or anything, but keep in mind that these photographs will be representing you and your business, so make sure they’re clear and attractive.

• Submit information about your business to services like Localeze and infoUSA, which help you validate information about your business and track your business’s information across the internet. If you find incorrect information on one of these sites or other local listings, make sure to let the site know: incorrect information like this is often a self-perpetuating cycle, as sites use information from elsewhere on the web to complete their profiles. If your info is incorrect on one site, this may lead to widespread mistakes, so nip this problem in the bud.

• On local listing sites, always ask customers to leave reviews. Even if they’re negative, they help possible customers see that your business is legitimate. If they’re positive, there’s some free advertising!

• A moderate amount of bad reviews can actually be good for business. When you see a listing with all good reviews, it tends to look somewhat suspicious: the company can’t possibly be perfect, so it seems like someone’s faking it. Obviously, too many bad reviews are detrimental, but don’t worry about getting a few. Everyone does.

• Add your local (not 800) phone number to every site and directory you can. Not only does it make it easier for someone to contact you, it also helps to indicate your location. Also, make sure that on every page, your phone number is the same.

• Make sure your mailing address is always attached to business listings and always consistent. This is how people can find you.

• To make sure your business is as visible as possible, create a business page on social networking sites: create a Facebook business page, a Twitter account, a blog, any kind of current, up-to-date record of your business that makes it easy to connect with other people. And once you create those accounts, make sure you update them regularly. Social networking sites can’t do their job if you don’t respond to messages and keep followers current on what’s going on in your business.

• Recognize that some of the most important web information about you is based on things that happen offline. The way you treat clients, both over the internet and in person, says a lot about your business. If you treat customers poorly, you can expect plenty of bad reviews and comments. If, on the other hand, you go above and beyond to treat your clients well and perform your services to the best of your ability, your online persona will show that, as well. The best way to control what the internet says about your business is to make sure you do everything you can to treat people right.

Local web listings are a wonderful thing. Broad internet visibility is great, but you aren’t going to get any business unless people in the area can find you and see good things about you. Invest just a little time in local SEO, and your business will thank you.

• Bake something delicious for your friends and family. Make it something special, maybe your sister’s favorite family recipe chocolate chip cookies or double chocolate brownies for your chocoholic best friend. Nothing says love like home-baked desserts.
• Make a scrapbook, photo book, or video of treasured photographs. There are cost-effective and easy ways to do this yourself or, for a little extra money (though not as much as many traditional gifts), you can have photo books professionally bound by companies like Createspace, Mixbook, and Snapfish.
• Put together a themed gift basket. For example, you could make a cold-weather basket and fill it with hot chocolate packets, a fun pair of gloves, and a good book. Be creative!
• Burn a mix CD with songs that remind you of the person you’re giving it to. You can include inside jokes and lots of memories and, if you’re really feeling creative, create a cover that matches the CD.
• Donate to a charity in another person’s name. Make sure it’s a cause that they care about, too!
• Limit the number of gifts by doing a Secret Santa exchange. Have each person draw the name of one other person and buy only that person a gift. Make sure to specify the ideal amount to spend so that everyone gives something at a similar level. This works especially well for extended family.
• Make a small gift so much more by turning it into an event. If you buy a board game for someone, make it into a family game night. If you give someone a DVD, declare a movie night.
• Handmade ornaments can be thrifty and meaningful gifts, often both beautiful and easy to make. You can find instructions for making different kinds of ornaments at craft sites online.
• One family favorite is always the personalized coupon book. Make a coupon book with coupons inside like “free backrub” and “good for one breakfast in bed.” Your family will appreciate it. This is also a great gift for kids to make for parents or siblings.
• Pay for magazine subscriptions. If you know someone who loves science, buy a year’s subscription to Popular Science or Discovery. If you have a friend who is always up on celebrity gossip, maybe a People subscription would be the thing to do.
• A small plant can work wonders in cheering someone up. Christmas cacti have beautiful flowers that bloom in the winter and can make even the grayest day better.
• Regifting can be great, too, as long as you’re careful. If you got a duplicate of something you already had last Christmas and want to give it away, that can seriously cut down on your costs. Just make sure that it is something that legitimately has value (not something that your friend will want even less than you do), and that you’re not accidentally giving it to the same person who gave it to you!
• If you have a skill that could be helpful, offer to do what you’re good at for free. If you’re a designer, help design something. If you’re a master chef (or near enough), offer to cook.

If you’re creative, there are plenty of ways to create gifts that mean a lot to the person who’s receiving them. The best way to make them count is to personalize them and make sure that even if they don’t cost much, they still have value to the person you’re giving them too. A little resourcefulness can go a long way.

• Make a list of everything you need to do for the process to go smoothly. Assign start dates and due dates to each task. Determine who will be in charge of each assignment.
• Get together a group of people from every department to serve as a committee for year-end organization. Because you’ll have to gather so many different kinds of information, having people who know different aspects of the company will make hunting down those pieces of data much easier. You may even want to think about keeping this committee around year-round.
• Make or update a list of fringe benefits offered to employees by the company that payroll doesn’t directly cover but that are, or could be, taxable.
• Using that information, calculate the taxable income from these benefits that payroll will have to take into account.
• Make sure to finish and close out any in-progress financial transactions.
• Make sure that you know the status of the retirement plan offered by the company and how to mark it on the W-2 as required by the IRS.
• Make a list of all the forms that your company will need by the end of the year, and order W-2s if you need them.
• Verify all of the information that payroll has about employees, including information like social security numbers.
• Print year-end financial reports including general ledger, accounts payable, and financial statements to have a hard copy of all of your current financial information. This can be helpful if you are ever audited for any reason.
• Check to make sure that any manual checks and voids have all been processed, cleared, and put into the accounting system correctly.
• Deactivate any W-5 forms for the year.
• If you want to be really prepared, get a head start on the new year: set up the new payroll processing calendar and submission calendar and order any new forms, reference books, publications, and state tax books that you might need.

With a little bit of prior planning, what used to be crunch time can become productive, efficient organizational time that lets you get everything done more easily and with less of headache. Follow the schedule that you set for yourself and your company, and make things easy on yourself by having access to all of the people and resources that you need to get ready for the end of another year.

Thanks to technology, however, your accounting frustrations can be alleviated to a greater extent than ever before. Dozens of small business accounting software packages are available for less money than you think. These packages can do everything from organizing banking and financial statements to tracking payroll and inventory. Below are tips to help you decide which package (if any) is best for you.

• Do your homework and check out product review sites before you commit. Research thoroughly all your choices to ensure that you’ll be able to use the software once you purchase it. Many software packages provide online tutorials and customer support.

• Small business accounting software until recently has been limited for Mac users, but things are slowly changing. You can now get Quicken, Quickbooks, AccountEdge, GnuCash (free), NetSuite Small Business and MoneyDance for Mac.

•  If you need only basic accounting functions, download Wave Accounting, FreshBooks or Billing Boss free for Windows-based systems.

• Sage Premium’s Peachtree Accounting and AccountEdge also offer a large selection of features for a reasonable price.

• At about $300, QuickBooks Premier Edition is considered one of the best accounting packages available for Windows-based small businesses. It offers tons of features the competition doesn’t have and offers customization for your company’s needs. If you’re on a Mac-based system, you’ll need to get QuickBooks Pro.

• You may have to pay more if your company requires an accounting software suite that performs  specialized tasks like estimating shipping costs, shipment tracking or providing tax services.