Washington, DC

Social media for brokerages selling space in a federal town

A brokerage feed in this metro runs into limits that have nothing to do with marketing. Buildings inside the District stop at a common height, which removes the pitch every tower market leans on. Some of the tenants in your buildings work under clearances and cannot be tied to an address, and the same people will never be seen commenting under a post. The months when anybody can act are set by appropriations rather than by quarters. None of that makes social a poor channel here. It makes it a channel with rules. Below is what a firm working the District, suburban Maryland and Northern Virginia can put on camera, how to write for a reader who cannot reply, and when to publish.

The height limit takes the view pitch away, so film the terrace and the floor plate

Office buildings inside the District top out at a common line, and everything a tour video is supposed to sell has to move sideways as a result.

Nothing rises above the pack here. The high floor with the long view, which carries a tour in almost any other city on this list, is not available to a broker working inside the District.

What replaces it is horizontal. Floor plates are wide, a full floor holds far more people than a full floor in a tower, and an occupier used to stacking three floors somewhere else misreads the plan every time. Walk the perimeter on camera and let the length of the walk do the work.

Roof terraces carry the pitch instead. With the whole city at one line, a terrace looks out at the monuments and the sky rather than into somebody else's curtain wall, and it is the one part of a Washington building that shows better on video than it does on paper.

Light is the other thing worth filming. Boxy buildings sitting on full lots take their daylight through the window line and through interior wells, so shoot at the hour the space actually gets sun and say on screen which hour that was.

A cleared tenant cannot be tied to an address, so the lobby stays out of frame

In a market full of cleared work, a tour video is planned backward from what is not allowed to appear.

A lobby directory board in Ballston or at Navy Yard names the companies on every floor. Some of those tenants hold work that requires a security clearance and have contractual reasons not to be associated with a location, and one wide shot publishes all of it.

Directory boards, suite plaques, badge readers, visitor logs and anything posted at a gate stay outside the frame. The tenant's own security people, not the property manager and not the landlord, are the ones who decide what a camera may see on an occupied floor.

Filming from a public sidewalk near a federal facility is its own conversation, and the officer at the door is who you will be having it with. Send somebody who expects to be asked and has an answer ready rather than a junior person with a gimbal.

Vacant space carries most of a sensible program here because it carries none of that risk. The full floor, the core, the elevator lobby, the loading area and the terrace are all yours to shoot, and they are also the footage with the longest useful life.

The reader you want is not allowed to comment

Much of the audience worth reaching in this metro is barred from engaging in public, which changes how a post has to be built.

A federal employee or a cleared contractor who comments publicly about their agency's space plans has a problem at work the next morning. They will not do it, and they should not.

So the usual call to action fails here. Inviting questions in the comments asks a reader to publish an interest they are not permitted to publish, and an empty thread under a good post is the normal outcome rather than a failure.

Build the answer into the piece instead. What a landlord will and will not construct, how a build out runs against a lease expiration, what changes about a timeline on the Virginia side: put all of it in the video rather than saving it for a reply that nobody will ever ask for.

Then give a private route and make it visible. A named broker, a direct line, an email address on screen. Somebody watching wants to reach you without leaving a public trace, and a comment box is the one door they cannot use.

Your posting calendar answers to the federal fiscal year

The months when a tenant can act, and the months when nobody can sign anything, are set by appropriations rather than by your marketing plan.

Awards cluster at the end of the federal fiscal year, and a contractor who has just won work needs space before it needs a broker. The weeks on either side of that are when a plain explainer about how space decisions get made earns its keep.

A funding lapse is the mirror image. Furloughs empty the audience of people who can decide anything, and a cheerful leasing post landing in that week costs goodwill that took a year to build.

What holds up through both is material that does not depend on the news. How long a fit out runs, what a federal contractor should sort out before it signs, what an occupier gives up and gains by crossing from the District into Northern Virginia or suburban Maryland: none of it goes stale in a dead stretch.

The parts of this that are not particular to Washington, from what a brokerage should actually be publishing to how a small team staffs the work, sit in our wider piece on social media for commercial real estate at /industries/commercial-real-estate/social-media.

Questions we actually get

Can we film inside an occupied building here?: Sometimes, and never on the assumption that the landlord's permission settles it. Some tenants in this metro hold work that requires a security clearance and have contractual reasons not to be associated with an address, so the tenant's security people decide what a camera may see. Plan around anything that identifies who is in the building: directory boards, suite plaques, badge readers, visitor logs. Vacant space carries most of a sensible program for good reason.
We were asked to stop filming from the sidewalk. What happened?: You were probably standing near a federal facility, and the officer at the door does not owe you an explanation about why. Public ground is not a blanket permission in a city with this much of that sort of property, and arguing the point on the street is a poor use of a broker's afternoon. Plan those shots in advance, send somebody who expects to be asked, and have a fallback angle picked out before the camera comes out.
Our posts get almost no comments. Is the account failing?: Not necessarily, because much of the audience here cannot comment. A cleared contractor or a federal employee who publicly asks about space plans is creating a problem at work, so interest arrives privately or not at all. Design for that. Answer the obvious questions inside the piece rather than promising to answer them in the thread, and put a named broker and a direct route on screen so the quiet reader has somewhere to go.
What should we post during a funding lapse?: Less, and in a different register. Furloughs remove the people who can make a decision, so a promotional post lands badly and gets remembered that way. What still works is anything genuinely useful about what a lapse does to schedules, to occupancy dates and to build out sequencing, written plainly and without a pitch attached to the end of it.
How do we show a Washington floor to a tenant coming from a tower market?: Walk it and let the walk take time. The height limit makes floor plates here wide rather than tall, so a full floor holds more people than the same tenant is used to and their headcount math is wrong before they arrive. A single unbroken walk down the perimeter communicates that in a way a plan never does, and the roof terrace, which most Washington buildings have and most tower markets do not, is worth the second half of the clip.

What is different here

Brokerage is licensed and advertising generally has to identify the brokerage rather than only the individual. The more practical constraint is that this industry is bought at submarket grain: a downtown tower and a suburban flex park are different products with different tenants, and content pitched at a whole metro tends to speak to neither.

More Commercial Real Estate marketing in Washington

Social Media Strategy & Execution for other Washington industries

Commercial Real Estate Social Media Strategy & Execution elsewhere

Written by KC Thompson, Morgul Marketing.

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Tell us what you are working with and we will say what we would do first, and what we would leave alone. A real answer, not a pitch deck.