A lot of professionals--not all--sometimes find it hard to take things like Facebook and Twitter seriously. After all, the former can include many an incriminating photograph of one’s family or friends, while the latter is a surprisingly cheerful collection of pithy statements, seemingly spammy sentences and throwaway comments. Some don’t see Twitter, therefore, as a serious networking tool. Fortunately, this perception of the social media network is becoming outdated. Technology and usage have progressed to an impressive extent since the days when to “tweet” meant to make a bird call, and the platform itself sounded like a gossipy bunch of women.

However, in a complex and serious field such as commercial real estate, the question that can often hover on the lips of many is: “Why bother with social media?” “Why Tweet?”

To answer this one must take a step back. A large part of building relationships between companies, industry professionals and even between the media and its subjects depends on good, old-fashioned human interaction. When dinosaurs roamed the earth, this was frequently done at business luncheons, expensed dinners, in-person meetings and--gasp--over the phone. Today, with companies watching their budgets and lots of new, snazzy technology, this has become less frequent. We email. We text. And more often than not, we get our news in a feed on our iPhones or iPads.