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Estates Gazette prepares for social media push

Posted: 31/03/09 By: Laura Oliver

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Estates Gazette is boosting multimedia content on its site and opening up some content from behind its subscription wall.

The Reed Business Information (RBI) title has launched a weekly podcast for the property industry and will look to develop more video content, Tony White, RBI digital strategist, told Journalism.co.uk.

Staff at the magazine have also started blogging, beginning with coverage of the MIPIN conference, with plans to launch a series of niche and specialist property blogs, which can be organised around geographic and professional lines.

Twitter accounts have also been set up for both specific staff members, teams and relating to event coverage, while a 'behind the scenes' blog is already publicly available.

In the coming weeks some blogs will be freely available on the EGi site. The social media push will be led RBI head of blogging Adam Tinworth.

"It's easy to forget that EGi were one of the innovators online for journalism back in 1995-96. It was one of the first out there with a rolling news service, behind a pay wall and that model has worked very well for it for the last 10 years," Tinworth told Journalism.co.uk.

"While that has worked for EGi, you can't ignore what else is going on. Estates Gazette has virtually no internet presence at all in the traditional sense. If you Google property you won't get EG, because it's behind a pay wall, you'll get competitors, the national press or other stuff."

The property industry is a very social industry and online resources will become increasingly useful as budget cuts are made, said Tinworth.

Staff at the title will be encouraged to experiment with social media and multimedia content, he added.

"EG is in a strong position, but this is a downturn. In a downturn you can shut everything down and hope to weather the storm; or if you're in a stronger position you can put time and effort into experimenting and innovating, so when the market does bounce back, you're in a good position to take advantage of that," said Tinworth.

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