S.J. Collins News

Creating social-media pages to connect with customers is by now a common practice for shopping center companies across the globe. But even though building relationships is a basic part of their job, relatively few executives in the industry take maximum advantage of online tools like Google Plus or Twitter to network personally with peers, experts say. Real estate is serious business, after all, and given that the popular use of social-media status updates tends toward the trivial — a college buddy goofing on Hollywood actor Charlie Sheen, say, or somebody’s aunt trumpeting her latest victories on Facebook’s Bingo Blitz — some professionals remain wary of the likes of Twitter, where postings are limited to 140 characters in length.