Shopping Centers Today

MAY 2017

Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)

Issue link: https://sct.epubxp.com/i/817743

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214 S C T / M A Y 2 0 1 7 N E W S M A K E R S Michael Beckerman is CEO of The News Funnel, the largest real estate news aggregator and content platform in the industry. Beckerman talks to SCT about his process for curating the news, why he thinks it is so important for real estate professionals to blog and his plans to help bring together the tech and real estate worlds. How did you first get involved in real estate public relations? I always loved news. I always loved reading. Some of my favorite memories from childhood were talking with my dad about what he'd read in the newspaper. In my early 20s I decided to start a public-relations firm, without really knowing anything about PR. I remember getting a book at the library about press releases, and thought, hey, I could do that. I set up this business and started to network. My first client was a real estate homebuilder. This was in the late '80s, when the market was really bad. I realized that in bad times, companies needed more PR, and I also realized there wasn't really anyone who specialized in the real estate industry. From my reading, I knew that there were advantages in business to having a niche. I decided then to specialize in real estate. It wasn't long before I got my first commercial client. For 25 years I built up my agency: Beckerman Public Relations. We were in New Jersey, New York, D.C. and San Francisco. We had clients across the country. I grew the firm to about 60 people. Then in 2008–2009 I decided to go in a different direction. Why did you decide to launch The News Funnel? As a PR professional, I had seen that print was starting to go away. In the late 2000s, individuals and corporations were beginning to understand that they could create their own content and their own media by writing blogs, by creating their own white papers and by hosting their own webinars and podcasts. When I started The News Funnel in 2011, my goal was to encourage as many people and companies as I could to create their Media master Michael Beckerman helps businesses build credibility with content By Rebecca Meiser

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