Two weeks today, Promoting Property:  insight, experience and best practice will be published.  It is already available to reserve via Amazon, Routledge and many book shops.

The idea for a ‘bible’ on property and construction PR occurred to me a couple of years ago.  I was conscious that this was a rapidly growing sector with some very skilled practitioners – but limited means of sharing best practice.  Following an enthusiastic response from Routledge, Liz Male, a construction PR specialist joined as me as a co-editor and we quickly realised that the amount of expertise on construction and property together would create a very heavy tome – hence two books, Promoting Property:  insight, experience and best practice and Communicating Construction: insight, experience and best practice, which will be published later this year.

Property is an extensive and incredibly varied industry, as is the PR and communications expertise that serves it. Even within the scope of the book we have merely scratched the surface of property PR and all its technicolour glory.

That said, the colour, depth and diversity provided by our chapter authors create a fascinating glimpse into the practice of property PR and, we hope, provide a comprehensive introduction as well as some expert knowledge and best practice. We are very grateful to the chapter authors (listed here) and other contributors who came forward with their insights, case studies and personal stories from a variety of property sectors.

The book is invariably slightly biased towards residential property: looking at new homes in the private and public sectors and the marketing and sale of existing homes, at all points in the price range. We also have a chapter on commercial and retail property from a leading PR agency in the sector, and some very interesting chapters relating to the use of technology in property, PR for interior design and the promotion of property consultancies. There are of course property functions that are not covered in this book – but we hope to include them a second edition.

Arguably, property PR is not as pioneering as PR for some other sectors and is sometimes fairly traditional. But it is increasingly becoming a strategic management discipline and consequently PR practitioners are getting a stronger voice at board level.

This is exactly as it should be. Property – the communities we create and the buildings in which we live, work, rest and play – is by far the biggest factor in our health and wellbeing, safety and security, environmental responsibility and social cohesion. To be an influential PR and communications professional in this sector is to make a genuine difference to people’s lives.

As property PR continues to develop in strategic sophistication, creativity and ever-extensive methodology, it will be fascinating to see how it evolves.

In the meantime, we hope that this book provides an interesting and educational resource for all property PR teams, students studying for property, PR, marketing degrees and for anyone working in the built environment sector who needs to consider PR and marketing as part of their role.

We and see this book (along with Communicating Construction) as part of a continual learning experience and we hope to continue the discussions on LinkedIn, where we would welcome comments, thoughts and general feedback.

Promoting Property:  insight, experience and best practice is published on 30 April