DougraySmith, the Scottish based niche investment and development real estate advisory practise, is set to launch the first ever-Scottish property news page on the China micro blogging platform Weibo.
Launching on Monday 14th March, ‘Scottish Property Experts’ has been developed to meet the demand from China for property services in Scotland.
Translated as microblog, Weibo is a Chinese microblogging site, similar to Facebook and Twitter, and is one of the most popular sites in China used by over 176 million people, of which more than 90% visit the site more than 3 times a week.
Spearheaded by award-winning DougraySmith it is hoped that the new Scottish property focus will assist Chinese property investors to purchase Scottish property, across all sectors.
Chris Dougray from DougraySmith explains: “We have visited China and have been developing our Chinese contact base over the last eighteen months. We now feel ready to implement the next phase of our strategy – our social media platform, which has been developed with our digital marketing partner Digiology China.
“We will offer updates on all matters of Scottish real estate to individuals and businesses interested in investing in Scottish property. The updates will be issued in Mandarin and whilst initially focusing on clients of DougraySmith, the service will be available to third parties in the future. We foresee strong interest from the residential, student accommodation and commercial real estate sectors.
“No other real estate advisor in Scotland, or indeed the UK, has developed such a platform to showcase property and we believe it will open up a new market for owners.”
The initiative has been given the backing by David Melhuish, of the Scottish Property Federation.
David said: “There is no doubting that there is growing interest in Scottish real estate from Chinese investors and developers and of course we have witnessed growing investment in both London and Manchester over the last 24 months. The DougraySmith and Digiology proposition is likely to meet with real interest.”
The new proposition has also met with encouragement from Beijing. John Somers, First Secretary for Scottish Affairs at the British Embassy in Beijing said: “All efforts to generate Chinese interest in Scotland are welcome and I wish this new venture the best of luck.”
Kelvin Chan of Digiology China noted: “We have had a deep involvement in the Chinese digital market, most noticeably on the recent Scottish Government’s Unique Events Blogmanay campaign where we generated 21.6 million Chinese views of Hogmanay and wider Scottish life in ten days. We felt the matching of our skill set to DougraySmith’s position in the China facing property market was a perfect fit.”
Adam Foster of Digiology China also added: “We have a unique offering being the first and only dedicated Chinese marketing service in Scotland. With our team made up of an experienced digital team, a Chinese business partner plus on the ground partners in mainland China has allowed us to deliver successful campaigns for clients such as Royal Mail, Cathay Pacific and Newcastle United FC to name a few.
“We are looking forward to working with DougraySmith on this pioneering media project to promote Scotland’s property sector to Chinese investors and developers.”
Wendy Liu, of the City of Edinburgh Council’s Investor Support team stated: “The Council have been actively promoting Edinburgh to the Chinese market and have witnessed steadily increasing interest from both developers and investors. We welcome this new concept and would support them on this initiative to help generate more interest from China in the Edinburgh property market. We wish DougraySmith and Digiology the very best in this new and exciting venture.”
James Brodie of China Britain Business Council added:
“To see a home grown Scottish digital offering dedicated to the Chinese market is a reflection of the increasing engagement between Scotland and China’s netizens. It’s great to see this now covering both trade and investment opportunities. In recent years, CBBC has itself become increasingly involved in facilitating Chinese Outbound investment into the UK and it’s great to see this added initiative, which we strongly encourage”