LinkedIn has become the nearly ubiquitous career-focus networking tool for professionals of all types, and realtors are no exception. We’re certain most of you already do have a LinkedIn profile. However, if yours is one that you created but then haven’t done much with since then you will be pleased to learn of ways that your LinkedIn profile can help you advance your real estate business. Today we’ll look at easy steps you can take to optimize your profile and then some actions you can take to put you more at the forefront for realtors in your area of the country.
All of this is important because lead and client generation in this business is never easy, and the competition is stiff nearly all the time. These days that’s more true than ever, and realtors should be looking for anything they can do to get a leg up on their competitors and demand a greater share of the pie. Here at Real Estate Leads, our online real estate lead generation system has been a big success for Canadian realtors who’ve decided to have the Internet working for them to provide them with quality leads putting them in touch with people who are genuinely looking to buy or sell a home and need a professional to work with them.
LinkedIn is definitely one of the most under appreciated social networks, but it continues to quietly grow and become even more entrenched as a super solid business networking tool. Real estate professionals across the country and around the globe continue to utilize the social networking tools provided by LinkedIn. Over 90 million users have now registered with LinkedIn to advertise their credentials, speak with others in their business community, and meet new clients and business partners.
LinkedIn Profile Tips
- Have a Solid Summary
A well-written summary paragraph for your profile benefits you in a big way. It’s displayed prominently on the user snapshot page, and serves as an elevator pitch to someone who is not familiar with your skill set and work experience. If you’re not particularly skilled with writing, spending some money hiring a writer to create your summary is a good idea. As it’s short, they likely won’t charge you much at all.
- Have a Great Photo
Pick a great photo to represent you, and again hiring a professional for the job may be a good idea. Pictures can make a great or terrible first impression, so choose one where you’re looking your best. Also, don’t think you’re obligated to be smiling in a photo. Sometimes just a pleasant and focused expression to your look will do if you struggle to smile naturally.
- Make sure your Profile is 100% Complete
Be sure to fill out all of the sections of your profile. The more information you provide, the easier it will be for appropriate real estate business partners and potential home buyers / sellers to identify you as a good fit and be in touch with you.
- Optimize It
You can and should have SEO keywords incorporated into your profile, and that’s in the summary and elsewhere. Make sure that they are incorporated naturally into the text, and that the sentences read as if the keywords aren’t ‘stuffed’ in there, it should read naturally.
If you choose to hire a writer, most copywriters will be familiar with keyword incorporation and keyword densities.
Use Connections to Represent Business Relationships
Through Connections, LinkedIn lets you demonstrate your industry relationships to the world. When making a connection with another user on the site, it’s established how both users know each other. Once the connection is made, both users can then exchange recommendations, send inMail (through LinkedIn’s internal email program), and easily make referrals from their respective trusted networks.
A greater number of connections means more potential for making new business contacts. Often posting and viewing status updates of other users lets real estate professionals maximizes this platform’s potential. Status updates allow a user to instantly update their entire network of connections on what is currently happening in their business community.
It’s a good idea to keep an eye on these updates, as the next great opportunity may be posted to a user’s entire network.
LinkedIn Connections Tips
- Find Your Company
Most of you will work for a real estate company that already has employees on LinkedIn, so by looking up the company name you can easily connect with all of your co-workers. The same goes for those who went to school with you; search for the educational institution so you can quickly connect with them.
- Find Your Clients
LinkedIn supports the upload of many different contact file formats. You may find after uploading your contact file that many of your clients and associates are already on LinkedIn.
Invite Friends. It’s very easy to import everyone you know that has a LinkedIn profile. Simply go to the webmail import tool, enter in your email login information, and seconds later you can select those you wish to extend invitations to join your own trusted real estate network.
- Attract New Business by Answering Questions
Users can also interact on the site through LinkedIn Answers. This Q&A format lets professionals post and answer questions related to their industry, and it’s an opportunity to establish yourself as one of the experts. If your answers are voted “Best Answers” for frequently asked real estate-related questions they can generate a lot of business inquiries. Good, accurate, and informative answers can actually be advertising for you in this way!
LinkedIn Answers Tips
- Ask Questions
It’s good to ask questions here if you need to gain information. It’s not that you will be scene as being unknowledgeable.
- Express your brand
LinkedIn Answers gives you a great format to put your personality and expertise on display. Really try to be yourself and let your character come through. Answer questions in your voice to create something of a real estate business brand in LinkedIn Answers.
- Be Helpful
Share valuable information, but be judicious about it. Don’t put your insider secrets out there without giving it some thought, but overall being super forthcoming with information and being helpful is a big plus for you.
Advertising Opportunities
Similar to Facebook, LinkedIn provides an ad platform for users and advertisers to take advantage of the network’s reach and social graph and use images and text-based ads to promote their business and services. Relevant ads are served to LinkedIn users depending on their profile information provided, which make LinkedIn Ads very targeted.
LinkedIn Advertising Tips
- Start Small
Setup a simple, but targeted ad campaign by following the easy steps that LinkedIn provides for you. If you don’t have the budget for too much testing, then be sure to start your campaign with very specific, narrowed down demographic selections.
- Test, Test, Test
It’s best to use at least 3-4 ad text variations per campaign, and then test them against each other to see which one is performing best.
- Target Your Campaign
Establish an idea of who your target audience is and target your ads to them. Running a campaign for a large network may leave you spending too much of your marketing budget.
- Refine, Again & Again
Check your campaign regularly to identify trends and signs that could you could use to optimize your campaign. A particular ad that is getting a low click-through rate compared to another ad, for example, might benefit from optimizing the wording in that ad. Or you might pause it entirely so the better performing ad receives more impressions.
One last important consideration for LinkedIn is to protect your info. The site is as secure as any out there, but manage your login information as carefully there as you would for any other important site. The best advice is creating a complex, unique password for use with this site so that you’re the only one with any control over your profile and how you’re using it to market your realtor services.
Use LinkedIn effectively and it can and will do something for you when it comes to lead generation, but it’s a gradual process so the best thing you can do is to start seeing it in different light from other social media platforms and digital networking options.
Sign up for Real Estate Leads here and receive a monthly quota of qualified, online-generated leads for buyers and / or sellers that are delivered exclusively to you and for your protected region of any city or town in Canada. It’s a dynamite way to supercharge your prospecting efforts and get more out of the energies you put into finding new clients.
