4 STEPS TO WIN
I know you’ll agree when I say that it can be difficult to generate real estate leads via social media. Sometimes you think it’s a waste of time, right?
There is a way to get the email addresses of potential leads, THAT IS FREE, and your competitors are probably not even doing it.
LinkedIn for real estate ! It’s a platform for professionals to connect.
4 million Australians actively use LinkedIn?
That means a large chunk of your potential vendors are sitting there waiting for you!
With 8 million registered Australian users, LinkedIn allows professionals to get in touch with leads, seek business information and it even provides a place for a “smart” blog.
The real estate industry is beginning to catch on to the effectiveness of using LinkedIn for real estate to generate leads – for both sales and listings.
So what are the 4 steps to optimise LinkedIn for real estate leads?
STEP ONE
STEP TWO
STEP THREE
STEP FOUR
STEP ONE
If you look at social media sites, you’re more likely to trust and engage with businesses with the best (ie most professional) profiles and pages.
It’s the same when people are looking at profiles on LinkedIn. And good news: it’s not hard!
So, what makes a profile great?
It must be professional, engaging, appealing and educational.
Let’s look at how to do that:
The two most important photos on your LinkedIn profile are your profile photo and your cover photo.
Your profile photo needs to look professional and be high resolution.
Remember, this photo represents the ‘business you’, so if the pic doesn’t portray quality, that potential lead will see the same in your business.
The cover photo still needs to be professional, but it is where you can get a little more creative.
This pic is prime real estate to showcase the features of your business that you want to stand out. Have you:
Consider creating a custom cover image to display this creatively. You may need the help of a graphic designer for this so it doesn’t look amateurish.
The cover photo should still follow the tips from above, but it is an opportunity to share information in an eye catching and visual way.
Example of a creative LinkedIn for real estate cover photo
Use the bio to communicate who you are and what you’re all about so potential leads or connections can get a clear idea very quickly. Here you have three options:
Finding the right balance of providing enough information for the reader to know and trust you (but not so much that they become bored and move on) is important.
Your accolades, accomplishments, education and employment are valuable, that’s why LinkedIn has a section especially for them.
Because LinkedIn is a platform for professionals to connect with other professionals, these kinds of details provide assurance and qualification within the community.
Consider it a tacit testimonial.
Ensure your company website, phone number and any other contact details are available on your profile for interested people to find more information.
There’s an option to edit the URL of your profile. This makes it easier to read, more easily indexed by Google and, most importantly, makes you look more professional.
The automatically generated URL is usually your name plus a heap of numbers.
STEP TWO
A LinkedIn connection is a little like “friending” someone on Facebook, but it’s generally less personal.
Saying that, the easiest way to start is by connecting with your friends and your own network of real estate agents and work colleagues. Once you’ve done that, start connecting with an existing email list if you have one.
At this stage you should only be connecting with people you know, and who would remember who you are.
Have a look at the profiles of a few perspective connections. These people will receive a notification saying that you viewed their profile. Give these people a bit of time to receive this notification and possibly check out your profile too.
A couple days later you can invite them to connect with you via InMail.
InMail allows you to send a messages to other LinkedIn members that you are not already connected with (you will need a premium account). InMail is perfect to introduce yourself or company to your 2nd connections. Here’s the Golden Rule of LinkedIn (and networking generally):
Never ask for something before establishing a connection.
Think about it: if the first time you meet someone they ask for something, that meeting will feel disingenuous and you’ll feel used.
Here are a few basic things to remember:
Below is an example of how to contact a potential 2nd connection:
STEP THREE
Here’s the deal:
Groups are places where like-minded professionals come together to have meaningful conversations.
There are so many relevant groups for you to explore. For example, some groups focus on real estate social media, some on relevant industry news and some allow you to build a network of agents and gain referrals (and not to mention the many, many more).
Here are a few to get you started:
For real estate social media: “Social Media For Real Estate”
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1812050/profile
For current and relevant real estate news:” Inman – Smart About Real Estate”
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/59/profile
For real estate referrals and networking: “Real Estate Open Networkers”
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/97046/profile
“Real Estate Professionals Referral Group”
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/118487/profile
Now, once you’ve been accepted into a group, spend a bit of time getting to know how the group runs and who its members are. Once you are familiar it is time to actively contribute and make the members of these groups know who you are.
As noted above, each group is based around different types of content, and has different rules to what is acceptable to post.
Following these rules you should:
Who knows, you may just get a referral or a lead.
You can find more information about groups at the LinkedIn help site, here.
A showcase page is like a sub-page to your profile that focuses on content and promotion.
You should be posting a very minimum of once a week. But if you want to be a power user and make an impact aim for 3-4 posts a week. It is very much a case of “you get out what you put in”.
To demonstrate, you have been posting on your profile, but you have a part of your business that you want to showcase that could have a whole page for itself.
If you want to showcase:
you can create a showcase page!
A showcase page is like a sub-page to your profile
that focuses on content and promotion.
You access the showcase page through the right hand side of your profile but you can find a tutorial of how to make a showcase page here.
Here you can create a “blog” type page that lets a particular topic have the spotlight. It’s all extra information that builds trust and qualification to your brand.
So there you have it!
If you:
You will soon begin see the benefits of using LinkedIn to gain organic leads.