According to Quantcast, 64 percent of the U.S. members of LinkedIn make above $60,000 per year. That equates to roughly 35 million high-income members in the U.S.alone!
Given its demographic skew towards affluent professionals, LinkedIn is a great place for commercial real estate agents to connect with a very valuable target audience. However, professionals buy and sell their own houses and properties too. That means LinkedIn is also a great tool for residential real estate professionals to build relationships that lead to sales.
Of course, some realtors are better at leveraging LinkedIn to grow their businesses than others. Here are 10 creative ways realtors use LinkedIn to get better results from their efforts.
Profile Development & Community Participation
The first step to effectively leveraging LinkedIn to build a realtor’s business is creating a profile and getting involved. The most successful realtors invest the time and energy to create a 100-percent complete profile, and they prioritize two important activities.
1. Recommendations: As realtors connect with other people on LinkedIn, the most successful among them understand that LinkedIn recommendations are equivalent to testimonials. Since the vast majority of a real estate agent’s business comes from referrals, LinkedIn recommendations are a critical piece of the agent’s profile.
2. Company Page: There is no doubt that people can be more powerful as part of a team than alone, so it makes sense for realtors to make sure the brokers or firms they work for are included in their profiles. Realtors should also make sure that they appear in the employee lists in their employers’ LinkedIn Company Pages. Every extra piece of exposure helps!
LinkedIn Apps
The most successful realtors know that there is more to LinkedIn than a profile and updates. They know there are additional apps to help them get even more benefits from the time they spend connecting and communicating with people on LinkedIn.
For example, realtors can feed their blogs and Twitter updates directly to their LinkedIn profiles and share videos and images too. Here are several useful apps that realtors can use to generate more business.
3. Rofo Real Estate Pro: The Rofo Real Estate Pro app allows realtors to feature their property listings and highlight client transactions directly on their LinkedIn profiles. Realtors can also share completed deals with their connections and track their markets.
4. Events: The Events app enables realtors to publish upcoming events such as open houses, meet and greets, webinars, tweet chats, and more. Realtors can also search for local events using the app and attend events where potential clients and business connections will be for networking.
5. Company Buzz: With the Company Buzz app, real estate agents can monitor keywords related to their business or local market used in Twitter updates without leaving their LinkedIn accounts. When keyword matches are detected, the realtor can jump into the conversation in real-time. For example, a realtor could enter keywords like “realtor,” “sell,” “house,” along with his or her town into Company Buzz and monitor local tweets from people who might be looking for a realtor.
6. Polls: The Polls app offers an easy way for realtors to interact with their own LinkedIn networks or to gather information from the entire LinkedIn network. Asking a question to all LinkedIn members offers an opportunity to get in front of a broader audience while gathering useful market research information at the same time.
7. SlideShare: For realtors who know how to make PowerPoint presentations to creatively offer tutorials, house tours, and so on, the SlideShare app is a fantastic way to share that content to the LinkedIn audience. The SlideShare app adds another multimedia experience to further engage the realtor’s audience.
LinkedIn Features
The most important thing that a realtor can do to stand out in the crowded LinkedIn community is to be active and use the many built-in features that LinkedIn provides to connect with a broader audience.
8. LinkedIn Groups: LinkedIn-savvy realtors know that when they join a LinkedIn Group, they can connect with every other member of that Group. Therefore, joining local LinkedIn Groups, and Groups that a realtor’s target audience belongs to, is a great way to communicate with key individuals that could ultimately lead to new business. It’s easy to search for Groups by keywords, location, and more, and often the realtors who have the most success on LinkedIn are members of many different Groups.
9. LinkedIn Answers: The LinkedIn Answers tool is where realtors can share their expertise with people who are actively looking for useful information and help. Realtors who take the time to search LinkedIn Answers to find relevant questions, and answer them well, can find new clients and generate referrals. Furthermore, realtors can ask questions in an effort to draw out potential clients. This is particularly effective for commercial realtors.
10. LinkedIn Ads: An affordable and effective way to advertise a realtor’s services is through LinkedIn Ads, which can be targeted by location and a variety of other criteria. Success with LinkedIn Ads comes with patience and testing. Realtors who find success advertising on LinkedIn are usually the ones that don’t give up after a single attempt.