LinkedIn may be less flashy than other social media platforms, but it’s one of the most overlooked channels for real estate lead generation. LinkedIn is the ideal place show that you’re knowledgeable and relevant in a loud, crowded industry.
Making LinkedIn work for you is really straightforward. We’ll show you how with a little time, a lot of consistency, and a clear objective, there is no better place to establish yourself as an industry expert. With a little dedication, LinkedIn can be an excellent tool to build your lead pipeline, establish your brand, and expand your sphere of influence (SOI).
1. Start by Building Your Profile
No matter how a potential client finds you—whether it’s through your website, Instagram account, or by word of mouth—chances are they’re also going to check out your LinkedIn profile. Your profile should have one main goal: show the world that you know what you’re doing.
Start the process by taking stock of your profile. Is it up to date? Is your photo in line with our headshot recommendations? We all know that it’s your online resume, so it’s a chance to brag about yourself. Make sure that all your relevant professional experience is accurate. Include all awards, accomplishments, accreditations, designations, and specialties.
You can also use LinkedIn to show that you’re multidimensional. If you volunteer or sit on a nonprofit board, include that in the Volunteer Experience section. LinkedIn’s own data shows that member profiles that showcase volunteer experience see as many as 6x more views than those that don’t. If you are a champion badminton player, include it!
Here are a few profile examples that show off designations, specialties, and accomplishments. Each profile really stands out and highlights what makes that agent special.
If you don’t have the time to make LinkedIn lead generation work for you, get relevant local content automatically posted to your social media accounts with Artur’In. For a fraction of the cost of a marketing manager, Artur’In will curate, create, and post content to your social media to engage any audience you want.
2. Make Connections To Generate Leads
If you’re like most agents, your connections are mostly … other agents. While it’s important to have relationships with fellow agents, when it comes to LinkedIn lead generation, you’re going to need to expand your network.
Networking thoughtfully is a crucial part of your lead generation activity. Spend some time establishing connections with people you know, and then start looking for new and valuable relationships. Connecting to community influencers is key to LinkedIn lead generation. Think of nonprofit boards, local thought-leaders, C-suite executives, and other movers and shakers who will open doors for you.
By design, LinkedIn does an excellent job of “recommending” new contacts for you—it can see who you’re connecting with and even who is visiting your profile (and so can you!). We caution you not to “request bomb” people, but instead, spend some time every couple of days strategically networking.
📌 Pro Tip
If you have a mutual connection with someone, reach out and request an introduction. A personal touch will help you stay connected to your SOI & may result in more rapid response times.
LinkedIn Networking Etiquette
If you don’t know someone but want to connect, we encourage you to use a little LinkedIn etiquette and introduce yourself. Best practice is to send a personal message with your request to connect on LinkedIn.
If you want to really show some respect or stand out, opt to send an InMail (essentially email that has a better response rate than a connection request), available with LinkedIn Premium.
19 Best Real Estate Email Templates & Scripts for 2022
3. Join Relevant Groups to Market Effectively
Joining a diverse range of groups will not only grow your network and generate leads, it will help you market more effectively to those leads.
Groups are an innovative way to get to know different segments of your target market. Through this networking, you’re gaining valuable insight into their pain points. Joining and being active in groups allows you to finely craft your value proposition so that you’re addressing the needs of your target audience.
For example, let’s say you have just moved to a new town and are building your network. Consider what kinds of groups might be interesting and helpful. A young professionals group, or even more specifically, professionals in finance, could be a good fit. Or maybe people who love dogs, jogging, or startups. Whatever your niche, chances are there’s a LinkedIn group for it.
4. Engage Meaningfully With Your Network
As with almost every social media platform, engagement only works if it’s a two-way street. Your success with LinkedIn depends on your ability to give back to your LinkedIn community. Sharing and liking posts isn’t enough.
The good news is that LinkedIn sets you up for success. It alerts you when connections have professional news, milestones, and anniversaries so you can reach out and congratulate them. Celebrating their accomplishments goes a long way to showing exactly what kind of professional you are.
You can also give back by taking a few minutes to write recommendations. The whole I’ll-write-you-one-you-write-me-one only gets you so far. Think what it would mean to your connections to see your kind words out of the blue!
Remember, though, you really want to be authentic. Nothing is worse than fake attempts at thoughtfulness—people can sense that a mile away.
5. Like + Share Relevant Content Thoughtfully
When leads look at your profile, they want to see that you’re the person others depend on for helpful, relevant, compelling content in your area of expertise. Ideally, you’re the one crafting the content, but I’ll get to that in a minute. For now, as you’re building your presence on LinkedIn, focus on posting and sharing articles and videos that will interest and inform your audience.
Because LinkedIn is unapologetically a professional platform, you get to write, post, share, like, recommend, and network unabashedly and not annoy your friends who just want cute puppy content.
Be judicious and selective in what you post, and make sure that it’s high-quality content. What you decide to share is an extension of your brand, so make sure it’s from a source you trust and respect. Set a goal to post regularly and be sure to engage with other relevant posts.
Remember, almost everyone has some degree of interest in real estate, especially with today’s fast-paced market. I bet you can find posts to share about real estate and real estate adjacent topics that will appeal to just about any audience, not just your fellow agents.
Stats about your market’s real estate activity—available from your board of realtors—supply topics for discussion on LinkedIn (including average home selling prices, current inventory, average days on market, etc.). How to stage a home for a quick sale, how to compete in a market flush with cash buyers, when interest rates are expected to rise—these are all great topics to share and discuss with your LinkedIn audience.
6. Create Content Around Trending Topics
Sharing and posting is a good start, but if you create your own article content, you will truly reap the LinkedIn rewards. Success almost always follows a mathematical model called the Pareto principle: the idea that the vast majority of the action is done by a very small number of people.
As you might imagine, the vast majority of people on LinkedIn never post anything, which means that if you regularly post content and use hashtags, you are much more likely to have people see and engage with your content.
This is especially true because users have to manually turn off notifications (and most people aren’t taking the time to do that), so your posts are getting seen by hundreds, maybe even thousands of users who didn’t even know they were interested in what you’re writing about.
Plus, LinkedIn clearly lays out what’s trending and liked and shared in the LinkedIn News feed. Pick a topic and write about what you know: real estate.
Take a look at this LinkedIn News Feed. While at first nothing looks real estate-related, you could easily tie these topics to real estate and craft a post that’s timely and relevant to your audience.
For example, the mass exodus from the workplace in 2021, dubbed “the Great Resignation,” is perfect fodder for a post about who’s buying new homes. The trends toward remote work and self-employment have popularized entirely new real estate markets.
The popularity of Peloton bikes in recent years might signal that homebuyers are looking for added exercise space when shopping for a new home. New grads commanding massive starting salaries create a whole new demographic to target with real estate marketing. And “finding your why” is a topic that could apply to pretty much anything for anyone—have fun with that one! Here’s a short informational post (and bonus points for the video content) from Luxury Presence that’s timely and engaging:
In the end, all of this work is in pursuit of your goal to convey your expertise and generate leads who see and appreciate your industry authority. While writing articles is wonderful, creating video content (as in the example above) might be even better.
📌 Pro Tip
Consider producing and sharing a video that showcases a neighborhood, explains 1031 Exchanges, or even a 30-second video to introduce yourself and your business.
7. Upgrade to LinkedIn Premium
A LinkedIn member who checks out your profile might be an excellent lead. One of the most frustrating things about LinkedIn is that it tells you how many people viewed your profile, but not always who viewed your profile. If they are searching LinkedIn in private mode, you may receive a cryptic notification like “A CEO viewed your profile.” Knowing who they are makes it possible to follow up and turn that warm lead into a hot one.
That’s where LinkedIn Premium comes in. It lets you see who has viewed your profile in the past 90 days, but still lets you browse in private mode. Warburg Manhattan’s Gill Chowdhury scored a $3 million dollar deal from LinkedIn:
“I recently noticed that a prominent businessman whose attention I was seeking looked at my LinkedIn profile. This was a great sign. From there, I was able to focus more on this individual to the point where I was hired to sell his $3 million-plus property without ever meeting him, and with no phone interview. My messages were powerful enough to convince him, and LinkedIn was a key part in that opportunity coming to fruition.”
InMail Messages
The only way you can message someone who is not in your network is by signing up for LinkedIn Premium and using their InMail platform.
LinkedIn promises that InMail is 2.6x more effective than cold emails or calls, but it’s not cheap. You only get five InMails per month with the base subscription at $29.99 per month. An upgrade to “Sales Navigator” (Core $79.99 per month, Advanced $125 per month, and Advanced + (pricing upon request) only gets you 50 per month.
LinkedIn Premium also includes unlimited people searches, competitor data, industry news, analytics, and more. It could be a really powerful addition to your marketing strategy, but only if you’re really going to put your time into LinkedIn. Otherwise, it’s probably not worth the investment.
8. Buy Ads & Sponsored Posts
Of course, if you’re pressed for time or don’t want to learn yet another social media platform, LinkedIn also offers a ton of paid promotion options that you can use for lead generation. You can build audiences and create sponsored content, messaging ads, or text ads for LinkedIn lead generation, site visits, or what LinkedIn was designed for—recruiting agents.
Just be aware that since LinkedIn is a business-to-business (B2B) channel, advertising on LinkedIn is not cheap. If you want to try your hand at advertising on LinkedIn, here’s a quick rundown of what they offer:
Sponsored Content
Sponsored content on LinkedIn works pretty much the way it does on Facebook. You write an insightful and timely blog post, then pay LinkedIn to promote it for you. As on Facebook, there are no set fees for sponsored content on LinkedIn. Instead, you bid on placement with other advertisers. You have options to place single image ads, video, carousel images, and event ads.
LinkedIn Messaging Ads
Taking another page from Facebook’s Messenger advertising options, LinkedIn also offers advertising in private messages. You can create messaging ads for brand awareness, recruiting, or lead generation, and can even spark engagement with conversation ads.
Text Ads
Of course, text ads are the bread and butter of LinkedIn’s advertising options. Unlike sponsored posts that only show up in someone’s feed, text ads appear on the right-hand side of the homepage, giving your ads much more reach.
By the way, if you’re thinking about creating content for LinkedIn or any social media platform, LabCoat Agents Marketing Center (LCA) is a must. It’s the first easy-to-use design app created specifically for real estate agents and teams. It’s like Canva on steroids. Essential for any agent who wants to look stellar online in 2022. You can explore LCA’s options with a free seven-day trial.
9. Be Consistent for Optimal LinkedIn Lead Generation
We’ve laid out the steps to make yourself stand out in a crowded space. LinkedIn gives you all of the tools you’ll need to be successful in expanding your audience, establishing your authority and brand, and networking strategically. LinkedIn lead generation happens organically when you’re following these steps regularly. Consistency is absolutely essential to making LinkedIn lead gen work for you.
Devote 20 minutes a day to:
- Connect with former and existing clients, friends, and colleagues
- Strategize your target leads
- Share, like, and engage with relevant content
- Join groups
- Offer congratulations to someone celebrating a professional milestone or success
- Write a recommendation
- Write a post on a trending topic
- Create video content (start with elevator pitch introduction)
10. Use Hashtags To Reach Your Audience
Hashtags are essential to getting your content seen by relevant audiences. As with any social media platform, hashtags help a relevant audience see what you’re writing and sharing.
Here, Chris Linsell has added hashtags to his profile, and D.J. Paris includes hashtags in his post, promoting it across the relevant channels.
And here, Becky Brooks, digital marketing manager at The Close, shows us how to use hashtags to ensure an article is targeting the right audience.
Over to You
Are you a real estate agent who uses LinkedIn to generate leads? We would love to hear your social media tips or questions in the comments below.
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