There are a few reasons why businesses and individuals turn to LinkedIn. It’s one of the most trusted social networks, there’s less nonsense filling up the feed, and it’s the ideal place to go for business networking and relationship making.
But, are you making the most out of your LinkedIn efforts? What a lot of real estate agents don’t realize is that optimizing your profile the proper way can dramatically impact your efforts and make it much easier for you to find opportunities.
The key is that people can find you. If you haven’t updated your profile in a long time and you have a photo from 15 years ago, it’s likely that no one will bother reaching out because they know you won’t answer anyway.
The goal of optimizing your LinkedIn profile is to attract buyers and sellers to you so you don’t have to reach for them. This guide will help you get your profile on the right track.
Profile Picture
The mug you use is important because you want to use something updated, professional looking, but most importantly; clear. The headshot should be 400×400 pixels and make sure you’ve made it visible to everyone. You can do this in the “edit public profile and URL” section on the top right corner of your LinkedIn profile.
Ensuring that you make the profile photo visible to all will make it easier for people to identify you. Let’s say for example that you have a billboard on a popular street in your area. You’ll want the photo on that billboard to align with the one you have on your LinkedIn.
If you have a beard on the billboard and it’s been six years since you’ve had a beard, you might want to take a new photo for LinkedIn. Make it as easy as possible for people to find you.
Banner Image
The banner image that sits behind your profile picture is something that a lot of real estate agents have a hard time with because it requires you to get a little creative.
If we look at the above image, it fits nicely in place and the actual profile picture of the agent doesn’t cover any of the text. He also uses the banner as a chance to build trust in his audience by saying he is a “marketing-driven real estate agent.” That message may resonate with some people.
What you don’t want to do is use stock photos or something blank that everyone has seen before. That will make your profile look dated or unused. The goal is to look as professional as possible.
The Headline
Your headline is the most important piece of information you can put on your profile and there are a few different ways to go about it. First, you could keep it simple by inserting your title and the name of the agency you work for. Of course, some agencies may require you to say certain things on your social media but that’s not always the case.
This is straight and to the point. Plus, when someone types in realtor or the name of the agency in the LinkedIn search bar, you’re increasing your chances of someone finding you since you’re using keywords relevant to what you do.
You could also take a different approach and be more creative with your headline. Something along the lines of:
“Helping families of Philadelphia find the home of their dreams.” While that might attract attention and sound wonderful, you may not be getting all the keywords in your headline that you need to be found.
What you might want to do is save that additional information for the about section on your LinkedIn profile.
The most important thing you need to do with your headline is ensure that people can find you. So, if you’re a real estate agent operating in the North Philadelphia market for example. You might want to include that keyword in your headline. If someone is specifically looking on LinkedIn to connect with a realtor in that market, you’re increasing your chances of being the one that pops up.
About Section
While you may be limited to 120 characters or less in your headline, the same rule doesn’t apply to the about section. Now you have a chance to really showcase your expertise, talk about your accomplishments, and shine a light on what you have going on.
When real estate agents optimize their LinkedIn profile, they think the about section is all about explaining more about yourself when it’s actually about telling prospects what they’ll get.
Grab a pen and paper and write this down. Client’s don’t care about you. They don’t care that you went to UPenn and graduated with an MBA with a concentration in real estate business law. No one cares. All they care about is, “what are you going to do for me.”
Your about section should focus on what you do for your clients, how you’ve helped them, and what you plan to do for the person who is looking at you right now.
Good example:
In my 15 years of full-time real estate sales, I’ve worked with clients from all walks of life. Those who are entering the market for the first time are often nervous that everyone is out to get them. They’re afraid that purchasing real estate for the first time will result in someone taking advantage of them.
I’ve been working in the North Philadelphia real estate market for a while and I’ve assisted in hundreds of transactions. My only goal is to have a quick, simple, and satisfied transaction. Morals take centerstage with me and I pride myself in putting the needs of my clients first no matter what.
You can check my track record, ask others what they think but you’ll never know until you reach out. If you’re looking to buy real estate in North Philadelphia, reach out today and I’ll be glad to help.
If you check out the example above you’ll see that I did a few things there. First, I touched on the experience of the real estate agent. Second, I attempted to build trust by explaining the fact that morals are most important to me. Third, I included relevant keywords that someone may search for when looking to find a real estate agent in the North Philly area. One of the keys to being a successful real estate agent is understanding how to increase your visibility on social media.
You need to think of your LinkedIn profile as a custom website where people will find you and contact you because that’s what it is. While it is primarily for B2B contact, plenty of those business owners are consumers as well and will feel much more confident discussing things with you on that platform.
Workplace Information
Keep in mind that as real estate agents, we’re all competing against each other even within our agency. As a result, it’s important that we are as visible as possible in the event that someone searches for the agency as a whole.
Take a company like Century 21 for example. When we type that into LinkedIn we get a variety of results because it’s a huge agency with offices all over the world. If you work for a smaller agency, you may be able to increase your chances of being towards the top by having correct workplace information on your profile.
If we type Christian Saunders Real Estate into the search bar you’ll see that more than just the broker comes up, there are realtors on there as well. Chances are, they have the best optimized profile and that’s why their profile displays first.
Skills and Endorsements
The last thing you’ll want to look at are your skills and endorsements. These are at the bottom of your profile and likely have an impact on where you rank in the LinkedIn search as well. In addition to algorithm-related factors they’re also a big trust symbol. When someone comes to your profile and sees that you have 50+ endorsements with first time home buyers, that sure looks great to a prospective first time buyer. They may now feel motivated to hire you over someone else who may not have that.
Keep in mind that these endorsements can also count as keywords. If someone is specifically searching for an agent within a company that specializes in first time home buyers and you have a bunch of endorsements, you’re giving yourself an advantage. This is a big reason why it pays to specialize and be known for something in your local market.
Final Thoughts
One of the most important pieces of information I can leave you with is to maintain congruence across all platforms. I talked about this a little with your profile picture. You need to ensure that when someone wants to find you, they can find you easily and you look the same across all platforms.
When someone finds you on a billboard and they want to find you later on social media, make sure you look the same, dress the same, and have similar brand colors so they can recognize and associate you with those colors.
If you do all of this you’ll be sure to pull a lot more buyers and sellers rather than having to push all the time.
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