LinkedIn is an under-utilized platform when it comes to generating relevant traffic and delivering leads. Many real estate professionals are tapping into the potential of Facebook and Instagram, but consider LinkedIn to be a website that’s primarily for people looking for a new job. This is a mistake in the eyes of most digital marketing experts.
The approach to marketing on Linkedin is much less relaxed, more formal and well, business-like. Before you begin to market your business on Linkedin, make sure your profile is up to scratch with a professional photograph. It can also be effective to add a ‘smart click to call’ URL to your profile information so that other Linkedin users can request a phone call. Consider using a phone answering service like Moneypenny if you want to take calls around the clock. It’s one thing generating leads with LinkedIn – you must also capture and convert them!
Why Focus on LinkedIn?
After a large update to their algorithm in October 2018, LinkedIn has now become more of a social engagement platform. LinkedIn is also looking to increase the number of active users on the platform to garner a greater percentage of market share. This is great news for real estate agents, as this means that even without paying for advertising, you can get your posts, including images and videos, in front of a large number of people. Many marketing experts claim for example, that a post on LinkedIn is likely to get 5 to 10 times the reach of a post on Facebook (with the same number of connections). Every week there are 9 billion impressions on the LinkedIn newsfeed and only 3 million people sharing updates. Meaning there is a lot of potential and not a huge amount of competition. This is something that real estate agents should be looking to take advantage of now, as the opportunities available will not be around forever.
Engagement is Key
For your posts on LinkedIn to reach a significant number of users (and prospects), engagement is key. Engagement will slow down the ‘decay’ of a post – I.e. the amount of time it is shown on people’s newsfeeds and increase the reach of a post. The great thing about LinkedIn at the moment is that if a connection comments or interacts with one of your posts, it will show to some if not all of his or her connections, even if they are not connected with you or your business. Therefore, you don’t need a huge following to take advantage of this network.
LinkedIn have an article which outlines how their algorithm works, and they talk about ‘velocity’ – I.e. the quicker your post gets engagement, the more people it will get shown to.
LinkedIn Wants to be a Content Network
Whilst it is sometimes a good idea to post links back to your blog or to post YouTube videos on LinkedIn, they will dramatically limit the reach of your post if you do this. Just like Facebook, LinkedIn wants to be its own content channel and wants to keep people on their platform. If a post gives an incentive for users to leave their website, the post will most likely reach a relatively small amount of people.
Use LinkedIn as a hosting platform, rather than a promotional platform. Digital marketing expert Ryan Stewart suggests using LinkedIn as a microblogging platform – like a long-form Twitter. Another tip from this video is to make sure that your profile is set to “public” otherwise the reach of any posts will be limited to your connections.
What to Post on LinkedIn
Whilst articles are great for evergreen content – I.e. content that will continue to be relevant and get views over time, the number of views they tend to get in a given month is limited compared to the normal posts or status updates. Articles can also rank well in organic search. Because it leverages the ranking power of LinkedIn, your post could potentially go straight to the first page of search engine results for some of the more specific search terms and phrases.
Whilst articles are great, for quick wins, it’s best to stick to posting updates. To get the most out of your updates, be sure to use ‘hooks’ within the copy. This will hopefully get people to stop and take notice, rather than to keep scrolling. You will get a few lines before LinkedIn adds the eclipse/continuation marks to your post, requiring people to expand the update to see more – with this in mind, the hook should be near the top of your post.
- Questions
Questions can be a great format for a LinkedIn post, as they invite people to engage and comment, which is exactly what you want.
So for real estate, you may want to post a question such as:
“Is your office catered for social distancing? If so what changes were implemented?”
- Points of View
Industry-specific points of view can also drive a lot of engagement.
For example:
“The commercial real estate industry will recover in 2021 thanks to the number of new startups that require an office or retail space to operate”
- Data
Data is great for blog posts, as it is the most likely form of content to gain backlinks. It’s also great for LinkedIn posts as it’s often interesting and useful for others.
For example:
“18% of retailers in the US are behind on their lease payments”
- Videos
Posting videos, by uploading them directly to LinkedIn is a great idea if you want to reach lots of users. Videos are relatively rare on LinkedIn, so it’s easier to cut through the noise of all the updates. Adding a transcript to the video itself, so that people can see what’s going on without adding volume to the video is also a good idea if you want to get more engagement. Make sure that videos are informative, educational, helpful or entertaining. Don’t just promote yourself constantly.
Other great types of content include – industry news with your opinion, relatable stories, mistakes that you’ve made, success stories, a giveaway – for example, upload a pdf full of tips for people looking for commercial properties, posts that tag other users and other companies – e.g. “Top 5 Marketing Agencies” and tag the 5 agencies.
Promote Your Status-Update
If your profile is set to public, then you can copy the URL of your status update and promote it on Twitter and via your email list. Like we mentioned earlier, some social media platforms will limit the reach of your post however if it contains a link to an external website. Having said that, the more engagement you can get quickly, the better your post will perform – so it’s worth posting.
A final tip is to search by location and comment on any relevant posts that you find. This can help get your name out there in the local community.
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