LinkedIn is the most grown-up social media site out there, and getting familiar with everything it offers can help you make the professional connections you need to generate real estate leads. Take a look at some awesome LinkedIn features you may be missing:
Automatically sync your blog with your profile. LinkedIn has quite a few great apps available. The most important may be the WordPress app, which gives you the ability to automatically push your blog posts to your profile. Just go to “More” >> “Your Applications” and click “Get More Applications” if you don’t see WordPress. Then, all you have to do is enter the URL of your blog and choose where you want the posts to show up. Done! Then, take a minute to explore LinkedIn’s Application Directory to see if there are any other helpful tools for you.
Tweets No Longer Go to Your Profile. LinkedIn users can no longer automatically sync their tweets to publish on LinkedIn. If you want to post an update on LinkedIn, you have to do so directly. This takes away the automation that can make our lives easier, but it also prevents you from being inundated with non-business-related updates. Oh well.
LinkedIn Today Cultivates Professional News Specifically for You. You probably receive LinkedIn Today in your email inbox. If not, the link is right on your homepage when you log in. LinkedIn Today aggregates the top headlines and stories related to your profession and what your connections share. You can tweak the stories to get more content for your specific interests. This is a great way to find relevant blog articles!
Make Contact Without Making a Connection. The direct way to get in touch with someone on LinkedIn is by first making a connection. But if the person with whom you are trying to connect doesn’t hit the “accept” button, a workaround is to join a common group and then send a message. As members of the same group, you can send messages to one another even if you are not directly connected.
Browse Privately. LinkedIn shows others that you’ve viewed their profile under Who’s Viewed Your Profile. This is generally fine, but sometimes you won’t want people to know when you’re browsing their profiles, for example, when you are researching a client or a company. To temporarily change this, go to Settings >> Privacy Controls >> Select what others see when you’ve viewed their profile and pick one of the bottom two options. Switch it back to the default when you are done with your stealth browsing.
Export Your Connections. You can really mine your connections by taking them out of LinkedIn and adding them to your preferred address book. Click on Contacts >> Connections. Click on “Export connections” located on the bottom right of the contact box. Then, in the next page choose your preferred address book format.
Share Tools. If you spend much time on Facebook, LinkedIn’s share tools look familiar. Think an article about a new, faster iPhone that a connection shared looks interesting? Use the tools to “Like” it or leave a comment. Or use the “Share” button to forward it to one of your LinkedIn Groups or via email to people in or outside the network.
Facebook is constantly changing, and has tons of little nuances that make great tools for the advanced user. But who has the time or inclination to figure out every little thing about Facebook? Here are the basics you need to make sure you’re using Facebook to its full potential, get noticed, and gain real estate leads.
- Create a Facebook Business Page. This should be a no-brainer by now, for many reasons. Use your business page to promote your business, and keep your personal life separate and private. You don’t want to risk getting your personal page shut down for posting business-related content. Business pages also have some great bells and whistles that personal pages don’t have, which I’ll explain in #7. If the idea of creating a Facebook Business page makes you faint, contact HubConnected. We can make sure everything is set up and working properly, and even build you great custom pages.
- Convert Your Contacts Into “Likes”. People need to “Like” your business page in order to see your posts in their newsfeed. Facebook offers great tools to help you do this with the “Build Audience” link. Follow Facebook’s steps to Invite Your Email Contacts and Invite Your Friends.
- Interact with Your Clients on Social Media Sites. After you get “Likes”, continue to engage your leads! Like their updates, say Happy Birthday, and comment on their updates if you have something to say. You could even share appropriate content with them, like a link to a relevant article, if you really made a connection with them. You’ll build trust and likeability with potential clients.
- Share Your Business Page on Facebook. This option is a quick way to create a status update about your page. Using your PERSONAL PROFILE, create a status update with a link to your new business page. Use the dropdown box labeled “on your own wall” to see your options for sharing your page, like in a group or with a specific friend. Make sure you tell people to “Like” the page!
- Network Across Platforms. Make sure you link to your Facebook page (with the note to “like” the page) across all of your business platforms: your website, your blog, your email signature, Twitter, Google, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc., etc., etc. Don’t forget to verbally tell your clients to find and “Like” you on Facebook!
- Like Other Relevant Business Pages. Using Facebook as your Business Profile, take a few minutes on Facebook to like people or businesses that interest you, especially in the real estate industry. Keep your choices professional. Just use Facebook’s search feature to find and like other business pages. By doing this, you may gain some likes back! Additionally, these people will show up in your newsfeed. I’ll explain why this is important in the next step.
- Post to Facebook Regularly. Listings, open houses, real estate news… there are tons of ideas for relevant posts. Post away, up to three times per day. If you don’t have any ideas, take advantage of those people and businesses you followed in the previous step. Do they have a great post? Share it with some positive comments. Everyone wants to have their content shared these days! Mention them in the share, and you may even get a like back.
- Star and Pin Important Your Posts. These are the fun bells and whistles you get with a business page. Hover over any story on your Timeline, and you’ll see a star icon and a pencil icon. The star highlights a post, which makes the post the full width of the page. Use this to make important content more prominent on your timeline. This is also a great opportunity to display visual content: you can include a big picture. The pencil icon allows you to “pin” a post. This means that it will stay at the very top of your page for up to 7 days and won’t get pushed down the timeline by subsequent posts. This is the best place to feature anything that you want people to take action on: promotions, deals, events, etc. The pencil icon also allows you to change the date of a post, hide it from the timeline, or delete it completely.
The more personal attention you can give to Facebook, the better. If all of this sounds like gobbledygook to you, HubConnected can do all of the work for you. HubConnected will also integrate all of your social media platforms, and automatically send your new blog posts to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Jacqueline
