With Jane Jackson, Career Coach and Author
Top Sydney Career Coach and author of the bestselling book, Navigating Career Crossroads, Jane Jackson believes LinkedIn is a great vehicle for real estate agents to promote themselves, create job opportunities and leads.
With more than 400 million members, Jane has helped many clients to create, maximise and optimise their LinkedIn profiles. Jane believes we should actively use the world’s largest professional networking platform to engage with our audiences and potential market to build our brands. She says, “Whatever you put onto LinkedIn needs to be relevant to your professional audience so that you're adding value to their lives, you're educating them on what you can do, and also educating them on what they might be interested in your area of your expertise."
LinkedIn however is not an instrument for continual selfpromotion. In fact Jane says, “LinkedIn is not there for you to say, ‘Buy from me, buy from me, buy from me all the time’.
Its purpose is to educate your audience that you know what you're talking about and you're providing them value and interest when it comes to the content that you're sharing."
Jane says, "Have your name up there and above your name, have a very, very professional profile photo. It must be of your head and shoulders, so the audience can see your eyes. Make good eye contact with the camera, and have a nice warm smile, so people can feel the warmth coming from you."
Jane says, "The tag line underneath your name is very important. For real estate agents put your job title, your area of expertise and the specific area you focus on when you're actually selling your properties." She advises agents to identify their job title and where in the industry they work such as investment, property, residential or commercial sectors.
There is an important section called Summary - which you must add yourself. It comes just underneath your tag line and where you're located. Jane says, “In that summary, many people just copy and paste their resume summary basically in there, so it's a bit dry and it's written in third person."
She recommends, "Think about who you want to attract and then write as if you're writing to that one person. It will either be your hiring manager, your target audience, someone who is struggling to find a property and they want a really good real estate agent perhaps. Tailor it so it's talking to them."
Further, Jane suggest that you be conversational and establish credibility – use some statistics, a couple of testimonials, and add a bullet point list of key words of your skills which could be negotiating or auctions.
Jane says, "At the end of the summary, put in your email address and your contact phone number, maybe even a social media handle if you've got a Facebook page or a Twitter account. Put that there too, so that even without being connected to you, people can pick up the phone right away or email you right away without having to pay for an in-mail, which is what LinkedIn makes you do if you're not, in any way shape or form, connected to that individual."
Jane believes you can add photos of recent sales to your Linkedin profile but make sure you tweak it so you are providing hooks and interest to your audience. Remember you are not in the business of telling your audience that you are great – you are in the business of building your brand and you can use LinkedIn to show why and how you are good at the trade and the market you work in. Use Linkedin to expose the skill set you use to generate sales.
Jane says, “Maybe you've just sold an amazing property and there's a beautiful photo there and your target audience is a very expensive suburb. When you're actually posting your article, have a picture of that lovely home and have a good headline - it could be, 'Top Sale of the Week'. Always have a little bit of a comment as to why you're sharing it. It could be, you maybe met a really tough negotiation, a great result all around and then people might think, okay, that's a beautiful photo, what is it? Let me just have a look because perhaps, if you're lucky, someone else is looking for a similar type of property, and you'll be able to tell people that, ‘I actually specialise in prestige properties’, and then, that helps to build your brand as well."
When it comes to posting, Jane recommends once a day, or twice at the most. She says, “On Twitter, you can just post unlimited Tweets, but on LinkedIn, one a day or if you really don't even like posting, once a week is fine. The feed tends to disappear, a bit like Facebook - once you've posted something it'll disappear and people keep scrolling down. If you do post once a day then at least you've got a chance at being noticed and anything that you post, make sure it's always to do with your area of expertise. It might be, ‘Sales Techniques’, or 'Negotiation’ or ‘How to value a property’ or ‘Top tips when it comes to choosing the right property for your family’. Those are the sorts of articles that would capture the attention of someone who might be thinking about buying a house or selling a house at some stage."
Posting 20 times a day on LinkedIn, so that you really clutter up someone's feed. A no-no.
Bad mouthing another company is not good either. Always be positive, even about your own competition.
Continual self promotion. The general rule of thumb would be to post three or four articles of interest from other sites that might be educational and then, have one soft sell of yourself and then, one hard sell post.
If you would like more information, please contact: jane@janejacksoncoach.com or visit her website janejacksoncoach.com