LinkedIn for Real Estate Agents – Learn how top Realtors use LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter to help grow their online presence and increase their website traffic.
LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter for real estate agents — let’s go! We’ve already talked about the two dominant social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram. Facebook is by far the most dominant because the most people are on it. And, it tends to be an older demographic, and older people tend to be the people with the most money, and therefore the people that are more likely to be homeowners.
As Realtors, it’s not your job to look for the most “hip” or “cool” social media channels, but rather the most popular social media platforms for your target demographic. This of course changes over time, but at the time of writing this, Facebook and Instagram are the most important social media platforms for you to be active on.
The next three most popular social media channels for driving traffic, increasing your market share, and growing your branding, are, in order of importance, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Let’s dive into how you should use Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter for real estate agents.
VIDEO: LinkedIn for Real Estate Agents
Content Marketing
Blogs are a powerful tool to use on your real estate website. Your blog needs to be hyper local, brand specific, crafted for good search engine optimization (SEO,) and full of value to readers. Once you have all this great content available on your website’s blog, you need to find good channels for distributing that content.
Places to share your blog/content
By putting your content on each of these platforms, you will catch different audiences. You will start to notice which members of your sphere of influence (SOI) are most active on various platforms. Different people are active on different platforms for different reasons. Each social media platform offers its own unique vibe and purpose.
Pinterest for real estate agents
You may not have considered using Pinterest in your real estate business. In fact, you may have been downright surprised that this is the social media platform we listed first after Facebook and Instagram. But the fact is, a lot of people are on Pinterest.
Pinterest is user friendly, and people go there for recipes, decorating tips, DIY instructions, home improvement ideas, etc. Pinterest is designed for sharing all kinds of content. So … you need to be there!
Pinterest post ideas and tips
- Blogs from your website
- Graphics that are real estate related tips
- Infographics on the market
- DIY tips
- Favorite recipes
- Local tips
- Home/gardening tips
- Home decor ideas
- Listings sorted by neighborhood
Why Pinterest for real estate agents
- Get name recognition
- Increase brand awareness
- Direct traffic to your website with each post
- Audience is anyone in their 20s through 40s, mostly (wealth-building age range)
- Great organic reach
- Not highly saturated with real estate agents
Start posting to Pinterest regularly. Make this part of your marketing plan start out slow and easy. Maybe your goal is to post once a week to Pinterest. Remember, you can simply repurpose the content you are already posting to other social media channels. You can easily create well-branded thumbnails for Pinterest in Canva.
Images are everything
Now, this doesn’t only pertain to Pinterest. It’s true across the board on social media. When you use images in your blog, on your website, or in your content marketing on social media, you must use good keywords for SEO purposes.
Don’t believe me? Go to Google. Type in “hardwood flooring options near me.” When Google’s search results come up, click on the “Images” tab. This is what a lot of people do when they are searching for something — in this case, if you were looking for the type of flooring you like to show your contractor, you might save the image to your computer. Or you might pin it to your Pinterest board for your remodeling project. Either way, whoever posted that image to their website or blog or social site is now getting attention from Google. And this increases the SEO on that website. Google notices. So if the hardwood flooring photo that you like belongs to a local flooring company, they are benefitting, since they used the proper keywords to come up in you Google search.
You want this to be your image showing up in someone’s search!
The lesson here? Make sure all of the images you use (on your website, blog, social media posts) are properly named. Use good keywords that provide hyper-local information so that if someone is searching for a listing in neighborhoods you serve, you want your listing to come up. If you title your images the default image title, you will never come up in these image searches. It’s a huge missed opportunity for you.
If you want viewers to interact with your content, create compelling images. The trend in this day and age is away from long bodies of text and toward images and infographics with text used sparingly.
LinkedIn for real estate agents
If Pinterest is a Zoom meeting, LinkedIn is a boardroom meeting. LinkedIn for real estate agents is a business-oriented social media platform that you can use to demonstrate your prowess and professionalism. You can upload your bio, your resume, and your work history. People can see your work experience and judge your background.
You need to look good here. This is the one place that your resume should be publicly published. If you aren’t on LinkedIn, someone who is on LinkedIn may not think you are a professional and move on to a Realtor that is.
It is important to not only post to LinkedIn but to also interact with other people’s posts. Much like Facebook, these interactions are very important. You can “like” a post or comment, or even share. Same concept as Facebook.
LinkedIn post ideas and tips
- Blogs from your website
- Other industry-related blogs you want to share
- Local recommendations and community stories
- Listings
- Job posts
Why LinkedIn for real estate agents
- It makes you look professional
- Great place to show off your background
- A more serious, business-oriented platform
- Great for building business-to-business relationships
- Reconnect with people from your professional past (grows your SOI)
- Great for referrals
- Join groups in your target demographic
- Job posts can include aptitude tests that LinkedIn provides, and easy access to applicant job history and background
- Ask clients for testimonials on your page
Twitter for real estate agents
If Pinterest was a Zoom meeting and LinkedIn was a boardroom meeting, Twitter is a cocktail party. It’s just a bunch of short conversations that range in topic and professionalism. It really is all over the place. Twitter is last on this list because it isn’t the most “serious” of social media platforms. In recent years, it has become more about what crazy things celebrities and politicians are saying and less about sharing valuable information.
When it comes to Twitter, quantity matters. The more you post, the better. Anything you can post to any of the other platforms can also be posted here. Stay engaging by putting a lot out there. It’s good to be on Twitter because there are a lot of people on Twitter, and you look tech savvy if you’re here.
I wouldn’t worry about posting fresh content to Twitter. Recycle content from your other platforms to post to Twitter. It is the least important social media platform that we’ve discussed in this blog.
Twitter post ideas and tips
- Anything and everything that you’ve already posted to your other channels
- Stay out of any divisive conversation (this is true about all social media platforms but may be the hardest to do on Twitter)
- Use images to make your posts stand out
- Use hashtags to appear in more search results
Why Twitter for real estate agents
- It makes you look tech savvy and present on social media
- May as well use it to increase your name recognition
- Engage with other people in a professional manner
- Direct users to your website and increase your SEO
Remember the end goal
No matter what social media channels you use, your website remains the center of your spider web. Create valuable content on your website blog to post to your social media channels and draw visitors into your web.
The goal is to produce content that gets your social media followers to click and end up on your website. This is where the magic happens. Being present on these social media channels will increase your SEO and generate better organic traffic to your website. And, it will make you look tech savvy and show off your social media marketing skills.
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