As a real estate professional, chances are you have heard of LinkedIn a number of times over the years. You most likely already have a LinkedIn profile, but are probably wondering how to get the most out of it. Over the next few weeks I’ll be presenting a series of articles that I hope will give you a better understanding of LinkedIn and how you can use it to your best benefit.
What is LinkedIn? – Over the past decade, in which the social media network has been active, it has amassed over 350 million users, worldwide, 107 million US users and 187 million unique monthly visitors and is worth an estimated Market Cap of $27 billion.
Since it primarily serves business professionals, you may have had your interest piqued in what the network can offer you.
LinkedIn is a social networking site with a slightly different approach than the vast majority – being that it is heavily focused on business-oriented relationships. Therefore, you can easily forge new connections with consumers, colleagues, and other companies.
While LinkedIn is not as popular as Facebook and Twitter (generally speaking), it is the preferred choice for executives and like-minded business professionals.
It’s a place to generate new leads, as well as new business opportunities and partnerships. In addition, you can stay up to date on the latest industry news, as well as share your own news and insights with your followers.
LinkedIn users are signing up at a rate of two new members per second; so it’s steadily gaining popularity as people start to realize just how important it is today.
Serving as an online rolodex, LinkedIn offers some highly attractive features that you can use to expand your business and gain exposure for your brand:
All-In-One Access – When it comes to maintaining relationships with distributors, promotional companies, suppliers, and other organizations, LinkedIn provides a platform where they are all immediately accessible from your own profile.
Not only that, but it’s a place that will allow you to build a highly-targeted audience that is interested in your brand, products, and services.
Company Pages & Showcase Pages – A Company Page is a page that allows people to learn more about your business. You can introduce your company, engage with followers, and share great content and industry news.
A Showcase Page is a page off of a Company Page that focuses on a particular area or niche of your business. In other words, it allows you to drill down to certain buyer personas to keep the content extremely targeted.
Competition Research – If both you and your competitors use LinkedIn, you can casually and easily compare your business model and relationships with theirs, at the click of a button.
Using LinkedIn is just as simple as using any other social media site. You need only an attractive profile to explain your business and the connections you would like to make, import whatever existing connections you already work with, and begin to expand.
Once you connected with others through a series of invitations (both those received and sent by you), you have what are called first-level connections. The second level relationships available through the site are determined by degrees: a friend of a friend represents, for instance, a second degree connection.
After you have established your network of primary connections, you can begin the process of establishing secondary and tertiary connections that can bring you additional business opportunities.
Next week: What to Do: Getting Started On LinkedIn
