7 Smart Ways To Find Real Estate Leads On LinkedIn In 2023

With all the new social media platforms out there, you might be wondering if LinkedIn for real estate is worth including in your lead generation strategy. Is it really worth investing your time in this platform when sites like Facebook and Instagram continue to be so popular?

In this post, I’ll cover why every real estate professional should definitely be using LinkedIn for real estate, and I’ll also share seven strategies you can use right now to start generating leads.

Why You Should Use LinkedIn For Real Estate

Higher Rates of Engagement

As a strictly business-related social media platform, LinkedIn provides some unique advantages for lead generation compared to popular sites like Facebook and Instagram.

While sites like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok for real estate agents can all be used to generate real estate leads successfully, users of these platforms tend to be in a different state of mind than those on LinkedIn. Typically, people go on these platforms when they want to relax, watch entertaining content, and connect with family and friends.

On the other hand, users on LinkedIn are in a more business-oriented state of mind. For this reason, your content and paid ads will be more effective here than on other platforms. People will be more receptive to your lead generation strategies and more likely to reach out to you to ask about your services.

When you advertise or post content on Facebook, Instagram, or another popular social media site, you are directly competing with this more lighthearted, entertaining content.

Especially when it comes to content creation, there is a higher likelihood that your content will get drowned out among the photos of peoples’ pets, updates from family and friends, and funny videos. It takes time to create content, so when it gets no engagement, then it can feel like you went through all that effort for nothing.

On LinkedIn, there is a much higher chance that content creation as a lead generation strategy will pay off for you due to the site’s lower signal-to-noise ratio.

Demographics

Another reason you should use LinkedIn for real estate is that the platforms’ demographics are ideal for discovering potential clients for your real estate business.

LinkedIn’s total number of users as of early 2021 is 738 million. Of this amount, 63% check their account monthly, and 22% check it weekly. While this is a fraction of Facebook’s 2.7 billion monthly active users, LinkedIn’s B2B focused audience is ideal for real estate lead generation.

Over 75% of the audience is 30 years old or older, and half earn over $75,000 per year. This demographic is in the perfect position for home buying or selling and will likely be receptive to you as a real estate agent.

Conversion Ratio

Lastly, LinkedIn has a high conversion rate that makes it perfect for lead generation. The platform has a 2.74% visitor to lead conversion rate. While this doesn’t sound like much, it is substantially more than Facebook’s 0.77% conversion rate.

In fact, HubSpot found that LinkedIn is 277% more effective for lead generation than both Facebook and Twitter, which only had a 0.69% conversion rate.

7 Ways to Generate Leads with LinkedIn For Real Estate

7. Use Your Banner as a Call to Action

An underutilized way to generate leads on LinkedIn is to make use of your profile banner. Many real estate agents leave this as a plain color background or use a similar photo as they would for their Facebook cover photo.

Your profile banner is a valuable space that you could use to draw in leads. You could do this by including text, a call to action, a brief statement highlighting your achievements, or a positive review or testimonial you’ve received.

For example, you could include a call to action question such as, “Looking to buy or sell in San Antonio?”

Alternatively, or depending on how much space you have, you can also include brief statements that highlight your real estate career like, “Top 1% of Agents in San Antonio.”

Above all, your banner should look professional and be high-quality. If you’re not comfortable using graphic design tools or don’t have any design experience, consider hiring a professional to create your banner for you.

You can find freelance professionals on sites like UpWork and Fiver who can help you create an eye-catching banner at a great cost.

If you want to design your profile banner yourself, you can use simple graphic design tools like Canva and free stock photo sites like Pixabay and Unsplash.

Ideally, your banner should be the same across all your social media channels and website. Having a cohesive look across all your different social media accounts is key to having a successful personal branding strategy. So if you already use a banner on your YouTube channel or Facebook business page, you can use the same one on your LinkedIn profile.

6. Include a Title in Your Name

LinkedIn’s first and last name fields on your personal profile present a valuable opportunity for you to rank above the competition both within the platform itself, as well as on Google as a whole.

While the majority of the site’s users simply fill in their names like normal, those who wish to rank higher can include a title along with their last name.

This helps you rank on LinkedIn and Google because the LinkedIn algorithm looks at these fields when presenting the most relevant results in response to someone’s search query.

Google also picks up on these same fields when displaying relevant search results pages for queries made on its platform.

For this reason, if you want to increase the chances of you being discovered by potential buyers, you need to optimize the first and last name fields.

This means using the last name field to include extensions to your name. These extensions should be relevant keywords in your field that a prospective client might be searching for.

For example, enter your first name in the box as usual, and then in the last name box, say something like “Handy – San Antonio Real Estate Professional” or “Handy – Realtor with eXp Realty.”

Alternatively, you can include any special designations or titles you have in this field. For example, if you are an official Realtor.

5. Create Content

As mentioned above, content creation is far more effective for lead generation on LinkedIn compared to other social media platforms.

When you post real estate content on Facebook or Instagram and it doesn’t get much engagement, the platforms’ algorithms will learn that your content is unpopular. This will create a cycle that is difficult to break out of if you ever want to increase the engagement rates on your content.

On the other hand, it’s much easier to get your target audience to notice your content on LinkedIn.

According to LinkedIn itself, content receives 15 times more impressions than job postings, with a total of nine billion content impressions in total across the entire site.

This doesn’t just apply to blog posts that you write. Any type of post you make is likely to have higher engagement. Use this to your advantage when posting announcements for events like open houses.

However, don’t use your LinkedIn to post advertisements for your latest listings. This type of LinkedIn post can come across as spammy, rather than the helpful, informative content that your audience on LinkedIn is primarily looking for.

In addition, you can also repost content from other users or post links to the interesting content you find on other sites. But while reposting is good on occasion, you will see the most benefit to posting your own original content.

Be sure to post your content on a consistent basis. Come up with a schedule that you can stick to regularly. Ideally, you should create at least three pieces of content per week.

4. Optimize Your Headline

Your headline, or LinkedIn bio, is the first thing someone will read on your profile. And if they aren’t impressed or don’t find you relevant to their needs, it could be enough for them to decide to click away from your profile.

For this reason, you should optimize your headline to contain popular keywords that your potential leads might be searching for. This will ensure that you appear in the results pages and your lead finds you relevant to their needs.

For example, many real estate agents will have terms such as “Realtor” or “home sales” in their LinkedIn headlines. While these terms are real estate-related, they aren’t as popularly searched for as “real estate.”

Even though “home sales” might be a more accurate description of what you do, a lead may not know to work with you unless you have the words “real estate” somewhere in your headline. This will make it clear to them that you are in the real estate industry and can provide the services they are looking for.

3. Use a Professional Headshot

Another one of the first elements people will notice on your LinkedIn profile is your profile photo. If you want to gain the most amount of leads, you need to use a professional-quality headshot.

All too often, many real estate agents on LinkedIn will use a more casual photo, like a cropped version of their Facebook profile photo.

While LinkedIn is a social media platform, it is a professional network above all else. For this reason, you should put in the effort to make sure your real estate headshot stands out.

This will give you increased credibility, demonstrate authority and confidence, and boost your brand’s reputation. Consider hiring a professional photographer to take it for you.

2. Utilize Customization Options

LinkedIn provides several customization options that you should take advantage of to create a more optimized profile.

First, you can customize your profile’s URL. This will make you more easily discoverable for people who are not signed in to LinkedIn and come across your profile on Google or other search engines. In addition, it will also boost the credibility of your brand.

Another customization option is to add a LinkedIn social sharing plug-in to your main real estate agent website. You can also include it in your emails. This will drive traffic to your LinkedIn profile and website by promoting your content.

1. Join Groups

Lastly, a great way to use LinkedIn for real estate leads is to join real estate-related groups on the platform. Just like Facebook, LinkedIn has groups for different interests and industries.

Ideally, you should join at least three groups and be active in them. However, you won’t find leads by joining groups with your fellow real estate agents.

Instead, join groups where you think your target audience might be. Specifically, try to find a LinkedIn group that has members of your local area or community. Then, try to answer any real estate questions they might have or share some real estate advice.

Participate in discussions regularly, and even start your own. You can also private message users to offer them your services or answer their questions. Private messaging is a highly effective strategy because it has a higher response rate compared to email. Because of this, you will likely get more connections and potential leads on the platform.

Interacting with LinkedIn groups will get your name and profile in front of thousands of potential leads. It will also establish you as an authority in the industry and increase your brand awareness.

Being regularly active in groups will also make you appear warmer to completely cold leads. This is because it will get them used to seeing your name. This way, you can easily introduce yourself and your services to them when the time comes.

Final Thoughts on LinkedIn For Real Estate

LinkedIn for real estate should definitely be part of your lead generation strategy. Follow these seven tips to make the most of your profile and time on the platform. As a dedicated professional network, you can find many qualified leads on the site who are in need of a real estate agent.

Do you currently use LinkedIn to generate leads for your real estate business? What has your experience been? Let me know in the comments below!