How LinkedIn Helps Real Estate Professionals Build Their Personal Brand

Written by Holtby Turner

Real estate is not really known as an industry skilled in brand building. Building yes. Building brands? No. As one of real estate’s oldest executive search firms, at Holtby Turner, we know why a distinctive personal brand makes such a difference. When a professional in property or construction hasa stand-out profile, it really gets noticed

As there are hundreds of books about professional brand building available, our goal is not to repeat why it matters, but what matters.

Regardless of your professional status or career position, everyone benefits from a well-constructed LinkedIn profile. Whether you are looking for work or not, this is where Google goes first when loading results against your name. It’s also where trade journalists, potential clients and colleagues head first when checking you out – your corporate website comes next.

If you’re looking to build your personal brand within real estate, LinkedIn matters. Making the top-level connections that elevate your personal status are noticed there. So being an active, positive voice within your network requires quality time spent on Linkedin. So here’s how to stand out on LinkedIn.

Your photo and header matter (they really, really matter)

A professional headshot costs as little as £100 in London and dramatically lifts your page. Arguably, it grabs more attention than anything else on your profile. Smart photos also quietly communicate that you care about your standing in your industry.

But if you don’t want to do that, ask someone you feel comfortable with to take a photograph of you in a plain top, against a natural background – that way there’s no fuzzing and you’ll look fresh. Blues, white and cream flatter most people and give a clean finish.

Don’t forget to customise your profile header so that it matches your photo colouring in some way. Click on the Edit Background button in your profile and either use LinkedIn’s stock images (not that interesting) or head to Unsplash for a ‘free to use’ image by searching their collections https://unsplash.com/ There are some beautiful architecture images, city skylines and natural landscapes that just add warmth to your header (the first thing people’s eyes often land on).

Put real effort into your summary

Think of your personal brand like any other brand – an advert that’s too long or dull will never be noticed! Your summary is always the part of your profile people initially look at. Don’t write a fact heavy timeline based bio: write an attention-grabbing, interesting summary that represents you.

Do not head straight to LinkedIn to write it though: LinkedIn is prone to crashing when in edit mode, so write your content in a document where you can save it, ready to copy across!

There’s a full 2,000-character opportunity to tell your story. That’s plenty of space to add video, photographs, presentations, certificates or award accolades, your portfolio or links to websites that have profiled you, or a project you’ve worked on.

Start with a punchy headline. Bizarrely, a lot of people don’t do this. We often suggest jotting a few down, then when you’ve finished your full profile, going back to it and seeing which feels most like you. Or, you can use what you’ve used as your headline as inspiration for the rest of the summary. Both work, so pick which best reflects you as an individual and feels right for your personal brand.

At a minimum, make sure these points are crystal clear as you build your personal brand:

  1. Who you are
  2. What you have done
  3. What you can do
  4. Why you do it

If you want to be known for a niche skill or particular expertise, then make sure it is clearly framed contextually “ … within real estate and construction.”

Ask yourself when you read it back, is your value clearly laid out and understandable? Is your mission statement easy to spot?

Discovery

Knowing how to be found on LinkedIn is easiest by selecting the ten keywords associated with your work and including them at the bottom of your profile. Use the | symbol to separate them in a Word document and then paste them into your profile as this makes the formatting crisp.

E.G. Funds & Investment | Real Estate Executive Search | Construction Programme Delivery

Organise endorsements and ask people you respect to recommend you

OK, so by now you understand that what you say about yourself on LinkedIn makes a difference to your personal brand, but what others say about you is 10x times more effective. A recommendation for each of your roles is kind of expected these days; two is good, three is ideal.

The best time to ask someone is when you successfully complete a project or reach a milestone as things are fresh in their mind (and if you have done a good job then they’ll be very happy to say so!). If you have to reach out to someone later, give them a helping hand by highlighting two aspects of the work you did to jog their memory. This lets them quickly write a recommendation and freedom to add more personal points if they wish to.

Endorsement skills can easily be rearranged so the skills you wish to showcase clearly, literally move up the list towards the top. To do that, click “manage endorsements” and drag the skill you wish to make more prominent to the top.

As you do this, you may notice some inconsistencies and some skills – perhaps the very ones you want to highlight – haven’t been endorsed by enough people to look impressive. Don’t worry.

Endorsements run on LinkedIn’s algorithm, so whatever is at the top stays there. This is mainly due to human behaviour – LinkedIn suggests endorsing certain individuals when you log in to your account. As most of us are happy to click quickly as a gesture of goodwill, the same top three skills tend to stay the top three. However, as an algorithm driven motion, the more clicks your newly repositioned endorsements gets, the higher up your profile they will climb.

Keep your experience sections concise

Avoid jargon and follow the Situation, Action and Outcome achievement-based highlights. It’s more interesting and will let you vary the content from your summary nicely too.

Don’t forget to add in any volunteering and mentoring you’ve done as a proper entry with dates. It always gets noticed and always adds value to your personal brand.

 

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