Jim Lillig's Real Estate Marketing Web Tips

As a real estate professional, referrals are your lifeblood.  Without them, all the advertising in the world will not make you successful.  With your LinkedIn profile, you can request Recommendations from the network of friends and business relationships you invite (or are invited to) to join your network.

From your Profile page (once you are logged in) you can click on the Recommendations text link at the bottom of the left hand navigation menu. This will take you to your recommendations page.  On the top right of this page, you will see a Compose Message button with an arrow next to it.  Click on the down arrow to reveal a drop down menu of the following items:
-    Send Message to a Connection
-    Send InMail or Introduction
-    Send Invitation
-    Send Recommendation
-    Request Recommendation
-    Send Job Notification

You will want to click on the “Request Recommendation” link.

First, you will be asked “Choose what you want to be recommended for” and this will list out all the present and past positions you have in your profile.  Select one.

Next, you will be asked “Decide who you’ll ask”.  Click on the Select Connections.  Here you will be presented with all of your connections.  You can select just one, or send to many people in your network all at once.

Finally, you will “Create your message”.  LinkedIn has already placed a message in there to give you some language if you can’t think of anything.  I personally have found that leaving the Subject line of “Can you endorse me?” works very well.  In fact the stock “letter” LinkedIn supplies does a fine job of getting people to respond.

I would however modify your particular request to get more specific if it has been awhile since you spoke to a customer. You might want to remind them how you helped them out with a particular sale or some advice you gave them.  In any case, you want to get them thinking about how you are someone they would recommend.

There is another, even better way for you to ask for endorsementsd that gets you Linked In (literally) for anyone searching for Real Estate Agents in your area.

At the top of your LinkedIn page, you will see 4 links, People | Jobs | Answers | Companies.  Click on the down arrow next to Companies.  Click on the Service Providers link.  Once you get to the next page, you will see a link near the top that says "How Do I Get Listed?".  At the end of that short paragraph there is a text link that reads "» Request a recommendation."  Click on it.

This will allow you to ask for a recommendation through the Service Provider channel.  You may also want to ask your network to endorse you through this method as it will boost your rankings for local searches of Service Providers in your area.

Of course, if you haven’t already asked every past customer, friend, neighbor, broker, mortgage professional and all the other acquaintances you make in this business to join your LinkedIn network, you need to do that now.  Endorsements are like product reviews, which everyone reads when making almost any purchase.  Your services are no different.  Just as an eBay Seller needs to have positive ratings to engender trust, so too do you.

Don’t be afraid to ask for an endorsement.  If you know you did a good job then ask them.  There is no more public place than LinkedIn for professionals to tell their story.  Or better yet, let someone else tell your story.

One last note about LinkedIn.  If you doubt the value this has to your business, try this simple test.  If you already are on the Internet in several places (such as your real estate office’s site, your link on the Realtor’s Assn. site or any other work related site) and you then sign up for a LinkedIn account, in very little time, when you search on your name the LinkedIn listing will come up first.  I have been online for 12 years with varying numbers of business’, I have nearly 3000 links to my name in Google, but still the #1 result in Google isn’t my website, www.jimlillig.com, it is my LinkedIn listing page.