Commercial Agents – Make it easy to follow you via LinkedIn

Do you use LinkedIn? Does your company have a LinkedIn page? It seems that social networking sites are becoming increasingly popular with the commercial property sector, particularly professional sites like LinkedIn.

The world’s largest professional network announced at the beginning of February that it now has 150 Million members. And this week, the network launched a new “Follow Company” button, that companies can embed into the homepage of their website.

What’s The Button?

To those of you that know and already engage in social media, this new LinkedIn button is very much like “Following” on Twitter or the “Like” button of Facebook. For those of you that don’t do social, by clicking this button your ‘Followers’ (people that you may wish to have contact with) will be able to receive automatic updates on your company in their LinkedIn feeds.

Companies that have a LinkedIn page can embed the aforementioned button into their website homepage as well as other online marketing materials. This makes it far easier for you to attract followers.

This is not the only button that LinkedIn offer. They also offer the ‘Share’ button enabling users to share articles with other users in their network and the ‘Recommend’ button, which in many ways is similar to the follow button.

Commercial Property Agents That Do Social Media

A large number of commercial property agents and chartered surveyors already feature social media icons on their ‘commercial property’ website pages. Yes, their commercial property pages, not just their residential section.

Companies like Knight Frank, Savills, CBRE, Jones Lang LaSalle et al, all actively use social media to engage with the market and potential employees. Jones Lang LaSalle has over 32,000 follows on LinkedIn alone.

But their social networking activity is not simple limited to LinkedIn. Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are all being actively used by commercial property agents. JLL even has its own dedicated YouTube channel and the likes of Savills and CBRE actively use Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for general and graduate recruitment.

Social Media For Commercial Property

So why embed this type of button into your website homepage?

Well ultimately these buttons make it easier for clients, partners and potential employees to follow the activities of your company. The aim is to stimulate engagement with these audiences and develop closer relationships that will benefit your organisation in the future.

Unlike other forms of marketing communication, social media channels like these are highly targetable. This results in a higher quality engagement, because not only can you deliver relevant content to that audience, but executed correctly, social media can stimulate powerful two-way communication.

What Members Want

Research has shown that 60% of LinkedIn members expect not just news, but industry insights from the companies that they follow. This is popular functionality as 70% of members on LinkedIn would or already follow a company on the network.

Philip Burrows, Marketing Consultant