First impressions can easily make or break a relationship. These days, first impressions are more likely to occur online—not during a first hand shake or phone call. Your LinkedIn summary is one of the most essential and useful tools you can utilize to leave a positive digital first impression.
LinkedIn reports that users with complete profiles are 40 times more likely to receive opportunities through their service, so mortgage professionals who leave their summary section blank are limiting the success they could have on this important business platform.
If you take the time to complete your summary, you could potentially receive more referrals or prospective clients simply because people now have a better understanding of how you can help them. You’re given 2,000 characters to tell readers more about yourself, skills, achievements, specialties, etc. Make certain to maximize each character you use.
Before you begin writing your summary, think about important aspects of your career you would like to highlight and share with readers. Make a list of everything you want to include in the summary, and then write it all in sentence form. Paragraphs should also be used to break up sections of your summary so readers can more easily digest the content.
Where to Start
Your first line should be interesting and captivating to keep the potential client on your profile. It can be phrased as a statement, question or a series of action words. Here are some examples from Silver Hill Funding employees with top notch introductions to their summaries:
- Michael Boggiano: Dynamic and profit-driven sales professional with more than 20 years’ success leading profitable businesses within the real estate and financial industries.
- Allison Herrera: Everyone excels at something. I’m great at helping mortgage brokers close and fund small-balance commercial loans and I’m also pretty good at making campfires.
- Juan Barcelo: Results-oriented, real estate finance professional with experience in sales, management, relationship management, contract negotiations, sales training and sales presentations.
Allison took a more personal approach by adding that she is good at making campfires, while Mike and Juan used action words to describe their work. Though each of these intro lines are different, all are effective at keeping the reader interested in learning more about the individual and how they can help.[/ww-shortcode-fancy-list][ww-shortcode-fancy-list]
Use Keywords
It is imperative that you use keywords to describe your career and skills as a broker and individual. The internet runs on SEO (search engine optimization), so you need to use the right words if you want to be found when people are searching for your niche.
Some keywords brokers can use as they apply include:
- Small-balance commercial mortgage broker
- Commercial loans
- Residential loans
- Broker
- Loan
- Closed deals
- Funding
- Lending
It’s also a good idea to use words that are meaningful to your target audience. You can position yourself as a solution provider for those looking for funding merely by using those keywords.[/ww-shortcode-fancy-list][ww-shortcode-gap height=”5″]
Add Your Specialties
This should be one of the last paragraphs of your summary. Listing your specialties is a great idea for two reasons. One, it allows people to quickly skim this section of your summary to see how you might be able to help them. And two, you can easily reuse some of the keywords you want to be associated with to help your SEO in this portion.
For more tips on marketing strategies designed to help you grow your small-balance commercial mortgage business, download our free Marketing Toolkit.
