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OPINION Legal Home Loans broker and director Cullen Haynes shares the principles he’s used to turn LinkedIn into a major lead generator.
If there’s anyone who knows the benefits of building a presence on social media, it’s Cullen Haynes.
The director of Legal Home Loans, a brokerage that exclusively services legal professionals, has championed social media as a brand-building tool and turned his principles into a bestselling book.
In a recent appearance on The Adviser’s Elite Broker podcast, The Laws of LinkedIn author shared simple things every broker can do to improve their presence on the social media platform.
For Haynes, it all starts with a willingness to put yourself out there.
“You can never over-post too much. You can never put yourself out there too much. It’s not who you know. It’s who knows you. You’ve really got to believe in yourself and put yourself out there,” Haynes said.
“There’s over a billion people on LinkedIn, but only one per cent of people use it properly.”
Start small and stay consistent
The sort of strong LinkedIn presence that feels like a current behind the flow of a river of leads certainly isn’t built overnight.
However, Haynes encouraged brokers who feel like they’re starting from square one to not be discouraged; the most important thing is to start.
“Start with text-only posts, once a week. Build that up to one every day,” Haynes said.
“Then you go, ‘Okay, I’ve done text, let’s move to a photo of the team’. Team photo looks good, and if you can eventually build yourself up to video and do under 60 second video and do at least one every day or a minimum of one a week, I promise you that’s more than your competitors are doing.”
Building consistency is just as crucial, according to Haynes, as that next great lead may be one post around the corner.
“It’s the story of [being] six feet from gold, where the guy buys all the equipment to go mining. He goes and digs and digs and digs and then he gives up and leaves it, and then someone else finds it and they go three feet more and they find the gold mine,” Haynes said.
“You never know [what will happen] if you just give it at least three months.”
Quality control
However, there’s a difference between consistency and posting boatloads of content for the sake of it. Hayne said his mindset “document, don’t create” helps him strike the right balance.
“My greatest skill is talking to people,” Haynes said.
“So, I thought, ‘What’s a way that I can put people on a platform that elevates them?’ In the meantime, some of that shine rubs off on me.”
Hayne has used live-streaming tech StreamYard to schedule LinkedIn Live videos he can host and broadcast onto different platforms.
“It was a great way to talk about lawyers and their stories or your tribe. And it’s all done live. And then afterwards, you can cut that content, put it to the podcast, whatever you want,” Hayne said.
Hayne also encourages time-poor brokers to plan as much as they can and make use of templating tools such as Canva.
“If you get templates and you set yourself up for the year with those templates, all you need to do is when you meet someone and you want to do a shout out post, you’ve got a template, you insert their photo [and then you’re] done,” Haynes said.
The ‘purple cow’
And for brokers who really want to stand out from the crowd?
Haynes encouraged every broker to try a little-known feature in LinkedIn’s messaging service.
“Not many people know about this feature, but there’s a little radio on your messages on LinkedIn. It’s underutilised. Click that message and just say, ‘Hey, I’ve seen your content. Love to grab a coffee with you if you’re not against it. Let’s meet next week. And by the way, we’ve just come out with our latest article’,” Haynes said.
“It’s like a purple cow in a field of cows. You always see the purple one. So you’ll get either. ‘Well, I’ve never received a message. You will get this.’ Or, ‘Yep, let’s grab a coffee.’ Or at the very least ‘Send through your article’.
“If you just start off with maybe five messages a day, that is better than the 99 per cent of people who aren’t doing that.”
Listen to the full recording of ‘How this broker utilises the Laws of LinkedIn to build his book’ here:
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[Related: How this broker utilises the Laws of LinkedIn to build his book]
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