MS: I’ve got business from Twitter promoting a blog and then the blog being read and people coming to us.
SD: What about linKeD-in? DJ: LinkedIn is a way to find new business contacts. You’re finding a new lender, a new broker, you’re finding someone you know already, press updates etc and so it’s more of a business-to-business platform from our point of view. LK: The clever thing is that every time you update your profile, it lets the person following you on LinkedIn know. I’ve had a lot of clients that who have moved on and gone to other jobs and I have been aware of it and they’ve found me through LinkedIn. It’s becoming that little divider box with all your clients in there with their rates, their details, their occupation, what they’re doing when they come off their rates. That can all be effectively stored on LinkedIn now. So for me LinkedIn is going to become a massive tool for mortgage brokers as a way of managing your client
base. MC: Going through a career change I sent out an endorsement email to over 200 people and have had a 30% response rate which for direct mail isn’t there. RS: Because it’s a professional environment you get people you are actually linked with at the same level or you’re on the same wavelength. It’s not social in that sense. It is business- like. LK: A lot of businesses now have underneath their logo, their mobile, their telephone number, their email, follow me on LinkedIn as a little hook on their signature and that’s fantastic. AB: We use Facebook as well quite actively - all of our key brands have got Facebook pages and what we’ll do is link to blogs or link to information.
“LinkedIn is going to become a massive tool for mortgage brokers as a way of managing your client base”
SD: hoW much activity Do you See on a buSineSS FacebooK Page? AB: I don’t know but we are tracking it. The pressure for us has been to get our websites up to speed and be as good and supportive as they need to be to deal with the social media because that’s so instant. Freshness is really important, it has to be regular. DJ: It’s down to the platform you use. We have one we use called Twitterfeed so we decide that certain elements from Mortgage Introducer for example that we might pick up as an RSS feed will go to Facebook and some them will go to Twitter and some of them will go to LinkedIn, but not all of them will go to the same media. SL: I think the business to consumer aspect is the weakest link to it all. For instance I set up a group on equity release. I did that partly to spread the word wider than just the current market to get new funders, providers into this market and it’s doing that. But the one audience it’s not reaching is the consumer. So somehow I’ve got to think about how
do I take that further to engage the consumer because the engagement is critical. KT: You do definitely get B2C interaction via LinkedIn. One of my very first mortgage clients contacted me again yesterday and it’s one of the first mortgages I wrote in 2001 and he contacted me yesterday and we both had three or four changes in career since then and he found me via LinkedIn. JK: I think LinkedIn is the best platform out there at the moment but there is still a perception that LinkedIn is for people who are looking for a job. So some people might shy away from it because they’re not looking for a job. AB: I use it for checking out contacts. DJ: Where it really gets downgraded I suppose is that Twitter has all the famous people on it and you can follow a famous person straight away. AB: Twitter is much more instant and LinkedIn is much more considered. RS: Well LinkedIn you really have to go on your desktop. It’s a great research tool. You’re looking into different types of data, you’re looking at competitors, it’s fantastic. AB: I think they’re different, it’s like saying an apple is like a potato. AM: But LinkedIn has started to change more recently to become a bit more like Facebook and I think that’s a danger. JK: One of the beauties of LinkedIn is that it’s based on the six degrees of separation principle. So if you guys are looking for a new client but you don’t know that person but my client knows that person, you can get connected in that way. AB: One of the things about LinkedIn which people need to manage carefully is when people you don’t know ask to connect. I’m very polite back to them with “how is it do you think I can help you?” because that way you filter out the people who are just looking for you to help
Join the debate @mortgagechat mortgage introducer JULY 2011 43
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