NEW BOOK BY ADAM GOWER PH.D.

Capital Calls and RESCUE Capital

A guide to thriving during the coming real estate crash for real estate syndicators and their investors.

4 Steps to Finding Real Estate Investors on LinkedIn

By Adam Gower Ph.D.

LinkedIn is the professional social media network. It’s a lot more nuanced and adaptable than we give it credit for sometimes. You can use LinkedIn for all things business, including finding new investors in the right position to look at your projects.

Here are 4 actionable steps you can take to use your LinkedIn as an investor magnet.

 

1. Build Credibility

Having a presence on LinkedIn, especially with an informative profile, helps you lend credibility to your name online. Investors, like every other professional looking to work with you, will probably Google you as part of their due diligence. If they have no idea who you are, they’ll be hoping to find something meaningful about you online.

LinkedIn is a place they’re likely to click through to and it’s likely to be one of the first mentions of your name on the first page in a Google search.  If your profile is bare bones, empty, generic, or otherwise wasted space with little real value, you may lose some credibility as a result. Build something that helps an investor know you’re serious and that gives them a sense of confidence in your ability.

If you have a seasoned development team, make sure you apply this in a macro sense as well. Don’t just focus on making your profile look legitimate; do it for your other employees as well. You can create a simple template for them to use for their own profiles. You goal here is to give off a credible, consistent brand image through every person that represents your company which will include people who aren’t customer-facing.

Get access to our FREE weekly newsletter exclusively covering the latest updates from the real estate crowdfunding world

2. Actively Use Your Account

 

Work on making a name for yourself as a go-to person in your field. You can do this by posting consistently on your feed. You’ll build up a database of information that people can refer to at any time. Content is still king online. Post or share useful, relevant content to your feed. Share things that your target investors would be interested in viewing and that provides direct immediate value to them.

 

With content, you need to look at what works best on the site. Right now, video is the preferred type of content across the board. Every site wants simple video content because it encourages higher engagement and longer site visit times. If you post video content, you may gain some promotion beyond normal organic visits.

 

Similarly, using LinkedIn’s newer features can also end up in a content boost. If you want higher visibility on your posts, look for what LinkedIn is promoting the most, which will likely be their newest features. For example, publisher articles used to get more priority in user feeds. If you were able to score a spot as a writer of one of those articles, you would get a ton of free promotion and visibility.

 

Today, there are different features being introduced. Publisher articles are no longer as visible or effective as they were when first introduced. Look for the current features that lead to better visibility and promotion, like live videos.

3. Create Investor Personas

 

Once your profile is actively being used to target investors, it’s time to look for new connections and try to approach new investors. On LinkedIn, you can’t just search based on net worth or similar financial criteria. Instead, you have to build up a persona, an ‘avatar,’ of what your target investor looks like and search for that.

 

You can base this on information you gather from investors you’re working with now or who you’ve worked with previously. Look at data such as:

 

  • Job title/position
  • Location
  • Company size
  • Function
  • Content preferences

 

All of these things are searchable in some way over LinkedIn. If you come up with an investor persona based on what your existing investors look like, you can probably manage to find new investors with similar characteristics. There is, unfortunately, no way to search LinkedIn directly for people with a high net worth.

4. Seek Out Personal Referrals

 

Although you can ask for referrals directly over LinkedIn, called ‘introductions’, it’s probably not as good of an idea as a personal referral. If you have a connection in common, you’ll have better luck approaching the person you know and asking them to introduce you.

 

Pick up the phone, send an email, arrange a video conference call, or make a point to go see your contact in person. You’ll be able to make a stronger impact on the new connection and will be more memorable if you can organize an introduction the ‘old-fashioned’ way.

 

***

 

LinkedIn isn’t a job searching platform as many people typecast it. It’s a dynamic social media network geared towards creating effective professional connections. Start taking your profile seriously and work to build up your outreach and networking on the site. You could end up attracting and meeting new investors.

If you have only just started in real estate development, have completed no deals, have no email list, but know you want the freedom and wealth being a real estate developer brings, then I suggest your first step is to start evaluating deals so you can recognize a good one when you see it.

Here’s where you should start. You’ll learn everything you need to know – the different types of real estate, different development strategies, how real estate cycles influence the market, and all about due diligence.

If you want to find deals and raise money for them so you can start your real estate development business, then learning how to conduct due diligence so you can pitch your deals better to investors is a great place to start.

Learn More

If you’ve already purchased one or more real estate project and are seeing more opportunities than you can finance, then now is the time to start building your investor network so you can finance all your next deals quicker.

You’ve already got some momentum; now start finding and educating prospects about what you’re doing so you can build an email list of people to pitch to when you’re ready to raise money for your next deal.
This is what we build for private clients all the time – it’s called the Investor Acquisition System and you can access the entire program right here so you can find prospects, and convert them into being deep pocketed, repeat investors in your deals.

Learn more

If you are a seasoned pro with multi-cycle experience, a substantial portfolio, a decent deal pipeline, and find yourself spending too much time raising equity capital because you’re still doing it in-person, then it’s time you put technology to work for you.

The wonderful thing about doing this is that you’re not going to be doing anything different than you’re already doing and, guess what, you’ll never have to sit through investor meetings again.

Sounds crazy I know, but I lay the whole thing out for you in this white board workshop where I personally show you exactly what it takes for you to transform your equity raising into a fully automated, capital raising machine so you can find new investors while increasing commitments from your existing network.

Learn more