Pinterest is a social media website where users share their favorite images from around the web with their followers. Rather than using words to express themselves, Pinterest users use images and photographs instead. Like other forms of social media, Pinterest offers a unique opportunity for real estate agents looking to grow their businesses.

With so many people using Pinterest these days, there is an opportunity for real estate agents to get the word out about their business. By creating a Pinterest board and sharing high-quality images with your followers, you can drive traffic to your real estate website or blog while also increasing the awareness of your real estate business. Here are a few ways you can utilize Pinterest to help improve your business.

Show Off Your Listings

Since Pinterest is intended for people to share their favorite photos and images from around the Internet, it is the perfect website to show off your current real estate listings. You can pin your favorite listings to your board and share the details of these properties with your followers. When pinning images to your board, it is important that you remember to only share high-quality images. You do not want to share low-resolution pictures that do not show the details of your listing.

Also, when posting images of your current properties, include enough images so you can give your followers a virtual tour of each property. This will give anyone viewing your images a better feel for the property and all of the amenities it includes.

Gain Traffic for your Website

One reason why real estate agents like using Pinterest is that it allows them to gain traffic for their website or blog. Ultimately, when you post an image to your Pinterest board, you will want to attract visitors to your website or blog. Each image that you post will link back to your website, allowing someone viewing your image to click the picture and be taken directly to your website.

This increase in traffic can help you spread the word about your real estate business and attract loyal readers of your blog. Whenever you post an image on your website or real estate blog, you can also pin it to your Pinterest board. This will allow you to gain valuable backlinks for your website as well as direct traffic from Pinterest itself. When you share high-quality images with your followers, they will re-pin it to their board, further increasing the amount of traffic your images create for your website.

Make your Photos Easy to Pin

When writing blog posts or placing images on your website, you want to make the images as easy as possible for someone to pin to their Pinterest board. Including a link on the image that someone can click to pin it to their board will increase the number of times, your images are shared on Pinterest.

Making your images easy to pin increase the chances of your images being pinned as all of the difficult work is taken out of the equation for the person doing the pinning. If your website is full of high-quality images, you will see your traffic start to increase once you make it easy for others to pin your images to their Pinterest board.

Use Creative Captions

When pinning your own images to Pinterest, try to use a creative caption that will capture the attention of people using Pinterest. The more creative and eye-catching your caption is the better your chances become of getting others to view your images and follow your board. Also, including some of your SEO keywords in your creative captions can help improve your website’s rankings for those terms as each image counts as a backlink for your site. Remembering to include your target keywords can pay huge dividends when it comes to your SEO campaign.

Pinterest is a wonderful social media website enjoyed by millions of people every day. Pinterest gives you the ability to share high-quality images with your followers, increasing the amount of traffic your real estate website or blog receives. If you are running a social media marketing campaign for your real estate business, do not forget to include Pinterest with the sites that you are using.

Ben Sawyer is an Internet marketing Specialist and Social Media Consultant. In this article, Ben shared with us some of his most successful tips for the social media campaign he was doing for arvernebythesea.com, an NYC real estate firm.

Having a web presence is extremely important when it comes to marketing your business, and search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the best ways to improve your visibility and reach.

Some companies don’t have the time or resources to invest in an in-depth and thorough SEO strategy, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t reap the benefits of SEO. There are plenty of small things that you can do on your own to improve your SEO that does not take too much time or money to implement. If you want an easy way to improve your SEO, do the following.

1. Use keywords.

Take the time to change out your website copy and make sure that you’re using keywords that are relevant and popular among your industry and brand. Search engines will scan through your website or blog in search of these keywords, and the more often you use them, the more your site will improve. If you don’t have access to your website copy because it’s controlled by a third party, start a blog and ensure that your posts contain keywords and that you’re tagging your posts with relevant keywords.

2. Use images.

Images can be an easy and great help to your SEO efforts. Make sure that you add images to your content and that you are filling in the descriptions of these images with keywords. Search engines also crawl through images, and if your images contain keyword descriptions, it will help improve your SEO.

3. Use links.

Make sure that you are using backlinks and internal links within your website. Link to other blog posts or websites that are relevant to your industry, and make sure that you use internal links to help your web visitors easily move between pages. Both backlinks and internal links will help improve your SEO.

You should also reach out to other bloggers or partner companies and ask if they would put a link to your website or blog on their site. These links act as backlinks for your site or blog, and these too will improve your SEO.

You may also want to consider joining a professional online community or using social media and pushing out links to your website or blog through these channels. Not only do they add backlinks to your site, but they can easily help your site go viral and generate more traffic, and more traffic also increases SEO.

4. Use the right URL.

If you have a blog or a website, it’s very important that you make sure your URLs contain words instead of random letters, symbols, or numbers. Search engines crawl URLs and use this to determine where to rank your website or blog, so if your URL is www.mydomain.com/pumpkins, it will do more for your site than www.mydomain.com/14729dfljddfs.

If you want your audience to find you and if you want to compete with all the other websites in your industry, you need to use SEO. But if you don’t have the resources or time to implement a strong strategy, use these tips to help you get your feet wet. Once you’ve made these small improvements, you can then find the time and resources to invest in a more detailed strategy.

Jacob Smith is an SEO expert writing in tandem with SEOMap.  For more information about SEO and keyword analysis, check out SEOMap’s latest SEO book on keyword strategy.

Chances are you have a Facebook and Twitter account, but what about LinkedIn? Do you really need to add yet another social network to your to-do list? Yes. The truth is LinkedIn social link sharing can greatly increase readership and page views to your website. Let’s take a closer look at the value of LinkedIn social link sharing.

What Is LinkedIn Social Link Sharing?

LinkedIn social link sharing is simply the process of sharing links through LinkedIn. It’s very similar to Facebook, except with this social networking site, you have the ability for your links to be seen by professionals in your field. This can be huge for the freelance writer or any other online business. You can also choose for the links you share to be visible to everyone or just those that are in your contacts. Another great feature is the ability to share the message on Twitter at the same time.

Why Is It Important?

There are several reasons why LinkedIn social link sharing has become so important. First of all, as mentioned above, you’re connecting with professionals in your field. This means that people that actually want to see your content will see it. Another benefit is that the more people who like your content, the more shares you’ll receive. As more people share your links, the links appear on more websites. This means that there are more backlinks to your site. This is beneficial because it results in your website ranking higher on search engines.

How Can You Get Started?

Your first step is to set up an account with LinkedIn. You’ll be able to add contacts pulled from your email contacts and then you can link to other professionals once your account is set up. The key is to not flood your page with links to your own site. Actually, in the first few days, you want to work with sharing content that is related to your business and sharing the content of others. Once you do start to add your own links here and there, people will be more apt to share your links in return. The important part is to stay active on the site and create more and more connections, which will lead to more link shares.

LinkedIn may not have the same fun environment that Facebook does, but the professional atmosphere makes it a great place to build your business and connect with those in your field. In other words, you can’t afford to have a LinkedIn account and participate in social link sharing.

About the Author: Carey Peight loves to use sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn for sharing links and social listening projects. The more you pay attention to current trends, the easier it will be to create content your readers want and need.