Episode 39: Frank LLosa, broker for Frankly Realty, says the extended network — the vast number of people connected to the people he’s directly connected with — finally drove him to fill out a complete profile on professional networking site LinkedIn.
It just took him six years to make up his mind since he initially joined with a very basic profile, he said.
"I resisted it, I didn’t like it. I (didn’t) want to do another round of social networking … another password, another thing to be updating," he said.
LLosa says what finally convinced him to get more involved at LinkedIn is the ability to make connections via shared connections — two or three degrees of separation.
He points out that the several dozen people he is directly connected with on Facebook can put him in touch with a network of more than 1.6 million of people via their own connections and their secondary connections.
When filling out a deeper profile on the site, and syncing your e-mail contacts, LLosa recommends being selective, and taking care not to send messages to everyone on your list stating that you are a part of the LinkedIn network and inviting them to connect with you there.
LinkedIn offers an enhanced, paid service to facilitate communications with other users, and LLosa says the paid service can help to legitimize those communications.
"Someone willing to pay (for the service) is much more likely to be a serious person," he says.
Watch past episodes of the Wheel Estate Cam.
Frank Borges LLosa is the broker, founder and owner of FranklyRealty.com, a real estate brokerage in Falls Church, Va. He is the creator of the Trust Me I’m a Realtor blog and multiple listing service wiki site FranklyMLS.com. You can follow him on Twitter: @franklyrealty.
