How Estate Agents Can Dominate LinkedIn & Build a Personal Brand with Rochelle Gilburn

In this episode of The Elite Agent Masterclass Podcast, we’re diving deep into one of the most powerful yet underutilised tools available to estate agents today: LinkedIn.

Hosted by Holly Boylan, Operations Director at The Avenue Estate Agents, this episode features a wide-ranging and eye-opening conversation with Rochelle Gilburn — property entrepreneur, LinkedIn visibility coach, and founder of two successful businesses.

Rochelle shares her full journey, from building property portfolios for investors in the north of England to becoming a trusted LinkedIn trainer for professionals and business owners across the UK. And she did it all without a high street office, fancy branding, or huge marketing spend — just by showing up as herself on LinkedIn every single day.

Together, Holly and Rochelle explore:

• Why authenticity and visibility are essential in building trust with your ideal clients
• The difference between ‘business content’ and content that builds connection
• How to create personal content that doesn’t feel uncomfortable or overshare
• Why “being the face” of your business is your greatest marketing tool
• How estate agents can leverage LinkedIn’s targeting features to find sellers in specific postcodes or price brackets
• Rochelle’s full visibility strategy: including post formats, ideal times to post, and how often to show up
• Why you should post on weekends and what your audience really wants to hear
• The difference between lurkers and likers — and why the silent audience is your most profitable
• How to turn engagement into inbound leads without being spammy or salesy
• And the top mistakes agents make when using LinkedIn that stop them getting traction

This episode is essential listening for estate agents who want to: ✔ Grow their market share in their postcode ✔ Win more instructions by standing out from competitors ✔ Build a personal brand that drives referrals, leads, and trust ✔ And finally, break away from cold outreach and become known for what they do best.

Whether you're new to LinkedIn or ready to take your strategy to the next level, this episode is a masterclass in marketing yourself as a modern estate agent.

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Transcript

Welcome back to another episode of the Elite Agent Masterclass. You're joining me, Holly, Operations Director of the Avenue Estate Agents with the lovely Rochelle Gilburn based over in Barnsley. So Rochelle, do you just want to give a quick introduction to our audience? Yeah. Hi, Holly. Thanks for having me on. So a little bit about me. I'm a bit of a serial entrepreneur. So I started out in business five years ago. I have a property business where I build property portfolios for other people. So primarily investors in the south of England looking to buy property in the north. And then while I was doing that, I got pretty good at using LinkedIn to find investors. So now I have a LinkedIn training business where I teach people how to get visible on LinkedIn. Well, great. I could never have hit the headlines like you just perfectly have. So obviously we've known you for quite a while because obviously we go to business coaching together in an external environment. And I think it's always great to see professionals like yourself always align based on that personal development piece. I think that you really align with us in that capacity that you always want to make sure that you're improving the offering that you've got. yeah that's it always improving like on the property side like the the property industry there's a lot of people who are doing not good things and I'm like I'm so passionate about making sure that like we find good properties that we renovate them to a good standard but also the person selling gets a good deal as well so I'm like I want it to be a win-win situation for everyone and then now I'm helping other people and showing them how they can uh they can do that too and from an ethical place rather than from a scammy sleazy, just trying to make loads of money place. Yeah, I think that's a headline word out of that topic, isn't it? It's the ethical piece. Well, I mean, when I think LinkedIn, Rochelle, I always think of you. So I think a burning question that I had for you is kind of what first motivated you to start building that visibility out on LinkedIn and how did you approach that versus other platforms? So I did a, when I first started in property, I did a property course and I actually had no experience in property at all. Like this was my first toe into property, but what I did have was a background in marketing. So I'd never really used LinkedIn apart from as like an online CV, but I'd built up a Facebook page for the stadium that I worked at for like ten years. So I've got a lot of experience doing that sort of thing, email marketing, updating websites. So I knew that marketing worked. I knew how to use social media. But when I was thinking about what I knew about Facebook and how you attract people and how you'd find people who had money, I just couldn't figure out how I'd narrow it down so I could find these people. Whereas on LinkedIn, one of my favorite things about it is that you can connect with people based on their location. So for me, My ideal clients live in the south of England, so I'm connecting with people in London and Essex and Kent, so I can actually search that term, that location. And then you can connect with people based on their job titles. So a lot of the time in marketing, it's a lot of making assumptions about people, going, right, okay, people have got this job title. If they're a director of a company, if they're in a certain industry, they're more likely to have the money to potentially invest in property. So it was just much easier to narrow down on that target audience on LinkedIn. So that was where I thought, right, I'm just going to put all my effort into there and see how it goes. Well, I love what you've just pulled on there, which is something that's very common, I think, in self-employed estate agency terms. And it's the ideal client because the agents transitioning from employed to self-employed, they inevitably want to attract a particular type of client in a particular type of location to, you know, be hyperlocal. in their postcodes. So to use LinkedIn and that capacity then for agents to attract their ideal client is a great alignment with how you use it in your business. Because I think it's so interesting, isn't it? Because you can really be talking on other platforms. You know, you can have ten to fifteen thousand followers, for example, on Instagram, but you've got no way then to whittle down whether they're actually in your audience and target area because yeah you want to obviously target on that basis I'm presuming that's it you might have ten thousand people who are in america and as an estate agent you're never going to do business for those people unless they happen to own a property in your location in england but like for my I'm essentially like in business terms, I'm registered as an estate agent, but I'm working for the buyer rather than the seller. So there's a lot of similarities and overlaps. And I think it's a great platform for estate agents to be on and not enough of them are using it and using it properly. Oh, definitely. And I think, you know, social media is a great outlet for people to get across their personal brand and their business, which I think consuming your content, I think you do really well. I feel like I get to know you and what your business does and how you solve problems for your clients, but also who Rochelle is behind the brand and the business. What is your advice for people mixing in that content? Because sometimes there is a hesitance about them showing the personal piece, but what advice would you have? I think it's so important. It's been one of the things that's worked so well for me because what's the difference between me and any other person with the exact same business as me? It's me, the person behind it. It's the person that sets each business apart. And people don't want to consume business content. So the business content that you put out is never going to reach as many people as the personal posts. So it's important to mix up that balance. So I'll share things about like I've got my two children, like the Easter holidays. So when I when I was out and about taking them on trips, I'd do a post about that. I'll talk about I started doing kickboxing during lockdown. So that's been a big thing that I posted saying I'm off to my martial arts class and people would ask me, oh, what martial arts do you do? my children do Thai boxing or I did Taekwondo as a kid, and it just gets people excited and they feel like they know you that little bit more, then that starts to build the trust with them. And then they're much more likely to think of you when they think, I want to buy a property or I want to sell a property. They're going to think of us instead of that other person who's just been posting business posts. Yeah. And I think that's really huge because I think what you said there about people don't want to consume the business content is something that we all selfishly forget as business owners who are obviously passionate about our own individual business but no one's going to be as passionate as we are about it so I think it's kind of understanding what will strike a chord with your ideal clients to kind of draw them in yeah that's it so I do an approach where I'll put posts out that attract new people into my audience so these are the post that they might be a bit more fun, lighthearted, sometimes a bit more serious, but they're explaining like why I do what I do and, and those side of things. And those posts get more people liking and commenting and the more likely to visit my profile and have a look at what it is that I do. And then once they've connected with me and they start seeing other bits of content, I'll be sharing more, um, like property posts, giving them tips, giving them value. educating them and showing them why property would be a good investment for them. And then at the bottom, I've got the sales posts, which never reach as many people. They never get as much engagement, but they're the ones that are important for getting people to actually message you and say, I'm really interested in what you do. How do I get involved? So it's having that balance of all those three different types of posts to make sure that you you're getting new people into your audience and you're not boring people either. yeah because I think everyone is like chronically terrified of that aren't we we were terrified of turning the audience off I think there's two things in there that you I wanted to touch on what you said you was talking about you obviously shared your why with your audience for people that maybe be hesitant about letting their audience in on a more of a personal brand and their their driving reason behind their business what what impact has that had with your audience becoming closer to you would you say I think people want to, like with property and especially my business, like people are paying me a lot of money. They're putting a lot of trust in me. A lot of my clients never even view the properties that they're buying. So everything is on me. So I really need to build that trust with them and they need to see like that deeper level of why I'm doing what I'm doing and know that I'm not just out to make money. I'm building a reputation. So there's a lot more things that are important to me than just like, taking some money and not delivering on what I've said I'm going to do. And the type of people that come into your life when you start sharing why you're doing what you're doing and you're sharing your values are people that match. So they want similar things to you and they support you and they believe in you. So they're much more than likely to want to work with you. A hundred percent, because I think that easily transpires into the world of estate agents, because, you know, when agents go self-employed, sometimes they they think an objection may be that there's a high street presence up the road with multiple staff members in. And obviously it's a one man band being a self-employed estate agent. So I think that's something really big to take away for agents listening. But they do really want to know why you've made that leap to being a business owner. Yeah. How can that positively impact with getting clients you enjoy working with? Because I think that is the difference when I used to work in a high volume estate agency business where I was just competing on fee and fee alone. But sometimes that would leave me in a predicament where me and the clients didn't necessarily align. They still got the same service, but the alignment wasn't there for them to truly take my expert advice for me to get them to where they want to be. So another thing that I want to touch on, Rochelle, is you mentioned engagement. How do you advise, you know, gaining that authentically and not chasing the like? Yeah. You have to pay other methods or do other things to get that engagement. But really, you do want that authentic engagement. Yeah, so like some people think, oh, likes and comments are vanity metrics, but I think they are really important and people underestimate it. And a lot of the people who say they're not important are the people who are not getting any interaction. Like the more people that like and comment on your post, the more people will see that post, the more people know that you exist, the more potential there is for people to want to do business with you. I'm really big at like the more visible you are the easier it is to to do business so some of the things I do to like help get more engagement uh obviously like having really good content that entertains people so I always think like what when I'm scrolling through facebook or linkedin or instagram what is it that captures my attention and how can I replicate that like you you need to capture people's attention in such a like split second because there's just so much on there. And on LinkedIn, it's actually so much easier to do that, because there is a lot of boring stuff. Whereas on Facebook and Instagram, you're competing with a lot of more entertaining, exciting things, whereas LinkedIn can be quiet, quite boring. So it's how can you hook people's attention with like, the first line of your post a really strong, I'd say really strong image, actually, just like I use selfies. So an eye-catching selfie that's going to stop people from scrolling and want to read more. Another thing that a lot of people forget, they concentrate solely on connecting with potential clients. And actually, I found most of my clients don't engage with my content. The first time I'll know that they're interested in what it is that I do is when they message me to say that they want to have a chat. Usually, they're quite like they'll hide in the background. I call them lurkers. And my partner's like this, actually. He's a lurker in all ways. So he'll be scrolling through Instagram and he'll watch a video that he seems to be really interested in, but he won't like it and he won't comment on it. He won't let anyone know that he's actually interested in it. So what you need to do is fill your LinkedIn with people who are engaged, people who are actively liking other people's stuff and commenting on stuff, because that's going to help promote your work. And so like one of the ways that I find people engage is simply by looking at other people's posts and going, who's commenting, who's liking, who's actively using LinkedIn and connecting with those people. Yeah, and I think that it's then what to take away from that is you need those people driving engagement on your LinkedIn profile to show it to more potential lurkers that will then eventually transact with you and move towards you in a different way. But first step is you need to get those people to see your content from, don't you? Okay, that's pretty interesting because I think I'm just taking it back into like personal life now, like how I then interact with things on social media. Yeah. I can have things, like, in my radar that I'm going to purchase or act on or, you know, attend, but I'm not necessarily taking those other actions that we're obviously talking about. So that's a really interesting takeaway. Yeah. It's like you're not going to tell them yet. I'm interested, but I don't want you to know I'm interested until I'm really, really interested. And especially... It's the playing hard to get, I suppose. Yeah, that's it. And in the world, the way that marketing is today, you know that a lot of the time when you signal that you're interested in someone, they are likely to message you and start having a conversation with you. So like I did it at the weekend, I'm looking for a new car and I filled in a form on a website. And this morning, nine o'clock on the dot, I'm getting phone calls. They've sent me a message, they've sent me an email. So I know that I want to, I'm pretty sure I want that car. But if I didn't, if I weren't pretty sure, I wouldn't have filled in the form because I knew that was going to happen. So you almost hold back away and go, right, when I'm ready, I'm going to fill that form in because they're going to start getting in contact with me. yeah there is definitely the hesitance about leaving the contact details in it because we do know what's coming now in today's age if you're in the social media and marketing space a lot you know potentially if you haven't had that exposure before you're still a little bit surprised but I think we are all hesitant with the information now So if someone was to approach you and say, look, I've never touched LinkedIn beyond setting up a profile and not a photo, say for an estate agent who was looking to grow their business, wanted to spend about fifteen minutes a day on LinkedIn, what would you recommend that they should be doing? So one of the good ways to build up traction, I think there's a few things you should do, like go on there. and connect with fifteen people a day. So in my first year, I grew my connections from two hundred and fifty people to fifteen thousand. And that was by connecting with the fifteen people a day. And it's making it a non-negotiable. You have to be really consistent with any social media. So fifteen people a day, then interacting with other people. So go on, comment on a few people's posts, like a few people's posts. And that sort of seems to push the LinkedIn algorithm into into action and also people will see your name and every time you post or every time you comment on something like a strap line your strap line comes up underneath your name so they can see exactly what it is you do and how you can help them and then do all that before you post and if you can post every day you'll build traction much quicker and the good thing about LinkedIn is you don't need to post any more than once Once a day, like on Facebook, I'm posting like three, four times a day. Some of the times where it's LinkedIn, once a day is plenty enough. So those three things, connect with your fifteen people, go on and comment and engage with a few people, reply to any comments on your posts and then put your post out there. That'll help you to start getting some traction. Are you particular about the time of day that you're posting on LinkedIn? So I think it works better when you do it in the morning, like before, before nine o'clock. But at the same time, I'm a big believer. It's better to post at any time than not post at all. So in that first year, and I made the commitment to myself to post every single day, no matter what, sometimes I'd get in bed and I'd be like, oh no, it's ten o'clock and I'm not posting on LinkedIn. So I just put something out there. That doesn't work as well now as what it, as what it did. So I'd be like, if you can't commit to that morning post, think about when are you active on LinkedIn? When are other people likely to be on LinkedIn? So I think it's the type of thing that people go on just before they go for lunch. They might go and check it or they might even check it in the lunch break. They might check it just after they get back from lunch. So if you've not posted before nine, you might think, well, I'll post between like twelve and twelve and half one, something like that when people are having the lunch or towards the end of the day at like half four when people are starting to wind down to to go home so it's just thinking um when are people likely to be active and actually weekends work really well which a lot of people tend to be surprised at but not a lot of people create content on the weekend for linkedin but people are still actively on there so linkedin's looking to it's not got as much content to put out there so you're much more likely to get seen by people I've never really thought about that because I have noticed that there's a decrease on that. I don't ever think to post on LinkedIn on the weekend, but it's exactly what you just said. There's less competition for your post. Yeah. Against, I suppose. Yeah, that's it. So get out there and not many other people will be posting. So it works really well. Okay. Okay. There's a lot of top tips that the audience can take away from that. So the highlights of what you've just said, then we're definitely looking to post daily. Yeah. done is better than perfect based on the times. What's kind of the mistakes that you regularly see that just drive you insane? Yeah. Well, I think what you just said that the word perfect, like everyone always thinks that they've got to be so perfect and polished. And a lot of people will say to me about LinkedIn, how they feel like they're not posh enough to be on there, like they've got to show up in the suit and tie and be really formal and actually just go on and be yourself and start now and you can get perfect later. It's about building in the consistency first. And then as you get further down the line, like even now, my posts aren't perfect, but I've got to a stage where I know if I put certain things out, I'm going to get people messaging me interested in investing. So it's like working on that one phrase. So where I am, the houses are really low value. So I often talk about buying four houses with two hundred thousand. And whenever I put that one phrase out, I get a couple of people messaging me interested in investing. So it's finding what is that thing that you can say to get those leads in. So yeah, I think trying to be perfect, trying to be super polished is one of the biggest mistakes people make when actually just show up and be yourself. One thing that I consume from being in your audience is your message is always very consistent. So do you advise people to keep hammering the same message or talk about different things each day? So I think with marketing, like it's, it's one of the things about it is saying the same thing over and over again and, and being thinking of like new and exciting ways to say the same thing. How can I, I'm selling this one thing. How can I say that in different ways across the month? Because a lot of people won't see your posts. So you can post every day religiously and some people still not know what it is that you're, you do because they're not they're not paying attention but one post that you put out with a slightly different angle they'll go oh my god that's perfect for me I need that or when it's the right time for them so especially in property and estate agents like they're they're not looking to sell the house until they're looking to sell the house so yeah like people aren't moving that often are they so it might be like well I moved here two and a half years ago and I'm like I'm never moving again but at some point I know I will And I think there's a big thing in there really knowing what pain points you are trying to solve with the audience or what reward you are trying to give them and that should then structure the way that you speak to them because you mentioned earlier on about a hook so do you feel like every post you put out is the hook where you spend the most attention? yeah so what I usually do is I'll write the post and then I'll read through it and I'll be like what's the best part the most interesting most exciting part of this post that I've written and that goes to the top so a bit like how you're getting like a newspaper article or um you know clickbait posts on on facebook you'll see something and that's the most exciting bit but that gets you engaged and it triggers something in your mind and you're like I need to read more So that's the bit where it's like, how can I make that more exciting, more engaging so that it stops people in the tracks and makes them want to read it? Definitely. So would you say for then on a lead generation basis, LinkedIn is your most effective platform that you put your message out on? So I only really use LinkedIn for property and then Instagram, I have got a property Instagram page and I'll just put out stories of refurbs and things like that. And I will also still share pictures of the kids, pictures of me on nights out and stuff like that on there. So it's a bit of a hybrid where people can get to know me. And then on Facebook, I just use Facebook for my LinkedIn training. And before I started using Facebook, I'd only really used LinkedIn as a business platform. Facebook is brilliant for my LinkedIn training. So I think it's going everything... has a place it's working out what's easier for each business so primarily the people I'm targeting for my LinkedIn training are people in property and there's lots of property groups on Facebook so I can go in I can post about my property projects I can post about new investors tell them that I've signed them up through LinkedIn tell them my tips about LinkedIn and that's a really easy way to to get leads for that business. Whereas the property groups on Facebook for investors are not the right type of investors for me because they've done property courses and they've got over high expectations of what can be achieved basically. So they're not the right clients for me. So it's working out your ideal clients, what is it that they're looking for? And there's a place for everyone, isn't there? There's some people who just want an estate agent that's as cheap as possible and they'll go for the cheaper names. They're not bothered about the service. They're not bothered about the photos. They're not bothered about someone like showing them around on the viewings. But then you've got other people who go, no, I want a personal service. I've had a really bad experience with those cheaper estate agents. I don't mind paying more. for that service. So where are those people who are willing to pay more? And I think it'll be easier to find those on LinkedIn for estate agents. Well, yeah. And also knowing, I think that's a big thing to take away is, you know, not necessarily the platform that you prefer, but your message on where your audience is. Cause I suppose what you've just said about Facebook feed and your LinkedIn business there is that people that are good on LinkedIn, you're not going to be easily finding on LinkedIn. yeah that's it and I think my linkedin business could do really well on linkedin but what I really like about my linkedin business is that I am actively using it for a separate business and it's working for me I think it's easy to make linkedin training on linkedin work but I need that platform for my for my property business but yeah the facebook is a lot more fun I much prefer hanging out on facebook but I compare it to like Facebook is like a party where you go and see your friends and you'd see like you'd find out what they're up to. Whereas LinkedIn is more like a networking event. So it's thinking about what do you want? It's not necessarily about being on the most fun platform. It's about getting the most business and the right clients for that business. A hundred percent. And I think that that is sometimes, you know, a tough lesson for estate agents to learn is that I've seen many business owners as well, just want to be on the platform that they prefer. Like I've always preferred Instagram, but when I was a self-employed partner, my audience was on Facebook. So I had to learn that a very different way to actually understand why the results were not associated because I'm trying to find my audience in a place that they weren't existing. so that's a really big takeaway and it's just really taking on the platform that you don't necessarily prefer but where the audience are and just kind of doubling down because you've mentioned it all throughout our conversation today it's it's about the consistency I think yeah and that is the hardest bit it's like show up building it into a habit so that you actually show up every day um but when like I just keep reminding myself like do I want the business or or not yeah I want it so I need to do it I need to post I need to be visible And it gets to the stage and this goes back to sharing like the personal stuff as well. Like I'll meet people for the first time and they'll feel like they already know me. And they'll say like, I actually thought we'd met, but I've just realized we haven't. I've just seen you so much on social media that I recognize, I recognize your face. It's almost like that familiarity that you get when you see someone in a soap or a TV program. And then when you say, if you've ever seen them in real life and you're like, oh, like that's, oh, and then you realize it's someone that you know from TV and you don't actually know them in real life. Yeah, and I think how powerful that could be for estate agents, you know, that when they turn up on the doorstep for that valuation appointment, that the customer already feels like they know them from a content perspective. You're in leaps and bounds ahead of where you would have been coming from a faceless brand. That's it, you're not just meeting a stranger at your door, you're meeting someone that you're already familiar with and you already like. No, a hundred percent. I think that is a really good way to end the conversation. So Rochelle, for the audience listening, where can they find you on these platforms if they obviously want to talk to you about investing in any property or growing their business on LinkedIn? So there's only one Rochelle Gilburn as far as I'm aware. So if you search me on LinkedIn, if you want to see what I'm doing on there, have a look at my profile, how I've got it set up and everything. If you want to know more about my LinkedIn train and if you follow me on Facebook, I've also got a group on there where I teach people how to get visible on LinkedIn. Well, Rochelle, thank you ever so much for joining me today. And I'm sure the audience took loads away from it. And obviously, audience, stay tuned for our next episode of the Elite Agent Masterclass.