How Should Mortgage Brokers Use LinkedIn Without Sounding Corporate or Wasting Time?

Why Do Most Mortgage Brokers Struggle With LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is one of the most misunderstood platforms in mortgage marketing.

Many mortgage brokers join because they are told they “should be on LinkedIn”, but few are shown how to use it properly. The result is predictable. Profiles are created. Content is posted inconsistently. Connections are random. After a few months, it feels like a waste of time.

From my experience as a mortgage broker and now as a mortgage business coach, LinkedIn is either a powerful inbound lead engine or a complete distraction. The difference is structure.

Most brokers fail on LinkedIn for three reasons:

• They treat it like a business page platform instead of a personal brand platform

• They connect with the wrong audience

• They post content without a clear funnel

When those fundamentals are wrong, no amount of posting will fix it.

Is LinkedIn a Business Platform or a Personal Brand Platform for a Mortgage Broker?

At its core, LinkedIn is a personal brand platform.

Yes, it is professional. Yes, it is business-focused. But people connect with individuals, not logos.

Business pages on LinkedIn have very limited reach unless supported by advertising. For a self-employed mortgage broker or mortgage advisor, time is better spent building authority through a personal profile.

This means:

• Your profile should clearly position who you help and how

• Your posts should reflect your perspective and experience

• Your voice should be visible, not hidden behind a company name

This does not mean posting personal details unrelated to your work. It means human positioning. Clients and prospects need to feel that there is a real professional behind the advice.

In my own journey, LinkedIn was the first platform that worked for me. It allowed me to build authority around mortgage business coaching because it centred around my profile, not a brand page. That same principle applies to brokers targeting clients.

Who Should a Mortgage Broker Connect With on LinkedIn?

One of the biggest mistakes I see in mortgage marketing is brokers connecting primarily with other brokers.

There is nothing wrong with networking within the industry. But if your goal is mortgage leads, your connection strategy must reflect that.

If your network is filled with:

• Mortgage brokers

• BDMs

• Industry professionals

Then your content is being shown to people who do not need a mortgage.

LinkedIn’s algorithm prioritises engagement within your network. If your network is misaligned, your reach is misaligned.

A mortgage advisor should be connecting predominantly with:

• Their defined niche

• Individuals they genuinely want to serve

• Professionals aligned with their target audience

As a mortgage business coach, my network is largely mortgage brokers because they are my clients. A residential mortgage broker should not replicate that model.

Why Is Choosing a Clear LinkedIn Niche Essential for Mortgage Brokers?

LinkedIn is demographic-specific. It allows targeting by job title, company type, and employment status. That is a major advantage if used correctly.

However, it does not allow targeting by vague psychographic categories like “first-time buyer”. Nobody lists that as a job title.

This is why niche clarity matters.

On LinkedIn, strong niches include:

• Self-employed professionals

• Limited company directors

• Sole traders

• Specific industries such as dentists or consultants

• Women in business

Self-employed professionals often perform particularly well on LinkedIn because the platform is full of business owners. A mortgage broker specialising in self-employed clients can:

• Search for directors and founders

• Connect strategically

• Create content tailored to their income complexity

That alignment is powerful.

Without a clearly defined niche, a mortgage broker’s LinkedIn activity becomes scattered and ineffective.

How Many Connection Requests Should a Mortgage Broker Send on LinkedIn?

Consistency beats intensity.

A simple system I teach brokers is:

• Send 20 targeted connection requests per day

• Do this Monday to Friday

• Focus only on your defined niche

That equals 100 connection requests per week.

Not all will accept. Even if 20% accept, that is 20 new relevant contacts per week entering your ecosystem.

Over time, this compounds.

The purpose is not vanity growth. It is controlled network building. When the right people are consistently entering your network, your content has the right audience to land in front of.

Without this step, LinkedIn feels like shouting into the void.

What Type of Content Should Mortgage Brokers Post on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn content works best when it follows a structured funnel:

• Awareness

• Nurture

• Action

This applies across all mortgage marketing channels, not just LinkedIn. It is something I break down in more depth on my YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@AshBorland, where I discuss long-form marketing strategy for brokers.

What Is Awareness Content on LinkedIn?

Awareness content introduces new people to your thinking.

On LinkedIn, this is primarily written posts. Short, clear, educational or observational posts that:

• Highlight common client mistakes

• Explain mortgage concepts

• Share insights from real cases

• Challenge common myths

Written posts typically receive the highest reach. For most mortgage brokers, three written posts per week is a strong baseline.

The purpose is not to go viral. It is to:

• Attract your niche

• Demonstrate competence

• Position yourself as a professional

How Should Mortgage Brokers Use Video on LinkedIn?

On LinkedIn, video is more nurture than awareness.

Short videos, around 30 seconds, work well because they:

• Humanise you

• Show your tone and personality

• Build familiarity

These videos will usually receive fewer impressions than written posts. That does not mean they are less valuable.

Video builds trust faster than text. In mortgage marketing, trust is the asset.

What Is the Role of LinkedIn Newsletters for a Mortgage Advisor?

LinkedIn newsletters are an underused tool.

They function like an internal email list. When someone subscribes, they receive notifications and emails when you publish.

A mortgage broker can:

• Repurpose longer educational content

• Turn YouTube transcripts into structured articles

• Publish once per week or fortnight

These articles deepen authority.

For brokers wanting structured guidance on building this type of marketing engine, I outline similar frameworks inside the FREE 30-Day Mortgage Broker Boost at https://ashborland.com/boost, where the focus is on systems rather than sporadic posting.

Depth content increases dwell time and reinforces expertise. It signals that you are not simply posting surface-level updates.

How Should a Mortgage Broker Optimise Their LinkedIn Profile for Action?

Awareness and nurture are ineffective if your profile does not convert attention into action.

Your profile should:

• Clearly state who you help

• Clarify the problem you solve

• Use the featured section strategically

The featured section should not showcase your most liked post. It should direct people to:

• A website

• A lead magnet

• A booking link

The goal is clarity, not ego.

For those exploring how positioning influences conversions more broadly, I regularly share educational breakdowns on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/ashborland/, particularly around profile positioning and messaging clarity.

Do Likes and Shares Matter for Mortgage Brokers on LinkedIn?

Metrics can be misleading.

Impressions, likes, and shares are not the objective. Mortgage leads are.

When brokers obsess over reach, they often drift into performative content:

• Overly dramatic storytelling

• Forced corporate clichés

• Generic motivational posts

That approach attracts attention but rarely attracts qualified clients.

LinkedIn should be treated as a controlled funnel:

• Connect with the right people

• Educate them consistently

• Build familiarity

• Make it easy to act

That is different from chasing engagement.

Should Mortgage Brokers Use Direct Messages for Outreach on LinkedIn?

Outbound direct messaging is widely debated.

Some professionals build businesses through cold outreach. It can generate results.

However, from a positioning perspective, it changes the power dynamic. When you initiate the conversation, you carry the burden of persuasion. The recipient holds the option to disengage immediately.

Inbound marketing, by contrast, positions the mortgage advisor as the authority being approached.

My own approach, and the approach I teach through https://ashborland.com, is heavily inbound-focused. That does not mean outbound is inherently wrong. It means that for many self-employed mortgage brokers seeking calm, repeatable systems, inbound is more sustainable.

The long-term question is not just whether DMs can generate sales, but whether they build durable trust.

How Can Mortgage Brokers Make LinkedIn a Consistent Lead Source?

LinkedIn works when treated as a system, not a series of random posts.

The process is straightforward:

• Define a niche that is searchable on LinkedIn

• Connect with 20 targeted individuals per day

• Post three awareness-driven written posts per week

• Publish short nurture videos

• Create a recurring LinkedIn newsletter

• Optimise your profile for clarity and action

Over time, this creates a repeatable inbound flow.

In my experience as a mortgage business coach, most brokers do not lack opportunity. They lack structure. LinkedIn is no different.

Used correctly, it becomes a steady source of inbound enquiries. Used casually, it becomes another platform that “doesn’t work”.

The difference is not talent or creativity. It is clarity, targeting, and consistency.

For a mortgage broker willing to approach LinkedIn with intention rather than impulse, it can be one of the most effective marketing platforms available.

FULL PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

 So how can mortgage brokers 📍 use LinkedIn without being stiff or sounding corporate or just not really working? LinkedIn is an interesting one. It's one that fun, like fun fact, fun story. My career started on LinkedIn. It's how I, how I built my first ever social media platform that worked to be fair. So I've been on LinkedIn way longer than I would like to admit, and I have.

Had really great success on it. I've also had times where it's really failed. Um, so there definitely a lot that I can tell you. And it's probably at this point now, one of the main drivers of new inquiries to my business. And, um, I wanna share with you some of the pitfalls of what people do and actually how you can.

Use it effectively. 'cause as a mortgage advisor, it's very, very good. It's a brilliant platform. In fact, if you want to use it correctly, if you don't use it correctly though, you will be spinning your wheels over and over and over again. It feels like a massive waste of time, and it will be a massive waste of time.

Actually doesn't feel like it. It will be if you don't get it right. So. That's what we're gonna unpack in this video. So the very first thing we talk about with LinkedIn   📍 📍 is it is a personal brand platform. Okay?  So yes, it might be a business platform. It's very B2B, it's a corporate-y kind of businessy social media network effect.

That's what it is. That's what's great about it. But it at its. Core, it is a personal brand platform, meaning it's all about you individually, not about your business. There are business pages out there, they suck, like no one's using business pages. Really, nobody's looking at them. Nobody cares about them.

It's all about. Your personal profile. So that's the first thing you need to think about is don't even bother with the business page. It's a waste of your time. You need a personal profile, which means you also need to be building that personal brand, meaning connecting with people as you sharing stories around you.

And we're gonna talk about the type of content stick around to later on 'cause we're gonna talk about the content that you should make and this the ways and the types of content and the purposes of those through this video. But. It is a personal platform. It does need to be sharing a personal feeling type of content.

It doesn't, it shouldn't be personal. It should drive towards what we actually want, the help, what we're trying to help, help and work with. But it should feel like that. The next thing to point out with LinkedIn that we need to understand is that   📍 📍 you need to connect with the right people.

 So don't connect with. Your mortgage brokers. One of the worst things you see with this is LinkedIn is a social kind of networking platform for professionals. Most of us are brokers adding and connected to other brokers talking about mortgage brokering or talking about how to, how we can, you know, help you with a mortgage only to broadcast that to more mortgage brokers who don't need help with the mortgage and are most likely looking at you and thinking you are rubbish.

'cause they're gonna always have that 'cause they obviously are gonna think they're better than you. 'cause that's just the nature of competition in business. Everyone's gonna think they're the best. You don't wanna have a platform full of mortgage brokers. I have a platform full of mortgage brokers because you guys are my clients, but I'm not a mortgage broker.

I'm a coach. There's a big difference. I'm a coach for mortgage brokers, so it's. Quintessentially different at its core. So what you must not be doing is connecting to brokers, to BDMs. You can if you want, but it's hurting your, your, your connections. It's hurting your reach, it's hurting this platform working.

If you're just connecting to people within the industry, you should be connecting with people who want you wanna follow 'cause you're actually interested in what they're doing. That's fine, but also you should be connecting. Predominantly with the right type of people. Which brings me onto my third point, which is   📍 📍 choosing your niche on LinkedIn.

  You should have a LinkedIn niche. You should have a niche that you are going to.

Use only on LinkedIn. So if that is, um, so let's say for example, you work with people locally, that's a niche, well you can't really do that on LinkedIn, so you need to be very clear on LinkedIn who you help. And with LinkedIn, one of the things that's really interesting is it's, it's um, what we call demographic specific.

It's job title specific. I can connect with mortgage advisors and do very, very well with that. Because that's the, because I know who they are, I can find them, I can connect with them, and that's great. But you know, if it's like, you know, first time buyers, you know, no one's got in their profile first time, we can't search that.

So you can't connect with the right type of, with with, with the random kind of psychographic or geographic. You can, in some ways, niches. What you really want is a niche that's, that's very clearly targetable now. Interestingly with LinkedIn, the best niches on LinkedIn is self-employed. Always self-employed.

So that could be complex income, could be limited. Company director could be, um, sole trade, like sole trader. Could be. That's kinda it really, to be honest. But self-employed and or bad credit could be a good one as well. But self-employed always does Well, and let's think, let's play that out for a second.

Why does self-employed do well? Well, it's pretty straightforward. You've got. A platform that is predominantly being used by business owners trying to promote their businesses and then you are going to target them. It's a no, it's a no brainer. So really it's the best platform. This niche is self-employed people on LinkedIn, if you wanna do well with it, there are others on there that do well too.

But, you know, um, another one's, for example, if you're a woman, women in business is really great niche. Like that's a great niche. Men in business doesn't really do as well personally. It's a bit of a fail that one. But women in business really, really good. So if you're a woman and a and a mortgage advisor, that could be a really great thing to do on there.

And I have a few clients who do that and do very well with that. So it really comes down to what set your kind of disposal, which then once we've done that brings us to the next one, which is,   📍 📍 once you know who that niche is, you then need to add them every day.  You need to go out, connect with them. 20 do like, was it two?

Two tens, 20 every day, five days a week. You get a hundred connection requests every single week. So you wanna do Monday to Friday, you should be connecting with those people every single. And I do this myself. I connect with mortgage people within a mortgage advisor, mortgage broker, all that type of stuff.

I do that every single day, 20 a day, every single week. Now, again, you're probably gonna get maybe 20% of those are gonna accept. So let's say 20 outta the a hundred are gonna accept. But what's good is they're now coming into your ecosystem, which is what we're gonna bring onto next about the content and stuff that you should be making.

But they're gonna come into your ecosystem when they come into your ecosystem. Now is where it all gets very exciting because now you are going to have the right people that you're gonna be able to target with the right type of marketing, with the right type of messaging, and that's fundamentally why LinkedIn does well.

The reason why majority of you who do LinkedIn are failing is because you're not getting that very, very set up. So you might be making the content. If you haven't got those things beforehand, you, you're not doing it, approaching it as a personal brand. You're not connecting with the right people. You're connecting too much with other brokers and people in the industry, and then you're not adding people and bringing people in because you're wanting them to come to you, then you're fundamentally gonna fail with it, in my opinion.

This leads me on to the, um, to the, to the   📍 📍 content.

So when it comes to content, there is a.   Specific method that I follow with my content for LinkedIn. It's very straightforward and it is, there's a couple of things you have to do now. First of all, I spoke about this before in the la I think it was last week's episode actually on this, uh, on the, on this series, which was about the types of content you need, and that is awareness, nurture, and action, every platform needs.

That's effectively a funnel awareness, makes people aware of you. Nurture makes people like and trust you. And then, um, action makes people take action. It's kind of straightforward there. So whenever we're looking at any platform, anything we do with online, offline, however it is that is a funnel system, we need to look at how do we build that.

So with LinkedIn it's actually very, very straightforward. Awareness is written posts, so with LinkedIn you need some form of written posts, and that is. Going to be written an image or it can be written on its own. Sure. Within Reason, snappy, you can go look at mine if you want to go to Ash Ball and you'll find it on LinkedIn, you'll see it, but it's going to be something either results driven, observational driven, but bear in mind this is going to new people, so it's people who don't know you.

That's the goal of this. Now, yes, it's gonna go to people who know you do, but it's going to go to people who don't know you as well. Now, ideally with that written content. You're gonna wanna probably do three of those a week, in my opinion. If you wanna do like best kind of practice, you're gonna want to do about three of those a week, that's gonna push to new people.

You then move down to the nurture part. So the nurture part, I would split into two categories.

Because there are two things you can do with LinkedIn for Nurture. So the first one is video content. So video content is great on LinkedIn, but it's like different to every other platform, is that it's nurture instead of awareness. Whereas on every other platform it's more awareness than nurture. It's very confusing.

The great thing about video content is it's gonna get people to see your face. It's gonna get 'em to hear your voice, and it's gonna make you human. So on a platform that's predominantly written, those videos will stand out and will get people who are interested in you watching them short 30 seconds only.

Don't do some big deep dive educational piece. That's not what you need to do. Gotta talk about that in a second. But on these, a short 32nd video. So they can kind of start to get to know you a little bit, see your face, hear your voice, that type of thing. Now, their views on that or the impressions on that so to speak, will be much, much lower usually than the written ones.

And this is the mistake people can make. They can just do the written because the written get the most views or, or the written in the image, that kind of static post. They get the most kind of impressions, but it's a game you need them to be to build them up. So you need the written ones and then you need the videos to build that nurture.

Now, on top of that, you can also add depth, and I call this, this is like depth and depth of knowledge. And this is LinkedIn articles. So LinkedIn articles, which is also known as LinkedIn newsletters. And that's what you really want is a newsletter are like a bit of a sleeper tactic. They're brilliant 'cause what a LinkedIn newsletter does.

It's effectively an email marketing platform built into LinkedIn, so you can write an article. I do mine once a week, which is, I ideally recommend people do once a week. That will be, this I'm doing right now will be turned into a LinkedIn newsletter. So all of my long form content, my weekly long form show that I do on YouTube, that becomes my LinkedIn article.

It's transcribed, it is returned, and I use the concept into, and then rewrite, re rewrite it and re repurpose it into that, um, article. But that article, that newsletter. Gets emailed out to everybody who subscribes to it. I'm nearly, nearly at 4,000. I'm about 3,900 and something subscribers on my newsletter, which means that those people are getting emailed from me.

Every single week through LinkedIn, so it's an extra point of contact. It brings people back to you. It's deeper because it's about 750 to a thousand words, and that just adds another layer. What's also great is every time you connect with somebody, it asks them if they wanna subscribe to your newsletter.

So if you are connecting with the right people, what a shock they're gonna get. A newsletter that says, like with me, mortgage Business Mastery. That's the name of the podcast, which is also the, the, the series we do here. That's also the name of the newsletter. Because it's the same content, it's the same concepts, and so they're gonna get one.

I'm a mortgage, I'm adding mortgage brokers. I'm a mortgage business coach, and I have a newsletter called Mortgage Business Mastery. It'd be a no brainer to download it, which is how you get people onto it. So this is a very, very clever system in how to make it work, and that's what I love about it. And then you have the action partner.

The action part is getting people to take action. You just need to optimize your profile, make your headline very clear. Who you serve and what you help them do. And very clear signposts of feature posts. And the feature posts shouldn't be the most liked post. This is a really common thing on LinkedIn.

It's incredibly egotistical of like, here's the most liked post. No, it shouldn't be that. It should literally just be the ones that you are featuring to get people to take action, go to your website, stuff like that. So the profile is optimized for action. So that's your awareness. Written, nurture video and, and articles.

And then action is profile. And when you do that, you absolutely can clean up. If you've got a very targeted and clear niche and person, you're, you are connecting to.   📍 📍 It's not important for like shares and followers.

 It's really not. The goal of this is to just get people through a funnel. So if you are thinking I need more impressions, I need more of that, you will end up going down the stupid route of just being way too, like LinkedIn, cheesy, awful content. We all know that content, how I'm walking down the road and then I saw the homeless guy and now I decided that.

You know, it's made me think about my work. It's just terrible stuff and we've seen it. Don't do that. Focus on being educational helpful. You are working with your clients, but you are targeting of a specific problem. If you apply that, you'll do well, but forget about the metrics. The metrics do not matter.

There is another bit you can talk about with this,   📍 📍 which is direct messages.  So sliding into people's dms on LinkedIn. Now, this is an interesting one because this has brought up quite a bit. I myself am not a fan of this. But there are people out there who I respect who teach this method, and I respect them a lot.

So it doesn't mean that I think it's a, I'm not going to slam anyone who's doing it. I myself am an inbound, very big fan of inbound leads. I'm not a fan of outbound leads, and I'll explain why that's the case. When somebody, when you reach out to somebody and you say you can help them, which is great, and that's fine and you can get business from it, when you do that, it is on your shoulders to show the person how you can help them.

Which means that you are the person without the power in that dynamic. This is why I don't like it. It's why I do not like cold like outreach, like, like outbound leads supposed to inbound leads. If you are doing that now, it's on your job. You've got to try and get them, show them. And if, if the person has at the end of in the conversation, the person who can say, look, you reached out to me.

Whoever can say that has the most power in that conversation. 'cause it's the ending. So if you are saying to them, I can do all this stuff, and then they go, you know, I don't really want it. Let's say with insurance, I don't really want it. You reached out to me. That is a bad place to be and that's why I do not like DM marketing.

I think it's pretty salesy. I think it's sleazy and it puts you on the back foot of everything else if you wanna do it. There are people out there that teach it. That's fine. I don't like it. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I think it's a bit rubbish personally, but. You don't need it. I've run my entire business without using it, and all my brokers who I work with don't use it.

But if you do everything else, you'd be fine. But there are people who teach it and if they wanna teach it and they wanna do it, that's absolutely fine too. I'm sure it gets you sales. I dunno if how much of it builds long-term. Um, trust as a whole different question.

 Now, we spoke about it a bit in here, this awareness, this nurture, and all of that type of stuff. And so without creating content that actually converts, but I actually did a deep dive on that last session. So last episode, that was exactly what I did, and I broke that down in more depth. So if you want a bit more clarity on that, I'd highly recommend you check out that video.

I'll put that on screen right now for you so you can click on that one. Check that out. It give you a bit more knowledge around. The concepts of the type of content that you should be creating, the real types of content, the psychology about it, what to say and what to say, when that's something you wanna check out.

Just give that a click.