If you’re active in the Instagram real estate scene, you know how lucrative it can be. In fact, Instagram is the 4th most-used social platform in the world with over 1.22 billion monthly users, 58% of whom say they’re more interested in brands after seeing those brands in Instagram stories.
Basically, Instagram is an extremely powerful tool for real estate agents. However, despite its popularity and relatively easy-to-use setup, growing your Instagram account can still be a bit challenging. It takes time—but you’ll soon find that it’s absolutely worth it.
How To Supercharge Your Real Estate Instagram Account
There’s really a pretty basic method to supercharging your real estate Instagram account. The number one thing you need to do is to PROVIDE VALUE. If you aren’t providing something that’s valuable to your audience, they won’t stick around to listen.
There are three main ways to provide value to your Instagram audience:
- Educate them on what’s happening in the real estate market.
- Highlight local businesses in your real estate area.
- Share your experiences in a way that helps people learn from your journey.
If you create content surrounding these topics, your Instagram account WILL grow, in time. It may just take a few months for your follower count to really take off.
Create Content
There are two main types of content to focus on creating for Instagram.
1) National Content
If you want to grow a truly wide audience, you must provide some kind of national content. Don’t forget that referrals are still an incredibly lucrative form of business!
If you know agents around the nation who would be willing to partner with you, you can create a huge base of followers from around the country and refer them to your partner agents as necessary.
So, share content that touches on national real estate issues and covers the market as a whole. This type of content will attract a lot more viewers in the long run and provide you with a larger, steadier follower base.
2) Local Content
Of course, if you want to use Instagram to generate business, you’ll definitely need to keep an eye on local content that you can create as well. Remind your Instagram community that you are there to serve them by providing local information and real estate services.
Your goal with this type of local content is to make yourself the local digital major. When people are seeking important and relevant information about the local real estate market, you want them to come to you first.
Put content out there that educates and engages locals. Highlight local businesses, talk about the local market, give neighborhood tours, etc. Make sure your followers know where you’re based and get to know your area well by viewing your content.
Use the Algorithm
Just like any platform, Instagram has a powerful algorithm that you can utilize to help you attract more followers. If you really want to supercharge your growth in the real estate Instagram sphere, keep an eye on what the algorithm wants to see.
Here are the main methods of engagement to look for, ranked by level of importance.
1) Likes
First, Instagram is looking for people to like your post. This means that your post was well-received. Unlike on Facebook, where reactions can mean all sorts of things, on Instagram, people will only like your content if they actually like it.
Focus on relatable, likable content for your audience. It also can’t hurt to put in a call to action (“Like if you agree!”) to give that natural engagement a little boost.
2) Comments
If you can get people to comment on your posts, you’re winning! Any comments lead to further comments and a wider distribution of your post. Encourage positive engagement by asking followers to comment.
This can even be as simple as asking them to tag a friend who would benefit from your content, as this both drives comments and attracts more of an audience from their friends and family.
3) Saves
Getting people to save your post means you’re really doing something special! When people save content, they do it so that they can return at a later date and continue to engage with what you’ve posted.
Create usable and relevant content that will remain fresh for a long time. This will allow your users to come back again and again when they need to re-reference the information you provided.
A great way to provide a lot of information at once is to encourage viewers to “scroll to the next slide.” Not only does this keep them on your post for longer, but it may also help you drive them to save the content if they’re short on time so that they can look again later.
4) Shares
Shares are powerful as they allow new users from all kinds of places and spaces to view your content. As you get more shares, new viewers may continue to share your work, which is ultimately how you could end up going viral!
Use a call to action to encourage shares—something like “Share this with your friend who needs to hear it.” If people believe that your content is valuable and their friends would appreciate it, you will almost certainly get at least a few shares out of the deal.
5) Hashtags
Instagram is especially known for the prevalence and importance of using hashtags. Most people on Instagram follow at least a few hashtags that are meaningful to them in some way. Use as many hashtags as you can without letting them completely overwhelm the value of your content.
There are a few main types of hashtags to include on every post:
- High-volume hashtags (e.g. #austin #homegoals)
- Geography-related hashtags (e.g. #austinrealestate #austinrealtor)
- Branding hashtags (e.g. #jaimeresendiz #josephgonzalez)
Add at least one of each type to the end of every post to drive more views.
Supercharge Your Instagram Today
You now have several valuable and actionable tips that you can use to drive traffic to your Instagram page and attract a wide audience. Keep your focus on creating valuable content, working with the algorithm, and always being willing to engage with followers who ask questions or make thoughtful comments.
If you can follow through on these simple steps, you can and will grow your real estate Instagram page! Just remember to be patient—anything that’s worth doing is worth taking time to do well.