Editor’s Note: Social Skills is a bi-monthly feature in RISMedia’s Daily News focused on social media and digital marketing tips, trends and solutions for agents and brokers.
Across the real estate industry, notable agents, brokers and firms often have a compelling presence on social media, and consistently amplify their voices, beliefs and business strategies to their unique following. While Instagram has seemingly become harder to navigate in past months, with posts becoming prioritized as a result of what Instagram thinks followers want to see rather than ensuring chronological visibility to users—hitting the “algorithm” each time, which Instagram used to take pride in—the new system isn’t impossible to master.
These are the four best ways to enhance your Instagram profile, whether you’re a broker, agent or firm looking to gain traction as a voice in real estate.
Switch your profile to creator mode
First, if your account isn’t in creator mode, you’ll want to switch to that setting on your profile to ensure that you have access to the appropriate data to effectively measure your growth progress.
Once in creator mode, features provided to users include a professional dashboard and growth insights, where statistics, metrics and post reaches are trackable—imperative if trends are going to be monitored for improvement. To access insights, head over to the profile section at the bottom right of your profile, and click your professional dashboard. Check out how many accounts you’ve engaged, while seeing the total number of gained followers through your latest posts over a set time period, and more.
Post accordingly
Now that you’re in creator mode and can apply new tactics and measure account growth, post accordingly. You can click on your new professional dashboard, click followers, and see when your followers are most active. If the bar graph shows a majority of your audience being online at 7 p.m., it’s worth posting a few pieces of content at that time throughout the week, and monitoring the posts for positive trends. If the posts “hit the algorithm” with your followers, gaining likes, comments and reposts, there’s a good chance that numerous other like-minded real estate professionals and potential clients will come across your profile—whether that be from the explore page, because you’re creating content relevant to their interests, or because you’re being seen from various reposts/shares by mutual accounts.
Diversify content, and post relevant items
Make your content unique. The same post 10 times over doesn’t do much for users except turn them off from your account, and Instagram can even list you as posting spam. Not all posts will gain traction or reach millions of users, but it’s crucial to continue to post unique content that is differentiated. Switch from photos to video reels, give commentary, and ensure that you are putting out the highest quality posts that you can.
Hashtags—yes, they still work
It seems like a blast from the past to mention hashtags, but believe it or not, they still do the trick for growing content.
Some of the most popular Instagram hashtags in the real estate space are #RealEstate, #RealtorLife, #Property, #Realty and #HousingMarket. Hashtags help ensure visibility, and a relatively new feature for Instagram users is the ability to follow hashtags—meaning, people can follow these keyphrases, and your posts will show up in their feeds. Stay consistent listing your posts with these, and you may end up gaining a brand-new following.
Are you looking to boost your online presence, enhance your content and grow your real estate business? RISMedia’s ACESocial is truly simple content marketing proven to highlight your expertise, increase engagement, generate leads and build brand awareness—all in one place. To learn more or sign up today, visit acesocial.rismedia.com.