Best practices for Instagram content and scheduling

Have a clear purpose for posting on your real estate Instagram

All of the content you post should ladder up to an overarching purpose. Think about the goals you are trying to achieve by posting. For example, are you hoping to convert customers? Or, maybe your goal is to keep a lively, engaged community. You’ll also want to decide how you plan to show up on the platform. Consider your tone of voice, the brand assets you will incorporate, and the value you want to bring to your audience (e.g. entertainment, tools, resources, or education). However you decide to show up, make sure it aligns with your purpose. 

Optimize your real estate Instagram bio

Before you get to posting, let’s make you are putting your best foot forward with you a strong Instagram bio. A succinct bio will help attract your intended audience. Here’s what to include:

What you sell.

Clearly state that you are a real estate agent. Even if your feed consists solely of photos of houses, reiterate that you are a real estate agent, not a leasing company or interior designer.

What makes you different.

Identify your niche and include that in your bio. Are you certified in Feng-Shui? Do you specialize in ultra-luxury real estate? Are you engaging with your clients differently because you have a specific background? Add one or two adjectives that summarize your brand’s niche or specialty like “fixer uppers” or “luxury housing”.  

Who and where you serve.

There are over 25 million business accounts on Instagram. Make it easy for customers to find you by clarifying who you serve and where. For example, you could pride yourself on delivering “stress-free first-time home buying experiences in Minneapolis,” or maybe you’re “San Diego’s top producing real estate agent for military veterans”.  

Your call to action.

Ultimately, your presence on Instagram should be driving new customers to support your business. Direct them to view your properties, read your testimonials, sign up for a free consultation, and more. Make sure the link in your bio matches your call-to-action, so customers know what to expect when they land on your website. You can use tools like Linktree, Tap Bio, or Linkin.bio if you want to add multiple links to your Instagram bio.  

Who you are.

Getting personal with your bio can help customers identify with your brand on a deeper level. For example, you could share that you’re a “small women-run business based in Santa Monica, CA” or a “Father-son duo based in Austin, Texas”. 

Make a plan and stick to it

The key to growth on social media is consistency. Be realistic with your bandwidth. If you can only dedicate time to posting 2x per week, stick to that and scale up as your bandwidth allows. An inconsistent posting schedule will not only inundate your followers but will make it significantly harder to track any data or engagement for your posts. 

You can leverage tools like Hootsuite or Buffer to schedule your posts in advance, making it easy to remain consistent. These tools also highlight time blocks when your audience is most engaged, signaling the best time for you to post throughout the week.

If you’re wondering how often you should post, we recommend following the 80/20 rule. 80 percent of your content should be authentic, unbranded editorial content, and 20 percent of your posts can be dedicated to selling a product or service.  

How to create and share authentic content on your real estate Instagram

Establish yourself as a thought leader

Social media has opened up an incredible opportunity to establish yourself as a thought leader to grow your business. Many of the real estate industry’s best Instagram accounts have been able to master the art of thought leadership to gain followers, customers, and credibility. Here’s how you can do it too: 

• The Law of Reciprocation. Think about what you can give your audience before asking to get something from them. Your aim should be to continuously add value to your customers before you make an offer or ask for something. 
• Give value-based content for free. Some examples of this include “how-to” information, free guides, tips, eBooks, webinars, white papers, or videos with helpful tidbits. You could also share curated content like infographics, blog posts, and inspirational quotes. 
• Spotlight your fans and supporters. Increase follower loyalty by featuring past clients or re-sharing their content if they tag you. 

Decide what type of content you should post

From listing videos to staging tips to motivational quotes, the list of the type of content you can post on your social media is endless. If you need some inspiration for your social media content, here are 50 Real Estate Instagram Post Ideas. 

How to understand your engagement on Instagram

Use the Instagram insights page to track performance 

The Insights page on Instagram is a great starting point for understanding your engagement. It is broken down into three tabs:

1. Activity. Here you can view account discovery and interactions. Account discovery includes the total accounts your profile reached as well as total impressions. Interactions are all actions taken on your account including profile visits and website clicks. 
2. Audience. When it comes to reaching your target demographic, the Audience tab should be your first step. This is where you can monitor your follower growth week over week, including gains and losses, as well as get a high-level view of who makes up those followers.  
3. Content. On the Content tab, you’ll see a full overview of your posts for the week, including the number of posts and views for your recent posts, stories, and promotions. Tap the “see all” button on any category to get a closer look at individual posts. 

Diving into the numbers

You can use the above data to monitor and improve your performance on Instagram. Most scheduling tools can pull your historical data and calculate the below key performance indicators. You can also calculate these manually using the following formulas:

• Engagement rate: likes + comments / followers
• Effectiveness rate: like + comments + saves + video views / reach
• Growth rate: the rate at which your audience is growing
• Weekly earned reach: the number of impressions you receive through user-generated content 

Strategies for growing your real estate Instagram

Key strategies for Instagram growth

Consistency coupled with these two proven strategies will help you achieve optimal growth for your real estate Instagram: 

1. Community management. Regular conversations with your followers, brands who service your ideal client, and prospective customers are really important to growing correctly. We recommend setting some time aside each day to go through at least 10 profiles and engage with their posts and story content.  
2. Collaboration. There is immense strength in collaborating with other professionals who have a similar mission or can bring value to your customers and vice versa. For example, you could partner with another real estate agent on a referral-based program and promote each other on your Instagram profiles. If you want to grow your presence as a thought leader, you could make a guest appearance on another thought leader’s Instagram reel, or start an IG Live conversation and encourage your followers to tune in.  Collaborating with other business owners can lead to mutually beneficial partnerships that expose huge audiences to what both of you have to offer. 

Need help with your real estate Instagram strategy?

If you would like help executing these tips in your business or more guidance around your specific business strategy, check out our social media management solutions and book a 1:1 strategy call with our team.  

For more helpful pointers to grow your real estate business, tune into our free bi-monthly educational series titled Building Your Presence. Follow our Instagram for updates on the next webinar!

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Luxury Presence is one of the fastest-growing digital platforms for real estate professionals. To learn more about how to build your brand, close more deals, and expand your network, get in touch with us today!