Agents

June 18, 2019

Today, social media gives us the opportunity to show up in a multitude of different ways, but if you ask me, not all kinds of content are created equal when it comes to real estate marketing.

In this post, I will be exploring the four different kinds of content you can create on Instagram, which are the best for real estate agents, and how to leverage them for growth in your business.

If you haven’t yet tapped into the huge potential of Instagram for real estate, you might first be wondering why this matters. Well, for one, there are a LOT of people on Instagram. Over a billion monthly users, in fact. Instagram is the second most trafficked platform behind only, you guessed it, Facebook, who purchased just Instagram 18 months after it launched in 2012.

So, yeah, it’s an important place to show up if you want to find any success on social media. It’s a great place to stay top of mind and connect with potential buyers and sellers in your market multiple times a day.

Now for a free app, there’s really a lot you can do with Instagram. They give you a bunch of features you can utilize, but in my opinion, not all are equally as impactful. So I’m going to share the four content types in the order of my favorites.

#1 - Posts in the Feed

Posting to the feed is the original type of content on Instagram. Before they unrolled all kinds of new features, it was just a photo app to share image posts. Therefore, if you do nothing else on Instagram, you’ve gotta be sharing posts to your feed.

This is a photo or video up to 60 seconds that you can post to a sort of gallery attached to your username. They stay there forever unless you choose to archive (hide) or delete it. These posts are what someone will see when they go to your profile and choose to follow you, so you need to make sure this is good, thoughtful, intentional content. I share a lot about how to make better posts in my free guide which is linked down below, so you can grab that there.

In terms of production ease, it’s easy to choose a great photo or video - just make sure it’s high quality, not overedited. The content should be really good since anyone can watch this at any time. You can choose a long form caption to share stories, lists, or ideas, or you can have a short and sweet inspiration caption.

Now, in my last Tip Tuesday I explained the different types of lead generation, Paid Vs. Organic which I will link above if you haven’t watched it yet. For posts in the feed, they can be either. You can just put your post up on your feed and be done with it, or, if it’s a really good piece of content that you think can generate leads, you could pay to promote it to be seen by a larger audience.

For the ease of creating this content, and the importance, I definitely place this in the #1 most important kind of content to produce on Instagram, and you should be showing up there with at least one post 4-7 days a week.

#2 - Stories

Stories are absolutely #2 on my list of the most important types of Instagram content you can post. Stories are 15 second video clips or 10 second photo clips that are posted to a separate feed, and disappear within 24 hours.

Now you might be thinking, what? They disappear within a day, why are they important than? Here’s why: Stories is where you fit anything that doesn’t belong in your feed. That means the behind the scenes, day-in-a-life vlog type content. Because stories are fun-sized and don’t stay up for long, you can do these on the fly. There is really no production requirements here because you can shoot photos and video for Stories right within the app.

I also love Stories because you can do a bunch of cool things with them by adding Stickers. Stickers are little functions that allow you to add a gif, tag your location, add hashtags, and most importantly, create polls, quizzes, or invite questions right in your stories.

I’m not the only one obsessed with Stories - studies show that users on the app consume stories more than feed posts. This is also true for Facebook, by the way.

Now, you cannot promote Stories posts, but you can create stories ads. By paying for a Story ad, you get a feature called swipe up which basically creates a link in the ad to where ever you want to send prospects if they choose to swipe up on it. Story ads are incredibly effective and actually not very expensive, so it’s worth looking into.

Stories get far more views and engagements from posts in the feed, and, with how easy they are to create, Stories come in a verrrry close second on my list. You should be showing up in your stories every single day to interact with your Instagram followers and build engagement in your community.

#3 - Instagram Live

In 2019, the social media networks are making it pretty clear to us that video is where this ship is headed. Facebook unveiled it’s live feature years ago, and Instagram wasn’t far behind. Instagram live can be done right within the app, and it’s exactly what it sounds like: a live broadcast featuring...you!

When you go into Instagram Live, it gives you a 3-2-1 countdown, and then connects to the live stream. Then, it will notify your followers that you’re live, and they can view the live broadcast as long as you’re on. They can also leave comments or ask questions, making this a really engaging way to interact with your audience.

Now, it’s not hard to get Instagram live set up and going, but you should have an idea for what you’re trying to accomplish on Instagram Live. Users tuning in will expect to be educated, motivated, or inspired, so you’ll need to spend some time before the broadcast putting together some good content to share.

This is number 3 on my list not because it’s not valuable - it is, and it can do great things for your Instagram account - but because most agents are afraid to go live. Scratch that, most people on social media just don’t love the idea of hopping on, face to camera, and sharing something on the fly. So unless you believe you can do this at least twice a week, I don’t know that instagram live is where you’ll want to put all your time and attention into.

#4 - IGTV

IGTV or Instagram TV is a relatively new feature to the app, and it is longform, vertical formatted video. This also has its own separate feed called a channel, and again, it kind of works just as you’d expect. IGTV videos can be between 15 seconds up to 60 minutes long. Think of it like a Youtube channel. Now when IGTV came out, it was BIG. Like, I was super pumped thinking this is it, this is the next wave of digital content. But, it didn’t take off like I expected it to.

One of the problems I see with IGTV is at first when it came out, there weren’t a lot of mainstream mobile apps to help with editing and formatting these videos with ease. This mattered because users watching IGTV a lot of times expected to see a more polished, production style video like Youtube. It also takes time to format that content in a different way from the rest of the content users share to Instagram, so just for that reason, the fact that it takes a lot more time and effort to get them produced, and the relatively lower consumption rates. I put IGTV 4th.

So there you have it. In the order of importance, I rank the types of content as Posts in the feed first, then stories, Instagram live is third, IGTV is 4th.

At the end of the day, this is what I tell to agents: we aren’t digital marketers. We can spend a lot of time and effort getting to use all of the different features that these platforms provide, but you have to know yourself and your business and your audience who should be potential buyers and sellers, and decide what the most important types of content are to post.

For me, that’s a post to the feed every day, and stories 7-10 times a day. It sounds like a lot, but I plan out this content once a week and I’m very intentional with my strategy. And, the time is well worth it, because every week I am lucky to talk to leads that come into my direct messages inquiring to buy or sell with us.

I’d love for you to try this out and start seeing results! And if you want to take those successes even further, be sure to download my Instagram Guide for real estate agents, I have it linked down below with some other resources, or you can go directly to www.Instagrowthforrealestate.com/blueprint. It’s totally free, and it can definitely help you start to grow on Instagram.