Published: 02/08/2021 By Mark Tew - Senior Website Consultant
Easy and enjoyable to use, Instagram is a fantastic social channel for property agents with its ability to elevate a brand’s presence and to generate more leads for businesses.
With over a billion daily users worldwide, Instagram provides a brilliantly creative and visual platform with which to engage your audience. So, here are some of the most effective tips and tricks to utilise Instagram in the best way possible.
1. Use high quality images and videos
Firstly, one of the most important things to understand about Instagram is that it’s a visual platform. Quite simply, it’s all about photos and videos. So, if you can master these, you’ll see a dramatic rise in enquiries and leads for your property agency.
But before you get ready to upload them, you need to consider selecting those with the highest quality and strongest resolutions. You don’t want any blurry images which could put off potential clients.
The purpose of your images and videos are there to attract people and stimulate engagement and connection between you and your viewers. So, the ones with the best quality will lead to the highest engagement and deepest connection, and ultimately, the most enquiries.
2. Tell a story
The next thing you ought to consider, is storytelling. Story telling is an important part of any social media campaign and it’s an effective way to resonate with people and create a human connection. But, how can you tell a story on Instagram?
You may want to align your beautifully selected photos or videos with a caption describing the fascinating history of a property, any quirky features it may have, the neighborhood and what it’s like to live there. This will help your viewers to envision themselves living in the property and to stir feelings of excitement and curiosity. And of course, the most engaging stories lead to the most enquiries.
3. Post at the best times
Now, you may be tempted to post your amazing new property in the spur of the moment or at the end of the day, but before posting think to yourself – will I get the most views at this time? It’s easy to get excited about all those likes or comments, but you need to consider the time of the day when the most people will view your social post to ensure the highest exposure.
According to Sprout Social, as of May 2021, 11am to 2pm Monday to Friday are the best days and times to post on Instagram. In fact, Tuesdays are the best and Sundays are the worst. Considering this, before hitting that upload button consider the time you’re choosing and whether it’s truly the most effective time for your business.
4. Use Instagram Stories
Moving onto the features of Instagram, Instagram stories are an excellent option for your property agency.
They allow you to share photos and videos for a limited time of twenty-four hours on your profile. Even though they’re only up for a day, they’re a superb way to quickly inform your customers of properties. Not only that, but you can also add links to your stories so customers can swipe up and be taken directly to the property generating more social traffic to your website and more leads.
You may even want to add them as a highlight to your profile and consider creating a highlight called ‘New homes’. Highlights stay on your profile indefinitely and you can decide how long they’re up for; they’re an effective option for when wanting to create the longest exposure for a property.
5. Explore Instagram Live
With the recent announcement from Instagram themselves, video is about to become the key focus for the platform so it’s really important that you get to grips with it. One of key reasons being is that the Cisco Visual Networking Index has predicted that 79% of mobile data traffic will be video by 2022. So, from the looks of it, it’s pretty hard to escape video now!
Considering this, one of the video options you may want to think about, is Instagram Live. Instagram Live allows you to broadcast in real time and can be used for a multitude of reasons.
Firstly, you can live stream properties like a virtual tour. You can showcase your property portfolio, talk through their great features and respond to any queries from viewers. Also, you can livestream local areas so people can gain a deeper insight into what it’s like to live there.
Now, what’s so fantastic about Instagram Live, is that an endless number of viewers can watch. This will drastically boost your chances for more enquiries for your property agency and subsequently, more properties sold.
You can also use them as a chance to do Q & A sessions with customers to answer any questions about specific properties, the property finding journey and your estate agency. They’re a wonderful way to interact with your customers on a much more intrinsic, human level and allows your property agency to be seen as leaders in your industry.
6. Use IGTV
Following on from Instagram Live, considering adding IGTV to your video marketing strategy.
IGTV is a long-form, more immersive style of video which can be up to one hour long, takes up your entire screen and is a great way to connect with viewers and reach more people.
One of the best things about IGTV, is that you can share your videos from Instagram Live. All you have to do, is click ‘Share to IGTV’ and hey presto- up it goes! This is great for property agents, as those property tours and Q&A sessions will be able to reach even more people and potentially generate more leads for businesses.
Here’s another cool trick for you – you can share your IGTV videos to Facebook. This is a fantastic way to target all your customers, importantly, those who may not have Instagram. Just make sure your Instagram is linked to your Facebook account and tap the ‘Make Visible to Facebook’ button – easy!
7. Create Instagram advertisements
The final feature you may want to think about are Instagram advertisements. With very specific targeting, Instagram is great for reaching for more customers, building a stronger brand presence, and generating more website traffic.
You can be very precise in who you wish to target as you can set the age range, gender, their interests as well as a location radius ensuring the right people for your property agency are targeted.
Once your promotion is up and running, Instagram will establish who’s interreacting and who’s not and will then show the ad to people who are similar to the ones who are. This will create a higher reach rate and more website traffic.
Before getting too excited, make sure to set a budget of how much you wish to spend a week, a month etc as well as the length of time you want an ad to be promoted for. Instagram recommends at least seven days so their system can gain an understanding of whose interacting with your ads most effectively.
To conclude, Instagram is a brilliant platform to build a brand presence and to generate more leads for your business. With the platform itself continuously growing and evolving, you can grow your property agency with it exploring the vast opportunities on offer and reaching out to as many customers as possible.
Have a question about this blog? Or perhaps your property agency is looking to generate more quality inbound leads? The Webdadi team is on hand to help – just hit the link below to contact us today.
