Do you want to know how to successfully use Instagram to scale your real estate business?
Instagram marketing can be an incredible organic marketing tool for real estate agents. If you use it correctly, you can quickly build a community filled with ideal clients and become their go-to agent.
But if you focus too much on the wrong things when it comes to Instagram, your account will start to go downhill very quickly. Rather than being a lead generation machine, the only thing Instagram will be is a massive waste of time.
Here’s what so many real estate agents get WRONG when it comes to Instagram.
They focus on quantity > quality
They believe they should focus all of their efforts on growing a massive following (oftentimes, at any cost).
But having the wrong type of followers on Instagram (or any non-ideal followers for that matter!) is probably one of the worst things you could do when using Instagram for real estate.
It’s not about having more followers, it’s about having the correct followers.
If your followers are not relevant, they’ll only hurt your account.
A big part of that has to do with the Instagram algorithm. Let me explain!
How The Instagram Algorithm Works
Here’s what happens when you post on Instagram.
When Instagram first pushes out your post, it only gets shown to 10% of your followers.
If your followers react to it (i.e. through likes, comments, saves, shares), then Instagram will show your post to the next 10% of your followers. It’s kind of like a sliding scale.
So what happens when you don’t have the correct followers?
If you have irrelevant followers, people that aren’t actually interested in your services and will probably never work with you, your post will get zero engagement.
That first 10% of people your post is shown to won’t like, comment, or share because ultimately your content is relevant to them.
And after that, your post’s reach tanks. Instagram stops showing your post to any new followers.
But on the other hand, if you have fewer followers that are highly relevant followers, then your post gets picked up, and more and more people will actually SEE that piece of content.
When you build a highly engaged following, it signals to Instagram that your content is valuable and pushes it out to new people.
4 Ways To Use Instagram For Real Estate And Build An Authentic Following
So how can you build a genuine community of clients online? How can you use Instagram for real estate in a way that helps you connect with real potential clients?
Here are some tips you, as a real estate agent, can use to leverage Instagram.
Do Not Buy Followers
The fastest way to kill your reach on Instagram is to buy followers. This is the epitome of non-ideal clients. And because buying followers is against Instagram’s regulations, it could even result in getting your account banned.
If your ultimate goal is to get more eyes on your content, you have to remember that it’s not about the numbers.
While seeing a large following on someone’s Instagram profile might provide a little bit of social proof, at the end of the day the number of followers you have is a vanity metric.
Vanity metrics make us feel good. They make us feel like we’ve made it.
But when all is said and done, a large following does nothing beneficial for our real estate business. All it does is kill our reach and prevent us from reaching the people we actually need to be reaching.
So make sure to ditch any spammy practices to increase your following, especially if those practices include buying followers. Killing your reach on Instagram is very hard to come back from. There’s not much that can revive a dead account, and you may even need to start over from scratch.
Instead, stop obsessing over your numbers and focus on building a community of highly relevant, local followers in your area. You know, the type of people who might actually HIRE you one day!
Delete Ghosts or Bots
Even if you’ve been super careful with curating an intentional following, it’s highly likely that you could still have some suspicious characters in your following.
I go through my account on a regular basis to delete ghosts, bots, and irrelevant followers. If they look like they’re not real people, or they look like they wouldn’t be a part of my target audience, I’ll remove them.
I do this because it’s so important to me that my content reaches the right people. I’d rather have fewer followers have 100,000 followers that don’t truly support me and my mission.
Remember, it’s about creating a curated community that’s going to interact with your content.
Create Content to Attract the Right Followers
In order to build a truly authentic community, it’s important you create content that’s super targeted.
Your posts aren’t random. They’re not just ‘whatever you feel like posting’ that day.
In order to create posts that will resonate, go back and revisit your ideal client avatar.
Create content that speaks to your ideal client’s hopes, dreams, fears, and struggles. Be a valuable resource for them and you’ll quickly find them engaging with your posts, tuning into your stories, and connecting with you in your DMs!
Don’t Play The Follow For Follow Game
One of the spammiest ways you could use Instagram for your real estate business is playing the follow-for-follow game.
Again, people who use this tactic are of the mindset that bigger is better when it comes to their Instagram following.
Follow-for-follow doesn’t make sense for any business, but it’s especially ridiculous for real estate agents.
If you’re selling to a New York market and someone from Georgia follows you, why on earth would you follow them back?
This person will never become a client and is only interested in their own superficial growth on the platform.
When you’re using Instagram for real estate, you need to focus your efforts on growing a local community.
Instead of aimlessly following just about anyone, be sure to build relationships with potential clients in your market. You can find these people by searching for locations, on local hashtags, or just by checking out your followers and seeing where they’re from.
Instagram can be a powerful tool for generating leads for your real estate business, but you have to use it intentionally.
By focusing on quality over quantity, on authentic connections over spammy growth tactics, and by creating targeted content, you’ll be able to develop real relationships on social media.
You’ll create genuine connections that may even turn into paying clients!
Do you want to learn more about developing a marketing machine that helps you effortlessly attract leads and fills your calendar with appointments?
Download The Listings Lab Guide for Exponential Growth 🚀
