Instagram Marketing for Real Estate Pros
What to Post, How to Reach More People, and More!

The short answer… YES. Just take a look a look at these stats:

• 1 billion people use Instagram every month
• 200 million Instagram users visit at least 1 business profile daily
• Ads on Instagram receive 4x more engagement than ads on Facebook
• 75.3% of U.S. businesses will use Instagram in 2020
• 83% of Instagram users say they discover new products or services on the app

As you can see by the stats, your clients are on Instagram, and Instagram marketing can be very effective. The trick is in understanding the platform, what it’s useful for, and how to make it work for you. 

How to Make Instagram Marketing Work for You 

First, you need to understand that it’s unrealistic to expect you’ll post on Instagram, get tons of followers right away, and have leads pouring in. Rather….

1. Instagram is a social media platform. It’s not meant to be a mass broadcasting tool unless you’re a celebrity on influencer.
2. Instagram provides a way to connect with people we already know, or want to know, and it can provide a way to make new connections
3. Instagram is a tool to communicate with your sphere, get recommendations, & increase the number of connections. 

If you focus on the connection aspect--sharing your expertise, glimpses of your day-to-day live, listings, properties and so on--you can further your relationships with your sphere of influence as well as connect with new people and potential clients. 

What Content Should I Post to Instagram? 

This is where a lot of people get stuck, and why a lot of real estate professionals abandon Instagram for their businesses before ever really giving it a try. 

With so many possibilities, figuring out what makes engaging content can feel daunting. But it doesn’t have to be! Instagram will work best if you can find ways to incorporate things you’re already doing in your professional and personal life. Here are just a few examples of things you can share: 

• Real Estate (current and past listings) 
• Your expertise
• Your clients (you helping them achieve their real estate goals)
• Your real estate life (a glimpse of what you do behind the scenes)
• A little bit of your normal life (let people know you’re a real person) 

There are many ways to incorporate video--lazy listing tours, market updates, tips for home buyers & sellers, etc. However, if you want to save some time and still make easy, engaging videos, we recommend the app Lumen5. 

With Lumen5, you can easily overlay text, captions, and more to your own photos and videos to give them that something extra. OR, you can use Lumen5’s library video vignettes to quickly create a video from scratch:

Now that you have an idea of what to post, you’re going to want to get your awesome posts in front of even more people. And the most effective way to do that on Instagram is by using Hashtags. 

Hashtags are keywords or phrases strung together with the pound sign in front (#). They are used to draw attention, organize, and promote social media posts. Hashtags are the secret to marketing on Instagram, when used correctly. 

Examples: #2020 #realestate #austin #austinrealestatemarket

Using a relative keyword or phrase as a hashtag on a social media post will categorize that post so it can be easily found in a search. 

This is especially important in marketing real estate. Using certain hashtags like #realestate, #realtor, etc., categorizes your posts and will make them easier to find when someone is searching for real estate related posts. 

Sue Zimmerman, Instagram Expert, says this about hashtags, “In order to attract your ideal follower on Instagram you have to have a hashtag strategy. Start with broad hashtags that represent your service or products then niche down to what keywords your clients would use to find you… Hashtags become Hubs of content and you want to be a part of the Hub, i.e. the conversation.”

It can be hard to come up with new, relevant, or creative hashtags (especially with all we have going on already as Realtors) that will reach your target audience, which is how we discovered the #HashMe App. 

The #HashMe App does the hard work for you by creating hashtags based on Instagram's algorithm and trending information. 

#HashMe is an AI powered Hashtag Generator that helps you get more likes, make the trending page, and grow your instagram. (This is a free app and all of the information in this blog is based off of the free version, but you can also upgrade to the paid version.)

With #HashMe you can 

• Upload a photo to search for hashtags
• Manually search for hashtags with a keyword or phrase
• Copy and paste hashtags directly to Instagram
• Get more of your content seen by users searching hashtags and in turn convert that into more likes and follows

How to Post Consistently and Make Posting Easier

As important as Instagram marketing is, it’s also time consuming...

It takes time to find the right content to post,  the right caption to post, and to create the right hashtags and tags(check out our latest blog on the best hashtag generator tool for more tips on that one)... 

Then once you actually get that down you have to figure out when the best time to post is, what posts and days get the most engagement, what photos get the most followers, etc. 

As real estate agents, we typically don’t make time (or have time) to sit down and think out our posts in advance, especially since Instagram doesn’t have a way to schedule posts in-app, which is why a lot of us end up forgetting to post consistently, or at all. 

If you want to post more consistently this year, we’ve got the tools to help We’ve researched and found two of the best scheduler apps out there. You can use these tools to help you keep up with your Instagram account and your 2020 goals!

Sked Social 

Sked Social is a paid tool that lets you visually plan and schedule instagram posts and stories to engage your audience and convert more customers. 

With Sked, you can upload, edit, caption, and tag your photos before you schedule them to be automatically posted  to your Instagram posts and stories, Facebook pages or Twitter accounts. (But today, we’ll just be showing you how to use it for Instagram posts.)

By planning and scheduling your post in advance, you can stay more consistent, and consistent posting is crucial to Instagram growth. 

In fact, you can almost double your follower growth rate by moving from less than one post per week to 1-6 posts a week. And if you move from posting 1-6 times per week to 1+ posts a day, you can more than double your follower growth rate again!