“People come to Instagram to be inspired and discover things they care about, and that includes content from brands and businesses.”
–business.instagram.com

For the real estate professional, Instagram can be a wonderful platform to genuinely connect with people and have a brand recognized by consumers. If you’re not currently marketing yourself on Instagram, here are some statistics that will change your mind.

1. Instagram is a young social platform. Generally, millennials and Gen Z’ers prefer Instagram highly over Facebook. You’ll get ahead of the curve by targeting these people, especially millennials, and turn that into ROI.
2. 60% of people say they discover new products on Instagram.
3. 200 Million+ Instagrammers visit at least one business profile daily.
4. 1/3 of the most viewed stories are from businesses. Don’t know what a “Story” is? Don’t stress! We’ll cover that.

Set up a Business Profile
It’s really as easy as 1-2-3. Follow these simple steps to set up your business profile on Instagram. A business page is a great resource to have as it allows you to run ads and boost posts to reach potential new clients, keep track of insights (who’s viewing the posts, at what time, and on what day), and to connect with customers in a whole new way. A personal Instagram page doesn’t have the same opportunities.

Bio = Elevator Pitch
The Instagram bio (the short area of text at the top of a page) is basically that person’s elevator pitch. Once a follower reads the bio one time, she gets a glimpse of who she’s following and then she’ll never read the bio again. This is the one opportunity to draw someone in. Keep it short to the point, use emoji’s to break up the block of text, and make sure it sticks.

Shoot for a 2:1 Ratio of Followers
Generally, a successful Instagram page has twice the amount of followers as pages it follows. For example, if you’re a real estate agent who follows 300 accounts, you should have 600 followers on your page. The goal is to have more people following YOU as a brand, leader, and influencer than people you follow. Start eliminating this problem by unfollowing anyone who does not follow you back. Get picky!

Hashtags
Hashtags are how people will find you and your posts. Did you know you can use up to 30 hashtags? Use hashtags on all of your posts and make sure that at least 1-2 of them are personally-branded. What does that mean? Have 1-2 hashtags that only you would use, no one else, unless they were posting about you. It can be a blend of your name and your niche. For example, ours is #firstintitle and then each rep has his or her own branded hashtag as well.

Use the Right Visuals & Unify Your Brand
Instagram is a highly visual platform. Unlike Facebook, it relies purely on captivating images to draw in users. Don’t settle for just any photo you find online (also watch out for copyright). Use the right ones that match your brand’s color. Every color has a color code. If you don’t know what yours is, you can upload your logo into this website and get the color code to make sure every post is unified with the same color.

Stories, stories, stories
As stated earlier, one-third of the most viewed stories on IG came from businesses. Instagram stories are, similar to Snapchat, a photo or video that you can feature for 24 hours and then it will disappear. You can use all sorts of filters, stickers, location, hashtags, tag others, etc. in your stories. The people that you tag in the story can, in turn, share that same post in their own story and voila! Your original post is now in front of that person’s followers too.  Another great thing about stories is that they are discoverable. Which means people who don’t follow your page can still see your stories! You can post as many as you want and they show up in the form of a slideshow for users to view.

Overall, there are so many thing you can do on Instagram to reach new audiences and be a part of your community. Try to think outside of the box and really hone in on the value that you, personally, bring to your community. Why should someone follow your page? Do you have anything interesting to say? Are your images fun to look at? Do you have anything valuable to provide? Ask yourself these questions before starting your account!

As always, we are here to help you. Reach out to your local rep for a one-on-one meeting and he or she can sit down with you and go over these tools with your accounts and make sure you succeed.