Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
Instagram is one of the top social media platforms for real estate professionals thanks to its sheer simplicity. The platform allows agents to quickly and easily display attractive content to a target audience. It's also a mobile first platform that offers 60 times the advertising rate of Facebook, and 120 percent more user interactions than rival platform Twitter.
Given Instagram's potential, those who're just starting out on using the platform could do with being pointed in the right direction. In a blog post, Matt Murphy, chief marketing officer at Chime Technologies, a CRM platform for real estate, says the first step is to figure out what your objectives are. He recommends asking yourself questions such as "who is my target audience?", and "what conversion rate do I need for success". He also says it's important to understand how you will integrate Instagram with other social media platforms.
With that in mind the next step is to develop a content strategy, Murphy said. He recommends sticking with themes that will showcase your brand, market or particular real estate niche. Content strategies can also be built up around listings, services and data. In any case, the first thing to do is decide what kind of content you want to use. Instagram is great for advertising images, videos, graphics, chats and infographics, so these should all be considered. Once ready, create a content calendar and schedule posts according to this. Murphy advises "keep it fresh without losing the value of content by over inundating your community."
Hashtags are also essential with Instagram. Murphy says to choose smart hashtags that are relevant to your business and community, as a way of helping prospects find you. Possible hashtags include the name of the city, neighborhood or housing development your post relates too, as well as branding and other words associated with the particular property being marketed. Lastly, Murphy says it's important to hashtag other companies and people that hashtag you, as a way to build up your following.
Smart marketers also leverage user-generated content, Murphy says. This can be done in two ways: by publishing short client testimonials or client-submitted images or by simply allowing your community or followers to determine what you post. Track what garners the most engagement and do more of it. “Using user-generated content takes the guesswork out of marketing,” he says.
