No matter what your intentions are on Instagram—whether it’s to promote your listings or position yourself as a market expert—you can enhance your post’s reach and the amount of engagement it gets by using various tools and techniques. If you’re serious about taking your Instagram to the next level, you need to study up on the strategies that’ll help you resonate with your current and potential clients.

Agents today are becoming more bullish with their social media strategies—and for good reason. With less inventory and more competition for listings in most markets across the country, positioning yourself as an expert is one of the surest ways to attract leads.

In this blog, we’ll shed light on some of the best REALTOR® real estate Instagram templates, tools and techniques including:

• Hootsuite
• Market Insights
• ACESocial
• Video
• Agent Spotlights

Now, if you want to become an asset in your local market, then you need to have a solid Instagram plan in place by utilizing the best REALTOR® real estate Instagram templates and other strategies. Consider these eight:

1. Video

Of course, photos are always a great place for real estate professionals to start, but if you want to take your engagement and relationships with potential clients on Instagram to the next level, you need to be using video. During the pandemic, we learned the true value of video walkthroughs when open houses and showings were not possible.

You should still be posting photos regularly, but consider posting videos occasionally of your current listings or satisfied clients giving reviews, to give your Instagram feed a nice mix of content.

2. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is an ideal tool for those looking to schedule articles they’ve found online or published themselves. Hootsuite allows for automatic posts across your social media accounts and recently introduced a new auto posting function that chooses the ideal time of day to post your content.

Hootsuite is one of the most powerful scheduling tools that agents have at their disposal, and if you’re already using it to manage your Twitter, Facebook or other social media accounts, then you can simply add your Instagram profile to get your posts scheduled immediately.

3. Agent Spotlights

If you’re a broker or run your brokerage’s Instagram account, this suggestion is for you. It’s easy to post photos of listings and your brokerage’s accolades constantly, but you should also be highlighting the rock stars at your company that make your company succeed: your agents.

Potential clients will love seeing the human side of your brand, so be sure that a lot of your Instagram posts are showcasing your agents. You can include their headshot, with your brokerage’s branding with some information about or a quote as the caption.

4. ACESocial

RISMedia’s ACESocial differentiates itself from other social media automation tools in the fact that the content being posted to your social feeds is provided by RISMedia, publisher of Real Estate magazine. ACESocial posts automatically to your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn…and now, there is a solution for Instagram!

Currently, the platform has a full library of articles that you can either manually schedule up to two weeks in advance, or set it and forget it with the automated posting feature!

5. Satisfied Clients

As noted under the video suggestion, featuring happy clients is one of the most popular and impactful types of Instagram posts you can upload to your feed. Whether it’s a video review or a photo of your clients with their new home accompanied by a quote, get creative!

When buyers finally close on a home, it’s often a huge, emotional moment in their lives; if you’re able to capture that, it can make for some very compelling content. Also, as they’ll likely already be posting about the moment on their own social media accounts, be sure to ask them to tag you in their posts.

6. Templates

Instagram templates are a great way to create engaging posts with less effort than having designers at your brokerage create custom images. If you’re new to using templates to create posts, Pinterest and Canva are great places to start as they’re free and have a wide range of templates for you to experiment with.

There are different templates for you to use, whether you’re promoting a listing, an open house, a happy client or tons of other posts that you can think of. Be sure to include your brokerages colors and branding, and any relevant hashtags. 

7. Market Insights

Sharing market insights on your social media accounts is one of the best ways to position yourself as a local expert, and it’s an excellent way to diversify your Instagram feed. Potential buyers and sellers in your area will love seeing up-to-date information about their local market and what they could expect to sell their home for or pay if they were to move to your area.

These posts should be sprinkled into your feed, but you’d be surprised how something small like a post about a statistic can push someone to list their home. And, of course, if a seller makes that decision, you’ll be the first agent they think of. 

8. Facebook

In a list of the best Instagram tools that you, as an agent, should be utilizing, you may be surprised to find Facebook listed. However, Instagram is owned by the newly-renamed company Meta, which also owns Facebook, and founder Mark Zuckerberg has been working to make the experience between the multiple apps under Meta’s umbrella work together more seamlessly.

All this is to say that when you’re posting to Instagram, you should also be utilizing the feature that allows you to post to Facebook simultaneously. In your Instagram account settings, it’s as simple as connecting to your Facebook account and enabling the app to post to Facebook. This doubles the amount of posts you can put out, and potentially double your online engagement.

Conclusion

If utilized correctly, Instagram can be a treasure trove of potential leads for any real estate professional. This year, as much of the real estate world embraces technology, consider utilizing one or more of the techniques and tools listed above to stay ahead of the competition in your local market.

With these tools to create Instagram posts for real estate agents, you can perfect your broader social media plan and have more time on your hands to chase down those valuable leads!