Real Estate Social Media: 6 Reasons to Use Instagram

While it might have started off as a repository for celebrity selfies, Instagram has become the next “It” social media platform for marketing your business. Its visual nature makes it a perfect fit for real estate agents looking to make a personal connection with followers.

Here are 6 reasons for real estate agents to use Instagram.

1. Bigger is better

Since its debut in October 2010, Instagram has surpassed Twitter’s user base with 300 million users exchanging more than 70 million photos every day. It’s also popular with younger audiences — millennials, to be precise, who are projected to overtake Generation X as the largest group of home buyers.

2. Seeing is believing

Photos catch the eye better than text. Instagram is a highly visual platform — that’s the whole point of it — which makes it especially suited to real estate. You can effectively supplement your wordier listing flyers with a collection of photographic eye candy that brings each home to life.

3. Minimal skills required

Even if your photography skills are lacking, Instagram tools and filters can make your snaps look like part of a gallery showing. You can correct basic issues by adjusting contrast and brightness, or rotating the orientation if the image is slightly askew. Experiment with Instagram filters to apply different effects and get optimal color results for your photos. The most popular and clicked photos are the most vivid ones.

4. It’s humanizing

By offering users the opportunity to like, share and follow your content, Instagram is a great tool for making personal and engaging connections with followers. Like your other social media posts, your Instagram stream should include shots of you and your team that illustrate your local real estate expertise and relay your brand, whether that means elegant and urbane, youthful and hip, or somewhere in between.

5. You can double down with videos

If you've been wondering how to incorporate video into your marketing efforts, unfurrow your brow. You can shoot up to 15 seconds of video through Instagram, optimize it with a filter — even choose a cover image from the footage itself — and then post it to your stream. Enticing shots of the remodeled bathroom, chef’s kitchen or panoramic deck view can be viewed and shared along with your still photos from the home. Use Instagram’s Hyperlapse, a time lapse video app, to create a full home tour in seconds.

6. “Free” fits any budget

For zero dollars down, you can post as many photos as you want. You don’t have to upgrade to get any additional features. While paid ads could eventually make their way onto Instagram, you’ll have already built an audience that is familiar with your brand.

Social media has proven itself to be a highly effective delivery mechanism for brand messaging. If you’re not using it yet, why not start with Instagram? As a real estate agent, you’re constantly showcasing photos that help your clients buy and sell their homes as well as those designed to impart your personality and character. Instagram gives you the chance to get your photos in front of one of the biggest social media audiences out there without the pushy sales pitch.

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