New Instagram Features for Real Estate Marketers
Instagram was once thought to be a platform meant for pictures of kittens, fancy dishes, and artful lattes. Now 85% of top brands are on it, and 60 percent of its 400 million active users log in each day, making it the most engaged social network second only to Facebook.
Instagram released several major updates in August, including Stories, a photo-sharing function similar to Snapchat. It allows users to create a string of pictures and videos that can be viewed by their followers for 24 hours. With the increasing popularity of Stories, Instagram has incorporated several additional features to make it even more useful.
Links to external pages.
For those in the real estate world, the most important update is arguably the addition of website links into an image or video in the Stories feed. By giving viewers access to a URL, posters can direct their followers to a specific landing page. At launch, this feature was only available for verified accounts, meaning those owned by brands or celebrities.
Once it’s available for lesser mortals, this feature will bring some significant advantages for real estate agents. Realtors who share photos or short videos of new properties will be able to direct viewers to the listing’s landing page. Or those with DIY or property-buying video clips can have links to full videos on YouTube or recordings on their own websites or other social pages, like Facebook or Twitter.
Marketing possibilities are immense, with the primary goal to drive traffic you stir up on social media to a landing page where you can capture lead information.
‘Mention’ other users.
The easy ability to create new connections is a great advantage of Instagram. Through allowing users to mention others in Stories, story-creators can target pictures or videos at specific people. And tagging someone thus immediately turns available to all users, so there is no delay.
One example is to use it to showcase happy clients. If an agent makes a successful transaction with a client, they can take pictures or videos at different stages and share it later on a storyline for all of their followers to see. The clients feel appreciated as well once they know you’re excited to be engaged with them.
You can also make use of this feature in Q&A sessions. If there are relevant questions that most of your clients have, you can record a short video response (or series of short responses) and mention individual clients in the caption.
Benefit from the ‘Boomerang’ Effect.
A stand-alone app that works specifically with Instagram, Boomerang creates ultra short, one-second videos that loop back and forth, so the matter needs to be suitable. Though nothing revolutionary, it’s a fun way to interact with Instagram followers. You can use this feature to show off clients celebrating after closing a transaction—dropping keys into hands, making a toast, opening the front door, etc.
While Instagram is indeed a great platform to promote your brand and your listings, it requires considerable effort. Needless to say, challenging for a busy real estate professional to maintain along with other platforms. No need to worry, we have several comprehensive social media plans available that are designed specifically for busy real estate professionals who are looking to connect better and engage with their audience without wasting any of their own precious time.