Here’s an interesting experiment for you: get a dozen or so realtors to write on a piece of paper the top three features they’d want in their ideal marketing platform. Features that would have the most impact on their reach and branding potential.

 

instagram for real estate

 

What you’d most likely end up with are a bunch of papers pretty much describing most things you can do with Instagram.

Top 3 features real estate agents want in their ideal marketing platform are things you can do with Instagram. Click To Tweet

 

Without a doubt, Instagram has grown to be one of the most powerful social networks out there, and it’s ideally outfitted to handle the needs of real estate agents looking to leverage social marketing for their business.

 

Its user base favors the “on-the-go” type of content that’s so familiar for realtors (constantly moving around showing properties, doing open houses, etc.) which gives you a unique opportunity to nurture and manage a polished property catalog combined with an effective channel to attract new clients, leads, and referrals for your business with little added effort.

 

And that’s what social media marketing is all about!

 

Now, as it’s the trend with most other social networks right now, compelling video content can make all the difference in the world for your marketing strategy. Helping you stand out and set yourself apart from the competition when done right.

 

 

As a real estate agent, you get to use video to invite people inside properties in an immersive way and evoke that emotional connection you want out of any potential buyer. It also lets you use the visual appeal of buildings and decorations to convey the implied quality for your services, capturing people’s attention and allowing you to capitalize on that interest.

 

That being said, not every video works the same!

 

When it comes to content, each social network has their own preferences, which directly influence how their users respond and engage with it. Being aware of these can save you a lot of time, effort, and headaches along the way by bypassing the steep learning curve you’d otherwise have to go through.

 

To that end, I’ve put together a brief write-up on three essential aspects you should keep in mind whenever you are making a video for your real estate business. So you can start growing your reach and benefitting from the increased exposure.

 

Which types of videos work best?

 

The first thing I want you to consider as you start producing video content for your real estate business Instagram feed is the style and format of the video you are making. While you might be tempted to start recording and uploading a long series of segmented videos showing each inch of a property you want to showcase, this might not be the best way to go about it!

 

Instagram’s a platform that prefers shorter, bite-size content (something we’ll come back to in a little bit), and showcases are but one of the many creative types of videos you can use to further your real estate marketing effectiveness.

 

Company Story Videos:

A company story is an industry term that refers to those videos showcasing the people behind a business. As a realtor, you and the image you project to the world is effectively your company. Which means that making videos that further that image in interesting, endearing, and engaging ways directly enhances the effectiveness of all other content you create.

 

 

Try making some “on-the-go” type videos, showcasing you preparing for an open house or just after closing a deal with some clients. These type of “behind the scenes” sneak peeks perform well with audiences and further their connection with your brand and content.

 

Product Videos:

The gist of product videos is to create an engaging piece of content that showcases the strengths and appeal of a product. Translating that to your real estate social marketing is very simple: these are the videos you use to showcase your properties.

 

 

However, trying to cover a whole property in a single video (or worse, a series of short videos) might prove to be counterproductive. Instead, aim to hone into a particular characteristic of the property that conveys its overall appeal (a beautiful kitchen, a luxurious pool area) and complement the rest with images and descriptions. This mixture of media is prone to be more effective.

 

Testimonial Videos:

Few things can convince a potential customer who’s still on the fence about contacting you faster than a testimonial video. Hearing and seeing the happy reactions from customers satisfied with your services can advance your lead generation efforts in great strides overnight.

 

Making good testimonials might be a bit more involved than you think, especially for an untapped market like Instagram, where you need to keep runtimes short, but you can find a lot of tips online for making the most out of testimonial videos.

 

Which video lengths should you aim for?

 

As I mentioned before, the length of your videos is a critical factor that can influence their performance. The mobile nature of the platform has influenced the patterns by which its users consume the media on their feeds, and if you want your video to perform well, there are some considerations you should be aware of.

 

To make it easier, let’s break it down by the different video options you have on the platform and see how they perform best.

 

Instagram stories have had a huge surge since their inception, as they provide a perfect bite-size piece of video content to your followers. They tend to perform better (as far as user engagement) when kept anywhere around 15 seconds. Stories are ideal for creating short “company story” type videos with an approachable and informal feeling to them.

 

As they are short-lived (lasting 24 hours unless you preserve them as highlights) you don’t need to worry too much about production value beyond projecting the branding image you are after.

 

Timeline videos are the other primary way of video distribution you’ll be using most frequently for your social marketing strategy. These are the videos you upload to your timeline and appear in you viewers feeds. With timeline videos, you have a bit more leeway as you can extend them up to a minute.

 

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Selling Your Home! #30secondswithJade

A post shared by Jade Mills Estates (@jademillsestates) on

 

However, I’d advise you to try and keep them as close to 30 seconds as possible, as this length seems to be the sweet spot for engagement. Timeline videos work great for your product videos (showcasing features of a property) testimonials, and how-tos.

 

Lastly, you have IGTV, a new bet from the platform for long-form vertical video content, and it is shaping up to be a powerful contender in this arena. The rules on IGTV are still being written, so I recommend that you experiment and see which lengths perform best.

 

As of right now, most accounts are capped to 15 min runtimes, with some selected ones being allowed up to one-hour lengths. Doing more in-depth tours of properties and discussing topics of interest in a more extended manner seems to be the ticket for realtors on IGTV, so adopting similar strategies to the ones seen performing well on YouTube is probably a solid starting point.

 

 

What about optimization?

 

To have an effective social marketing strategy that actually pays off for the time and effort required to make good content, you can’t just leave things to chance.

 

As important as it is for you to make quality content, you also need to take advantage of every available avenue at your disposal to ensure that those fantastic videos you are putting together actually perform well and end up bringing value to your real estate business.

 

Optimization (known for its more fancy name SEO) is all about utilizing these avenues of promotion to increase the chances of your videos being seen to as many people as possible, so let’s go over a handful of the most important ones and make sure you are doing everything in your hands to bring about the results you are after.

 

Hashtags:

hashtags are the big ones, and they work as keywords denoted by # signs that tell Instagram’s algorithm and other people the main topics relating to your video. Some hashtags are no-brainers (like #realestate), but you should research and find more precise hashtags capable of bringing more views to your content than general ones ever could.

 

Openings:

It is hard to overstate the importance of your video’s opening, but suffice it to say that most people will decide whether or not to watch the whole thing out of the first 1 to 3 seconds of a video. If nothing else, take from this guide the importance of nailing great attention-grabbing openings for your videos.

 

Captions & Descriptions:

These work in a similar fashion as hashtags, but give you more room to benefit from copywriting and entice people to watch. All your timeline videos should have an appealing caption that makes people at least click it, and your descriptions should be exciting and prompt people to want to share your content.

 

Make sure every video you come up with has a set of relevant hashtags, captions, descriptions, and openings that tempt people to keep watching, and you’ll have a robust framework promoting the content you make.

 

Summary

 

Discussing all the things you can do to build an effective social marketing campaign on Instagram for your real estate business could fill up books, and hours of video courses. However, by keeping in mind the simple, yet effective advice we went over, you are already ahead of the game from most other competitors that remain unaware of the full potential they are missing out on.

 

Start producing those highly targeted, quality videos and enjoying the fantastic power Instagram has in order to bring your real estate marketing to the next level.

 

 

Bio Victor Blasco:

Víctor Blasco is the founder and CEO of the explainer video company Yum Yum Videos. He is also an audiovisual designer and video marketing expert. Aside from running the business, he loves studying Chinese Philosophy and is a real geek for science fiction films and comics!