Strategy #27 - Using Instagram (7 minutes)

Instagram Highlights allow you to categorise and showcase important content for easy access. Unlike posts that may get buried in the feed, Highlights remain visible on your profile indefinitely.

Recommended highlight categories for real estate professionals:

• Listings: Feature available properties.

• Client Testimonials: Showcase positive reviews.

• Educational Content: Share landlord tips and advice.

• Company Culture: Showcase the human side of your business with team outings, team-building events, or mix things up by having an agent take charge of social media for the weekend or day.

• Events & Conferences: Highlight networking, training attending and what’s being learnt, as well as any speaking engagements some of your team may have at a training event.

• Behind the Scenes: The fun, the birthdays and the day in the life of videos.

• Awards and Achievements: Any special awards your office or team members have won. Special achievements can include 100% of tenants paying rent on time, achieving record leasing with days on market, and so on.

By organising your content into Highlights, you ensure that visitors can quickly find valuable information without having to scroll endlessly through your feed.

My profile has:

• Coffee: This speaks for itself.
• Travel: Any travel I do outside of real estate, including my personal travel.
• Family: My kids.
• Training: This is either training I am conducting or attending.
• Qantas: While either on a flight or in a Qantas lounge at an airport.
• Tattoos: Ones I want to get, or are getting or future designs.
• Food: Who doesn't love food? Again, this speaks for itself.

When adding to Highlights, consider including images and video content. Be sure to manage the look of the Highlight buttons, ensuring they are branded to your agency or at least have a consistent appearance, with only the wording differing.

Posting great content is only part of the strategy. Engagement is what keeps your audience interested and builds trust over time, and yes, this is something that I have been saying frequently throughout this book.

It’s fantastic that you started to create content, but it all falls on deaf ears if you don’t engage and or reply to your followers.

Here’s how to stay active and relevant:

• Comment on posts from potential clients and industry partners.

• Reply to comments and DMs to build relationships.

• Engage with strategic alliances, such as local businesses, property investors, and home service providers. You can ask them questions and encourage their involvement.

• Join conversations by adding value to an already existing comment made on a particular post.

Power Tip: When using relevant hashtags on social media, remember that you're telling the platform what the post is relevant to, which is great for trending topics. Create hashtags around the relevance of your business and audience while targeting those you are looking to target.

A great example is what we do for my posts. I’m a real estate coach, so I use hashtags to describe the training I’m doing and the topic of discussion as well: #Realestatecoach #BDMCoach #BDMMentor #RentRollGrowth #PropertyManager #PropertyManagement #IGTMasterMind #GrowingRentRolls, and so on.

If I’m at a venue or on a flight, I'll add their hashtag in as well, so I can capture their audience, as well as food or drinks: #Qantas #coffee #Brisbane #Sydney #{Venue name}

By consistently engaging with others, you ensure your profile remains visible and relevant within your niche. Just like Facebook, it’s also very important to check in to a venue and also tag them in the post.​

Instagram success doesn’t happen overnight. It requires regular tracking and fine-tuning based on your performance. If you’re not watching what’s working, how do you know what needs to be improved on, or used even more?

Key metrics to monitor:

• Follower Growth: Are you attracting the right audience and gaining new followers?

• Engagement Rate: Are people interacting with your posts and getting a reach?

• Click-Through Rate: Are visitors using your bio links?

• Conversion Rate: How many leads are you generating?

• Direct Feedback: Are people telling you that they’re seeing your content?

Instagram remains one of the most powerful platforms for growing a rent roll—when used correctly, and again, it’s not just about posting houses for rent or sale. People want to deal with people.

Your potential clients are human, so you, too, need to ensure that your social media platforms are also human and relatable.

You can establish a strong digital presence and generate high-quality leads by optimising your profile, posting the right content, engaging with your audience, and tracking your performance.

If you want to take your social media marketing to the next level, book a strategy call with Deniz at LeadMachineChat.com or visit LeadMachineSystem.com to explore your coaching options.