Instagram is one of the fastest growing social media platforms. As of December 2017, there are 800 million monthly active users who are posting up to 95 million images per day.
Catching the attention of audiences on Instagram is becoming harder than ever before. It is essential for real estate agents and agencies to optimise every part of their Instagram profile and content to cut through the noise, increase your reach and encourage authentic engagement.
In just a few simple steps, we explain 5 ways to improve your Instagram account to stand out in 2018.
1. CRAFT THE PERFECT INSTAGRAM BIO
Your Instagram account bio explains the essential information about your business. Appearing at the top of your Instagram profile, this bio offers a valuable space to describe what makes you or your agency unique in 150 characters or less.
Take this opportunity to describe your brand in text that is visually striking. Using dot points, emojis and short sentences to keep readers engaged. Focus on keywords and phrases that best represent the values and ethos of your business. You may also want to include a line describing the type of content you are going to share in your feed to entice people to follow you.
2. ADD YOUR CONTACT DETAILS
Instagram is a fantastic platform to showcase the success and achievements of your business and engage in valuable conversations with your audience. It is important to remember that the main goal of your efforts on social media is to build your business in one way or another.
Include a link to your website in the space provided in your bio and direct users back to this link when relevant. To optimise your links shorten URLs using software such as bit.ly to avoid cluttering your captions with lengthy text. Equally important is adding directions to your office, your phone number and email address for easy clickable contact points for potential clients. This feature is only available on business profiles.
3. MAXIMISE YOUR SEARCHABILITY
To optimise your Instagram account, your content must be easily discoverable on Instagram.
Instagram scans your handle (that’s the @XYZ) and your Instagram name (the bolded words at the very top of your bio) for search terms when users are looking for an account. Ensure that the keywords relevant to your business are in these two sections so that people searching for you can find your feed. You should include your business name and keywords such as “real estate Bondi” here.
Taking time to add geo-locations and hashtags to every post will increase your searchability and reach to new users and allow a broader audience to find your content in a few easy clicks. Consider which geo-locations may be relevant to your business. Add suburbs, local businesses, brand names or trending topics as hashtags in the first comment of your images to help your content reach a targeted audience on Instagram- a good mix of both broad and targeted hashtags is our recommendation.
4. CONSIDER IMAGE DIMENSIONS
Improve your Instagram feed by resizing all images to the correct dimensions and specifications. Use 1:1 or square images (1080 x 1080 pixels) sizing to create a consistent Instagram feed, or resize images to 1080 x 1350 pixels to dominant more screen space on user’s phones.
For Instagram Stories, images should be resized to 1080 x 1920 pixels for best results. Remember to bring life to your images on with filters, text overlays, and moving animations.
5. REMEMBER TO TELL A STORY
Instagram Stories continues to dominate the platform in 2018, so it’s essential to include this as part of your social media strategy.
Improve your chances of reaching the top of the Instagram feed by regularly posting new content to Instagram Stories. Create visually rich images by adding emojis, text, hashtags, geo-locations and even GIFs to every slide, and remember to include a call-to-action to get your audience engaging with your Instagram account.
