Ignite Your Brand with Instagram

Welcome to Ignite your brand with Instagram here at Cold Banker Realty.

We appreciate you being here since this program is optional and discusses best practices for your consideration. If you are thinking of adopting any of them, please make sure to review the requirements in your area or region with your broker, branch manager or manager, including those related to contacting consumers. We do want to highlight the importance of the Telephone Consumer Protection act, better known as tcpa. The general rules are that it's okay to call people if the person recently gave you their phone number, but remember to check the DNC lists regularly if they haven't spoken to that person or contacted the lead in a while. You will also want to check the DNC lists anytime you don't have express permission. Automated calling and texting platforms should never be used. Pre recorded messages and artificial voices should never be used. You will be personally liable for any violations of the tcpa.

You. Today we'll be talking about a few different aspects of Instagram for business, including an introduction to the app, how to best optimize your profile, how to source content, reaching potential clients, and how to close the deal through Instagram. So some history of Instagram as an app it was founded in 2010 and it was created to encourage users to share stunning photography. It was acquired by Meta or Facebook and it has now grown to an app primarily for photo, video and Instagram lives. Because Instagram is owned by Facebook, you will see a lot of different similarities between the two apps. When you first go to Instagram you will see what we call the Instagram Feed. This is the best place to post and reach the most people in terms of content and for views from your open houses to educational videos. Your feed is your introduction to potential clients. So everything that you post goes on your feed and it also goes to your personal page. If you have an Instagram for Business page, that means that your page is public so the content on your feed can be seen by people who follow you and people who do not follow you. As an agent looking to get more views and eyes on your page and your business, this is something that you want, which is why we highly suggest you have an Instagram for Business account. Next feature that's really great is called following versus Favorites. So you can now access accounts that you only follow and you can access accounts that you've marked as favorites so that you don't miss anything that they post. This was brought about because people had a few concerns about not having a chronological timeline and that they were missing different people's posts that they wanted to see and accounts that they followed. So this is Instagram's solution for that issue. Next is Instagram Story. This is an in app feature where you can share photos and videos that expire within 24 hours. You can simultaneously post stories between Instagram and Facebook. This is a great way to give a behind the scenes for people to get to know who you are and for your potential clients to really be able to talk to you one on one. You can also save stories to your highlights so that they are viewable from your Instagram page as long as you would like to keep them up. Your story highlights do live on your Instagram profile page. And again, this is a great place to put things like property tours, past clients, your favorite local places to visit, and anything that you would want people to be able to reference as soon as they see your page. So this is how you would basically save your stories for people to look at later. A few really cool Instagram story features to make it a lot more engaging, you can add external links. If you would like to add a link to let's say a listing or to your website, you can do that. On stories, you can use gifs, polls and quizzes to engage your audience and ask them questions. You can actually use a question box to ask your followers any questions that they would want to know. You can add music, you can add your location and tons of more details that you can add to your stories. So again, this is a great place to be engaging with your audience and your potential clients. Instagram Reels is Instagram's short form video version and it is the only type of video that they now have on the platform. This is really designed to keep you more engaged with your audience and with other creators around you. Now, Instagram Reels is their highest performing content on the app and it also has the longest shelf life. So for instance, if you post a reel today, your reel may be seen two to three months from now based on the shelf life of how long the videos perform on the app. Reels are a great way to really show your personality and it gives your audience the opportunity to hear your voice, see your mannerisms, and gives them a little window into who you are. As a real estate agent, you are involved in one of the largest transactions a lot of people will ever make. So they do want to know who you are, they want to see your face, and they really want to see visuals on these platforms. Instagram Live is Instagram's live stream versions. This keeps your followers updated by hosting live video, you can Talk about your industry, your business or brand, and you can also collaborate with others. So this is a way for people to engage with you in real time. The best thing and biggest thing to know about Instagram is the more that you use their features, the more that they will push your content out. So they don't just want you to post photos, they don't just want you to post videos. They want you to use a combination of all the features of the app to really show them that you are engaged in the app. And they will continue to push your content out to people who do not know you. Instagram Scheduling so this is a feature that will allow you to schedule up to 75 days with the content in the app. You can find Instagram scheduling when you go to make a post, there will be an option for you to schedule your post out. Now you can also schedule Instagram posts within Meta Business suite. So if you connect your Facebook business page to your Instagram business page, you can simultaneously schedule for both platforms at the same time. Instagram for Business, in addition to all the things that I just mentioned, has some really great ways for you to be able to efficiently connect with your followers. Brand presence is one. So Instagram for Business will allow you to grow your brand by using several different tools to promote growth. One is performance tracking. So the analytics on your business account will allow you to decipher what content will work best for your audience based on their behavior and post performance. So you can see with your analytics if your audience preferred longer videos, if they prefer infographics, if they prefer photos based on that tracking. Instagram for Business is the only way to run ads on the app. So you have to create a business profile and you would have to connect it to Facebook for Business to set up that feature. An analytical breakdown just so you can know what the analytics mean. Impressions will mean how many times your content was seen. This is also known as views. Your reach is the amount of unique users who view your content and this does not include individual views per user. So if one person viewed your content more than once, that would count as an impression versus reach. Your audience is your follower count and the increase or decrease percentage it went based on the time frame that you enter. It will also show you a breakdown, demographic of gender, age and location. Location is going to be very important for you as an agent to know that you are hitting the right locations of where people are that can actually work with you. Let's talk a little bit about profile optimization. So when you go to your Instagram profile You want to make sure that you have a few things listed. One would be your name, your occupation, the brokerage that you're with, your location, specialty areas, and then any links that you would like people to follow. So some of the best practices for your Instagram profile, you want to make sure that you have a very clear profile photo. It is zoomed in and it is high resolution. We definitely suggest to have a profile picture versus using a logo. You definitely want to show your face. If possible, include Realtor or real estate in the name section. Do not use hashtags in your bio. Make sure to include your specialty area. So if you are a global luxury specialist, if you work with commercial properties, anything that would be specific to you, ensure to use a call to action. So telling your users what to do next. In the example on the screen, the call to action would be start your home journey below. Make sure that you're following any compliance laws. You can also add your link. So you'll see here on this screen madelinejames.com is the link for this agent. And also you see that we have highlight covers in the highlight section that are brand consistent. So you can also create highlight covers for your own page. Next would be sourcing content so how do you know what to post? You want to think about what makes you different. So how do you know what to post and what is the best practice for that? You want to think about what makes you different as an agent. Is it your love for coffee? Is it the fact that you love golf? Are you a part of the PTA in your community and how can you use that to connect with people who might potentially work with you as an agent? So a few best practices to remember. You want to pull inspiration from frequently asked questions from your clients. You can bet if one client has a question, then another client who's in the same situation probably has a consistent question. So you can use that for content using answerthepublic.com this is a website that will tell you what other people are searching so you can type in a keyword and it will tell you what questions people have about that industry. Repurpose your content based on post performance. So if you had a piece of content that performed well, you can recreate that content and do something similar following relevant pages. So making sure that you're staying updated with other real estate pages, financial business pages, and pages that would really talk about anything that impacts the industry. If you're making reels and videos, making sure that you're watching other reels to get ideas and inspiration for your own and and then ask your followers simply what they would like to know or what they want to see. Making sure that you're reaching potential clients and closing the deal so some best practices to reach your relevant followers Again, you want to be making sure that you're posting so you want to post content about three or four times per week. You want to use hashtags right now you only need about 3 to 5 for the current algorithm. You want to make sure that you are engaging with other accounts so you want to make sure that you're following people you are commenting you are sharing and anything similar. You want to make sure that you're using tracking to look at your Instagram insights. You want to make sure that you're using tracking to look at your Instagram insights and see how your content is is performing and how people are engaging with it. A few best practices to then close the deal. You have grabbed the attention of your audience with relevant content. You want to include those call to actions in your profile and then also in your post. And then you can next use direct message to contact your client and provide more details.