28 Feb Dear Real Estate Agents You’re Starting To Ruin My Instagram Feed

Ok, that title comes off a bit combative, but I’m ok with that. While I might get some shade thrown my way from both marketers and real estate agents, I hope to get a bit of a dialogue going. So just what is my problem with agents and my Instagram feed? It’s the way I’m seeing marketing being executed that is the opposite of what the Instagram platform was built for.

Hey Clark, who are you to judge and who made you the Instagram police? Nobody did, that’s for sure! While this strategy we’re going to talk about most likely works for some brokers, it’s the kind of content I think the platform was built to avoid. What I’m talking about are newspaper era styled ads that I think are just so dated and ugly. I want to see sexy home content in my Instagram feed.

I understand that this image above does give value to a home shopper as they get a few pictures and a bit of information that they’ll want to know from first glance. I’m not trying to pick on this real estate brokerage and their Instagram feed, but this is the perfect example to look at and think about how you want your brand image to come off on this platform.

I’ll reiterate, I’m hoping to get a discussion going and hear back from real estate agents who are doing this, are thinking about doing this and find out how it’s effecting engagement. We of course have built ads like this for numerous real estate agents and brokerages, but we’d run these on Facebook and retargeting ads on Google. So why not put out some pros and cons that are on my mind, and you all let me know your thoughts on if this strategy is what you should be doing.

In the end, I do realize it all comes down to are you getting more leads and making money.

Why I’m Annoyed

Keeping in mind this all my personal opinion and I’m an avid user of the Instagram platform for not only our clients and here at Luxury Branded, but for personal enjoyment in my brief downtime. I want to see beautiful things, read personal stories and engage with people about that content. This, for me, is where the problem lies.

Instagram is for visually compelling and engaging content.

I think that if the selling aspect of the Instagram platform goes completely “newspaper” style image advertising proliferates your feed it’s going to be the slow death of Instagram and or your feed. Think about using Instagram to be the best version of your brand and put forth beautiful content that doesn’t need to have words plastered all over it.

Pros

• Does get the good info across quickly although the description in the photo is better.
• Can work fine with the carousel feature if the first image is the cover
• It can potentially increase engagement time as they have to sit there and squint to read the copy

Cons

• Theme pages will never share the image.
• It might lead to less engagement if a lot of users don’t like seeing that style of real estate content. I know I want to see beautiful pictures and videos, and then I’ll go read the copy.
• Adds a lot more photoshop time to your week
• It looks like shit.

Do It For IGTV

So I might have been a bit harsh in the title, I don’t entirely condone this practice, however I’d say if you must do it sparingly and when it makes sense. A new $40m mansion post is going to speak for itself with the content(we hope and if not, email us now), but a market report is a different story. A market report is a great informational bit of content that requires reading and visual. This makes sense.

Taking a look at one of my personal favorite(never done business with them) luxury real estate brokerages out there is Chestnut Park Real Estate here in Canada. I’m a big fan of their whole marketing and branding outlook, and they are a great example of when and how this can work. The image you see to my right is in the feed and leads to their IGTV video. If I had one fault to point out, is that the image used could have been a bit sexier but I understand it conveys winter time in Canada.

This works especially well as you do need a cover for your IGTV posts, otherwise people won’t know what they’re about. I’m fully aware I keep contradicting myself, mostly because I struggle with advising this to our clients and don’t want to shoot something down before they even test it with their audience.

My Final Thought

By this point you could be thinking to yourself..hey Clark, my engagement went up doing this. I wouldn’t be all that surprised and and if that converts then by all means get that money. I’ll just still be a bitter Instagram user that will still leave a positive comment anyway because the world needs a whole lot of that right now.

I will challenge you to take that newspaper style image and put it at the end of the carousel post and pick the best, most beautiful photo from the set be the face of that photo series. I say keep Instagram sexy. Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments below, or send me a Tweet, Inmail on LinkedIn or DM us on Instagram.