Hey there, it’s episode 108 of the Katie Lance podcast. And today it is all about Instagram. We are going to cover a ton of stuff in this fast and furious podcast. I talk about Instagram stories, Instagram feed, Instagram reels, Instagram TV. Instagram has been growing and changing by leaps and bounds. And if you are feeling like you are just not getting any engagement and the interaction and the business from Instagram that you need to get, listen up. I’m super excited. I share with you some of my biggest tips that are helping right now, when it comes to Instagram, let’s go on with the show.
Hey everyone. So excited today to talk all about Instagram. So if you are in a real estate or you’re an entrepreneur, you’re just, you know, trying to figure out Instagram for business, you are in the right place. Instagram has changed tremendously over the last, well, gosh, it keeps changing all the time, right? And if you’re feeling like, gosh, I’m kind of struggling a little bit with Instagram, or maybe you are wanting to get more into Instagram, wherever you’re at in your Instagram journey, I’m going to share with you a few of my favorite tips and tools and strategies that you can implement immediately into your business. Okay, let’s go. All right. The first thing I want to say when it comes to Instagram, is you’ve got to have the best first impression, you know, you never have a second chance to make a first impression, right.
So this is super important that you’ve got an updated bio. Um, I like to use emojis in my bio. I also think if you are using Instagram for business, I think it’s really beneficial to have either a business or a creator account for Instagram. They’re very similar, but also slightly different. I do like with a business account as of right now, as of the recording of this podcast, you can schedule content with a business account. Not that I think you should schedule everything, uh, but you can run ads and you can look at your analytics and there with the creator account, you might have a few more options in terms of creativity and music. So kind of a personal choice, but either way have a business or a creator account and make sure your account is open to the public. If you are using Instagram for business, it’s a lot like having a retail store.
If your door is closed, uh, it looks like you’re not in business. And that’s kinda what it looks like when you have a private Instagram. So you might have a private Instagram for your family and your close friends, but you want to have a public Instagram for business. So your bio first and foremost, right, have an updated profile photo, tell people who you are. Uh, if you’re in real estate, what area do you serve and brokerage? If that’s required by your local MLS, your local broker. And then you can also add highlights. You know, if you go over to my Instagram profile, I’m at Katie Lance over on Instagram, you’ll see these red buttons on my profile. You can create those once you start creating Instagram stories, as you can wait your stories, those those disappear in 24 hours.
Okay. But you can also add those stories to your highlights. So I have highlights that, uh, you know, showcase my podcast. Uh, they showcase videos. They showcase my speaking, they showcase my cat Rex. And so your highlights help to enhance your bio because they give people a sense of who you are and what does it feel like to work with you? Okay. So that’s number one, make a great first impression. Number two, engage with other people on Instagram, on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis to increase your following and build your brand. This is really important. You can’t just post and run. You have to be more interested in other people. So I recommend that you connect and follow your clients or prospects. Remember social media is not a one-way street. You have to give to get, you might even turn your notifications on for your eight plus clients and people that you want to make sure that you are notified.
You know, when they, when they post that way, you can connect with them. I love the idea of focus five. I’ve been doing this for years and years. It’s this idea of when you’re on Instagram, take five minutes to scroll through your feed, connect with at least five people a day. Now that doesn’t mean be a drive-by liker, but take a few minutes to like comment and engage with people. At least five people a day. And in the world of Instagram, you, we want to leave a meaningful comment. A meaningful comment is a comment. That’s at least four words. So instead of saying, great pick, we might say, wow, that’s a great pick Susie, where did you take that? Right? Or happy birthday, Joe, do you have anything fun planned for today? Right? You see how that feels a little bit different. So being more and trust in others is super important, especially for my friends who are listening, who are in real estate because real estate’s a relationship, business and relationships are built with small, tiny interactions over the course of time.
Every like every comment, every share, it adds up. Okay. The third thing I want to say, I want to say in terms of building Instagram and improving your Instagram is we need to create and post content that people are going to want to like comment, share and save. Right? So oftentimes what I see, especially with real estate is that a lot of folks are just sharing their listings or they’re sharing something, just very promotional. Um, and the thing is you have to understand that there’s an algorithm, the algorithm Instagram, especially right now in 2021 is all, is based on likes comments, shares and saves. So yeah, I would encourage you to think about your own behavior. You know, what gets you to life? Yeah. Comment, share, or save, and having a balance of your content, whether that’s business, content, promotional, content, educational content, inspirational content, um, that’s content that’s funny or content about your community.
That that balance of content I think is super important. So this is why it’s important to get yourself into a routine. You don’t have to necessarily post every day, but maybe you do a Monday motivation where every Monday it’s a motivational quote. Maybe every Thursday is a throwback Thursday where we’re sharing something funny or interesting about what’s happened in the past. Uh, you know, every, every Friday is a feature Friday where you’re featuring a local business. So thinking about different types of content, inspirational, funny educational, those are all different types of content that are going to build our brand, build our reputation, build the know like, and trust factor, which is super important. I would say, uh, just as a bonus tip, I love using the word, the app word swag word swag is awesome. I will link that in the show notes below, if you love sharing motivational quotes over on Instagram, like I do, you will love that.
It’s one of my favorite apps. And here’s the thing, you know, with Instagram, it’s not about getting the, it’s not about getting thousands of thousands of followers. It’s not about becoming the next like Kim Kardashian. It’s about getting the right followers, right. Which is super important. Okay. The next thing I want to share is extend the life out of every post, by repurposing and resharing your content. We’ve got to work smarter and not just harder. So when you’re posting to Instagram in the feed, you can share your Instagram posts from your feed to your stories, right? Which is important. You can upload videos. You’ve already shared from Facebook or YouTube over to Instagram TV. For that longer form video, you can review your older Instagram stories, looking your archive on Instagram, and you can take those older stories and turn them into new Instagram reels.
You can even take older Instagram TV videos and repost them as real as well. Reels are one of the newest things with Instagram. It’s getting a lot of engagement. So why not repurpose some of our older content? You can review your Instagram insights and reshare that older, yet relevant content that had a high reach, right? Oftentimes we just post something one and done. I’m a huge believer in working smarter, not just harder, right? That’s, that’s the name of the game. So repurpose, which is great. I also love, if you are thinking of posting someone else’s content, maybe you follow your local chamber of commerce or some of your favorite local businesses. Uh, if you search the app store for the repost app, repost is a great app that will allow you to repost other people’s content and give them credit as well. So the next thing I want to say is let’s put it all together, right.
So we’ve talked about engaging with people. We’ve talked about content. Like let’s talk a little bit about putting a plan together. I really believe that there’s a benefit when you think about a five day plan or seven day plan to think about what your pillar content is, right? Pillar content is content that that is typically content that takes a little bit of time, money or energy. It’s content, not just relevant for Instagram, but content like this podcast, content or video content content that can get repurposed. And so, for example, if you start to put out weekly video content or weekly podcast content, you can really use Instagram as a way to repurpose that and leverage that in a big, big way. You know, for example, if you put out a video on Tuesday, you might do a tip Tuesday, maybe it’s a one minute clip on Tuesday.
That video can be in your feed. You can also share that to your stories. A couple days later, you could put the full video over to IGTV. Uh, you could then also share a smaller clip of that video, maybe over to real. So you could even turn that into a carousel post. So, you know, it’s this idea again, of thinking smarter, not just harder. Now, one thing I will mention if you’re listening to this going, okay, I am stuck with content. If you haven’t downloaded our free content grid, you want to go over to Katie, lance.com forward slash content grid. Katie lance.com/content grid. We’ll put that link in the show notes below, but put your name and email in when you get to that link. And this is going to give you a ton of content ideas. We just updated this for 2021. This is relevant, not just for Instagram, but for anywhere on social media.
So definitely check that, check that out. Okay. Few more tips. Want to keep it moving here? Keep people curious with your content. This is important, especially if you’re using Instagram stories, which I highly recommend using tools like gifts, stickers using some of the different engagement stickers like polls and the interactive features are really, really important. Remember not everyone is scrolling through the feed. A lot of us are just looking at stories. So leverage stories to tell your behind the scenes, which I, which I think is important. One other tip I’ll give you here is hashtags. I get asked all the time about hashtags. You’ve got to choose the right hashtags to maximize your reach and expand your sphere on Instagram. You’re allowed up to 30 hashtags per post. So we want to think about what hashtags are relevant to your local town, community and city use local lifestyle and real estate related hashtags.
I would recommend looking for hashtags that aren’t necessarily in the millions, but using hashtags that are in the thousands or even tens of thousands can be really, really helpful. I also love to keep a running list of hashtags. You can keep a list on Google documents or on your phone, which is important as well. Uh, and as far as really finding the right hashtags, there’s some really great free hashtag resources like hashtag refied. That me hashtag find at me is free. I’ll drop that in the show notes below also. So you can check that out. So as we get to the end here today, the last few things I just want to share is like, it’s all about getting systemized and organized with Instagram. That is really the name of the game, not just with Instagram, but with anything with social media. So one quick way to get systemized and organized is to look up your insights, figure out, you know, when is the best time of day to post, what type of content is getting the most traction?
So look at your insights. You’re going to find out an incredible amount of information about when people are online. What type of content has resonated the most, uh, what has worked in the past and what has not as well. So, um, the good news is some of the things that I’ve walked through are some of the exact things that I have used to grow our business year after year. And it’s also the system. Um, many of the folks in our get social smart Academy have used to, to generate business through Instagram. So just a quick recap, five quick things, I’ll recap here. Number one, make the best first impression with your Instagram account and bio number two, engage with others on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis to increase your following and build your brand. Number three, extend the life of every post by repurposing and resharing, your content work smarter, not just harder.
Number four, choose the right hashtags to maximize your reach and expand your speed, expand your sphere and expand your sphere on Instagram. That’s a tongue twister there and number five, evaluate what’s worked in the past and what has not worked. So remember people do business with people they know like and trust and relate to, right? That relate-ability factor is so, so important. So I would love to hear from you, are you active over on Instagram? I am spending a ton of time over there these days. I am at Katie. Lance, give me a follow over on Instagram and then message man Instagram. Let me know that you listened to this episode. If you enjoy this episode, you know, do a little screenshot tag me in a post. You can tag me in a story or a post over on Instagram. I would love to hear from you.
And if you are looking for some additional training, when it comes to Instagram, we actually have a brand new updated Instaguide to Instagram for real estate. So if you go to KatieLance.com/instaguide, put your name and email in, and we will send you our brand new for 2021 complete Instagram guide for real estate. Check that out. Um, and we also have a masterclass. You guys, we just published an incredible Instagram masterclass that is available for purchase on demand. It is an in depth course all about Instagram. So I will drop that link in the show notes below. So you can check that out. If you’re listening, you can go to KatieLance.com/masterclass to find out more about it. All right, my friends. Thank you so much for listening. I am so excited to be able to spend this time with you here today. Um, let me know if you have any questions, reach out to me on Instagram and we will see you real soon. Have a great day.
