16 Tips to Use Instagram for Real Estate Lead Generation

To effectively generate leads from Instagram, real estate agents should start by creating a memorable username. They can also pick interesting hobbies to share, make Reels, or use strategic hashtags to build and grow their brand. 27.3% of Millennials, the largest group of first-time homebuyers, use Instagram daily—making this social platform an excellent place to market your services and real estate listings. Moreover, only 52% of real estate agents are on Instagram, meaning competition is not as fierce compared to Facebook.

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Instagram marketing for realtors is a challenging but effective way to attract real estate leads. Learn how to use Instagram for real estate lead generation by following these 16 social media tips:

1. Create a Memorable Username

When you first sign up to use Instagram, you will be asked to give your name and select a username. Your username is what people will see when they look at your Instagram page or search for you. When selecting your realtor Instagram name and username, there are a few unique considerations to make:

• Don’t include a brokerage name—Instagram works best for building a professional brand
• Keep it simple by using easy-to-spell and real estate-related words
• Utilize every line to associate yourself with real estate; you can do this with a well-placed pun or simply by inserting real estate-specific words.

Example of a unique username in Instagram for real estate agents (Source: Instagram)

Choose a real estate Instagram name and username you won’t need to change in the future, even if other things change (like your brokerage, location, or title). Your Instagram followers will grow more familiar with your username, so you risk losing trust if you change it. Keeping your name simple will make it easy for users to remember and search.

Instagram allows a minimal number of characters in your name and your bio, so make sure you make the most of the space, like Jasmine (@realtygirl) does in the image above. Include your name, title, or location to differentiate yourself from all the other “real estate agents” they see online.

2. Optimize Your Instagram Bio to Generate Leads

A real estate Instagram bio should immediately set you apart from all the other real estate agents in your area. While there is not much space to include your bio, it should convey what makes you unique to generate real estate leads.

Real estate agents bio sample (Source: Brittany Axelson)

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Example of a real estate agent’s bio (Source: Stefanie Lugo)

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Here is some information you should include in your bio to optimize your real estate account:

• Description: Let people know what you do. Simply put, “Realtor” or “Real Estate Agent/Broker” is an excellent Instagram name to describe your field of expertise.
• Location: Be specific about what area you serve. Adding “LA Realtor” or “NY Real Estate Agent” is enough to meet both description and location in a few characters.
• Value proposition: Describe your value proposition and mission as a realtor. For instance, phrases like “Buy with Confidence, Sell with Success!” or “Real Estate That Does More” provides visitors with an idea of the value of your services.
• Personality: Show some personality and include your hobbies, other than real estate. These will help clients relate to you as a person. Examples below include “Dog Mom” and “Fitness Enthusiast.”
• Brand hashtag: If your real estate firm has a brand or a campaign slogan, consider making it a hashtag and including it in your bio and posts.
• Call to action (CTA): Include the next step for your potential clients. Typically, this is accomplished by clicking on your link. The example above includes “Resources for Buyers, Sellers, and Agents,” which points to the link. A custom call-to-action button can also be added.
• Link: This is a separate link from your CTA. It is a single landing page or website link to send your curious visitors. Use Linktree, a single page where you can create tailored calls to action to generate more leads and differentiate buyers and sellers.

Sample of Placester’s website templates (Source: Placester)

Easily create a landing page that captures new leads with Placester. It provides the largest variety of real estate-specific landing page options, including home evaluation, home search, and buyer and seller guide landing pages. These templates can be customized to fit your brand and message. Placester also has built-in search engine optimization (SEO) tools to help you target real estate keywords that bring more traffic to your landing pages and website.

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3. Choose a Profile Photo That Fits Your Brand

On the Instagram feed, followers will only see your name and photo unless they choose to click over to see your complete profile. Hence, use a professional real estate headshot, a logo, or an image with personality.

(Source: Gina Castrorao Baker)

Ensure your photo is bright and clear, and avoid small text or busy backgrounds. Instagram profile photos can’t be enlarged, so followers should be able to easily see your face or logo without straining.

4. Invite Your Friends & Family to Follow You

Giving your professional Instagram account a boost by announcing your new page to your sphere of influence (SOI) is one way to grow your real estate business on Instagram. In real estate, your SOI includes everyone personally or professionally in your network. Invite friends and family to follow you. Announce your other social networks and link to some of the images and videos you’ll be showcasing on Instagram to get your audience involved across platforms.

(Source: Gina Castrorao Baker)

Keeping your SOI growing and nurturing is critical because they are one of the most important sources of leads for your real estate business. To be successful in real estate, you must have a large number of social connections, and those connections cannot be shallow. Quality and quantity are crucial, so work hard to expand your SOI while maintaining the relationships you’ve already built by hosting client events, sending mailers, and communicating with them regularly.

5. Stay on Brand, Not Necessarily on Topic

The ideal real estate content for Instagram is a combination of personality and product. Do you have incredible homes you are listing? Post the listing photos, virtual tours, and who you sell to. Do you have a dog you love that tends to get in trouble around the house? Post that too.

(Source: Ryan Serhant)

Keep the primary focus on real estate by posting about homes for sale, homes sold, open houses, events in town, and new restaurants or charity events. However, people come to your page to see if you are someone they’d want to work with, not just to see listings. Ryan Serhant, a well-known real estate agent and broker-owner, likes to have fun, which is everywhere on his Instagram. Look at the photo above. Doesn’t it seem like it would be fun to look for real estate with that guy?

6. Steer Clear of Sensitive Topics

Although you should be authentic in your messaging and Instagram real estate marketing, you may also need to censor your typical conversation on public forums. As you’re working to craft an accurate image of your real estate agent expertise, avoid discussing politics and religion when you can. The perfect way to post real estate on Instagram is to have fun and post about things that can’t offend people who might be thinking about working with you.

On Instagram, you should be the person who is above the noise and seems approachable to your ideal clients. Clients come from all backgrounds, religions, and political views, so you want them to feel comfortable contacting you. If you decide to have a personal Instagram account separate from your professional one and address politics or other controversial matters, set that account to “private,” so it is only viewable to those you invite into your circle.

7. Use Instagram Stories to Build Engagement & Connection

Using Instagram Stories for realtors allows you to position yourself outside of the traditional scrolling feed of your followers—at the very top of their phone screens. You can also open and swipe on your Story to see who viewed it to analyze your effectiveness. Plus, since Stories disappear after 24 hours (unless you save them in a highlight), the sense of urgency helps to attract those on Instagram to watch your videos since they cannot see them again.

Sample real estate Instagram Story (Source: Blink Marketing Agency)

What do real estate agents post to their Instagram Stories? They may include polls, like “Is anyone else as obsessed with this indoor pool as I am?” and “Neutral colored interior or Dull colored interior?” or special behind-the-scenes footage of property listings to promote the properties in a creative and fun way.

Instagram Stories are one of the best ways to create engagement and build your audience because of their extensive tools, like stickers, sounds, games, filters, and additional tools like Boomerang. Boomerang plays your video on a loop, frontward, and backward.

8. Save Instagram Story Highlights as Resources

Another great way to use Instagram for real estate is to use Story Highlights to transform your Instagram profile into a resource for buyers and sellers. To save or download Instagram Story highlights, open your Instagram, then click your profile icon. Then, click the highlight cover image to play it, tap the seen by count on the highlight you want to download, and click the download button.

Heavenlysellshomes Instagram Story highlights (Source: Instagram)

For example, Heavenly posts a group of pictures and videos to her Story, explaining concepts like earnest money deposits, disclosures, loans, and buyer tips. This social media marketing strategy helps you gain trust and followers without having to post completely new content every 24 hours.

9. Consistently Post High-quality Photos

Your real estate Instagram posts should stop scrolling thumbs. The best Instagram strategy for realtors to capture audience attention is consistently posting beautiful, clear, appealing photos. For Instagram growth in real estate, in particular, post images of happy customers, lovely homes, neighborhood events, and even photos that showcase the perks of living in your area and working with you.

Beautiful real estate listing photos (Source: @motivebillions)

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Aerial real estate photo (Source: @winklerrealestategroup)

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High-quality photo of the property listing in Beverly Hills, California (Source: timsmithrealestate)

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Instagram offers several built-in filters that can help make your images pop. Still, if you want to add other elements that can reinforce your brands, like a watermark, or critical information about a listing, you will want to check out photo editing tools like Canva. Canva is free and provides hundreds of stock images and templates for posts and Stories.

Visit Canva

10. Write Strategic Captions

Even though a photo communicates beautiful messages to your audience, the caption is an essential piece of the puzzle. Instagram allows you to post 2,200 characters in length as a caption, and the ideal length is between 138 and 150 characters.

Example of a great real estate caption (Source: Instagram)

Keep your captions engaging when simply listing or showing off your sales. For example, “High-quality construction materials used,” “Make wise and healthy land investments,” and “Trusted by people who love land investments.” You can even use real estate memes to add more of your humor and personality to posts and captions.

11. Use Instagram Feed Video to Attract Followers

There are multiple ways to upload videos onto your Instagram, and Instagram feed video, formerly known as IGTV, is for one-minute to one-hour-long videos. This is a perfect way to give tips or showcase walk-through property videos, elements about the neighborhood, local events, and interviews to attract new followers. Videos frequently receive more views and engagement than static images, so using this real estate marketing idea is essential.

Sample real estate IGTV video content (Source: Instagram)

You don’t have to be a professional video editor to leverage this valuable Instagram strategy. It’s easy to edit and enhance your videos using REDX’s Brand Builder. REDX Brand Builder is a “done-with-you” social media content creation platform designed to help you convert leads from your database through Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. In addition, REDX will convert your raw video into premium content by adding captions, emojis, and stickers. Copywriters will also craft a caption that matches your brand, voice, and message.

Visit REDX

12. Drive Traffic With Instagram Reels

Instagram Reels quickly became one of the most potent ways to get views and engagement to your content. Instagram Reels are a video format that can go up to 90 seconds. Full captions can be included, and the hashtag limits up to 30. Aside from this, the Reels feed is visible until you delete them, resulting in a broader audience reach and generating leads, which is different from Stories that are only visible for up to 24 hours. Also, Stories and Reels differ in engagement.

Instagram reel sample by @keriannkeriann

To have the best real estate Reels, use trending sounds, which is audio that can be added to your Reels for further engagement. These can be clips of songs or funny sound bites that add personality and humor to your Instagram profile. You can also trim property videos and stitch images to create an engaging Reel. You can either upload a video directly or use the essential video editing tools on the Instagram platform.

13. Go Live on Instagram to Increase Engagement

Are you looking for other realtor Instagram ideas? Whether you are posting a video to your feed, use Instagram Stories, Reels, or Instagram live, consider using video if you aren’t already. Instagram has more than 500 million users a month, and 70% of users watch Instagram Stories daily. Video is well-suited to real estate, so give your audience something extraordinary to view, like hosting a live Q&A session or quick tutorial.

Instagram post inviting viewers to a live Q&A session (Source: @realtorjillvandusen)

Using Instagram Live Video connects you to your followers in real time. Plus, Instagram will notify all your followers when they are in the app. You can leave comments for your followers to discuss what you’re sharing or turn comments off, but it is a captivating way to schedule a “live session” of any sort.

14. Increase Your Reach With Strategic Hashtags

Hashtags on Instagram create searchability and help your posts attract new visitors. Research hashtags before publishing a post to your feed. Hashtags help you target the audience you want to see your posts, gain new followers, and interact with possible leads. While Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags, it’s a good rule of thumb to keep it to around 10 because too many hashtags will make your post look spammy and drown the message.

Sample real estate hashtag (Source: Instagram)

Here are five effective real estate hashtag categories and a few examples:

• Hashtags for location: #brooklyn, #oklahomacity, #dallastexas
• Hashtags for newly sold or just listed: #justsold, #justlisted
• Hashtag your brokerage: #agentsofcompass, #kellerwilliams
• Hashtag for active buyers: #openhouse, #househunting
• Hashtag great local amenities: #[restaurant], #[coffeeshop]

15. Take Time to Engage With Other Users

To effectively use Instagram in real estate, you have to do more than post and expect results—you also have to engage. This means interacting with people who follow you or follow other real estate-related accounts. Find interesting people out there who are in your sphere of work and talk to them. Using the full potential of Instagram will require you to do far more than broadcasting.

Screenshot of realtor engagement on Instagram’s comment section (Source: Instagram)

Instagram works best when you use it as a tool for connection. If you’re laser-focused on posting to make money, it will inevitably come across in your Instagram strategy. Instead, being social and making honest interactions on Instagram is key to maximizing its potential for your real estate business. It takes time and effort to cultivate a following and gain momentum, but it’s a superb way to build your network by posting and using hashtags effectively.

16. Target Your Audience With Paid Ads

Instagram is owned by Facebook and allows you to target an audience and run ads similarly. On Instagram, your ads should fit seamlessly into your target audience’s timeline, expecting that some will begin to follow you for other posts and information.

Instagram ads example (Source: Quartz Agency)

If you know how to create an ad on Facebook, the Instagram process for running an ad will be almost identical. However, you don’t have to have an Instagram account to run Instagram ads (but it is highly recommended). You will have to:

• Determine your objective
• Select your audience
• Choose your ad placement and budget
• Format your ad

Instagram ads can multiply your account growth and generate qualified leads. You can see incredible growth when ads are used correctly as a part of your overall social media strategy.

Bottom Line

Using Instagram for real estate agents takes time and effort, but the process of creating posts and engaging with others online can be fun and rewarding. Have an Instagram presence that you work on daily, even if briefly, and engage users in the real estate services you offer. While running ads on Instagram can be beneficial when starting, the momentum comes from continued social engagement.