You get 400 ideas of what you as a real estate agent can share in your stories
so that you never, what's, what am I trying to say?
Is your Instagram strategy looking like a fixer upper these days? Never fear.
Just like it's possible to turn a fixer upper into a cash flowing asset,
the same is true for your Instagram strategy. And yes,
I know where you as a realtor are coming from. In fact,
I am from a real estate agent family.
I used to be a realtor when I was 20 years old. There's the old picture.
And funny enough, I'm actually sitting in a listing right now.
I'm sitting literally in a staged home.
So to say that I know real estate is an understatement. That sounds cocky,
but it's kinda true.
So if you're a real estate agent and you've struggled to get clients through
social media, specifically Instagram, you're in luck because in today's video,
I'm going to share with you how students of mine who are real estate agents
actually get clients through this beautiful free app we know as Instagram.
And stay tuned until the end where I'm going to share with you how you as a real
estate agent can get someone off the app and into your business as a
potential new client.
What I'm about to share with you has worked for my friend and student Erica
Rawls, who is a real estate agent in the Pennsylvania area.
And since we've worked together, she's gained well over 10,000 followers.
But more than that,
she's booked at least $25,000 in commissions from people who
discovered her on Instagram.
Erica is also a featured case study over on my website, EliseDarma.com.
So if you want to read her entire story and see her on video,
go to EliseDarma.com and find her there. I'm Elise Darma,
and I've helped thousands of entrepreneurs,
freelancers and creators use Instagram to actually bring the cha-ching to
their business.
And today I'm covering how you as a real estate agent can use Instagram to grow
your business.
The first step is pretty easy and you've probably already done this,
but the first step is to observe your competitors. That is,
go to instagram.com on your desktop,
or go to the app on your phone and look up some keywords related to your
area.
Maybe the city name plus realtor or your city name plus real estate agent.
Take a look at who is already on the app.
This was the first step that Erica took.
She looked at who was her competition on Instagram,
looked at what they were doing,
but more importantly looked at who was following them. The next tip is,
as you're building out your content feed, and as you're planning your content,
please don't be afraid to show your face.
The crazy thing is a lot of real estate agents are camera shy. I mean,
talking to a device or smiling at a device is not that natural.
So if you feel comfortable to show up on camera,
whether in video or photo form,
you are going to be leaps and bounds ahead of your competition.
For this example, I want to highlight my mom, Jacqui Darmanin,
who is a real estate agent. Go ahead and check out her feed.
She's someone who has gotten used to showing up on camera,
even though it might be uncomfortable,
but that's really how she stands out amongst her competition.
So check out her feed for some inspiration.
The next tip is to drill down on your hashtags. What do I mean by this? Well,
I have an entire video on how to use hashtags right here.
So go ahead and check that out after this one.
But for you as a real estate agent,
you want to use hashtags that are relevant to your location and your community.
You also don't want to choose hashtags that are way too big, like #Canada.
For example, you want to find hashtags that are specific to your city name,
your neighborhood name, maybe some businesses that are in your area.
Maybe they have hashtags,
but you want the majority of your hashtags or at least half of the 30 that
you're allowed, to be location-based. In terms of how big a hashtag should be,
I would look for hashtags that are quite niche and small. Again,
location-based hashtags are usually quite small,
but you can look for hashtags all the way up to half a million posts.
Here's a pro tip from Erica.
What she did was look at her competitors and check out which hashtags they were
using.
She looked at each one and assessed each one and then chose the ones that were
best for her business and her target client market.
The next tip is to be intentional about who you are following. Yes,
it's important who you are following and who you're going to engage with.
A lot of realtors,
sit back and they wait for the engagement and the leads and the DMs to come to
them, but not you, because you are being proactive.
And so with that means you need to engage with key accounts as well.
These kinds of accounts could be local influencers or community hubs or
community businesses. Think coffee shops, or local bookstores.
What are the businesses that your target client is following and liking on
Instagram? Here's what Erica said about this tip:
"I was really being intentional about commenting on the types of accounts that I
would actually want to follow, or the businesses I'd want.
That was when I started seeing an increase in followers." The next tip is to
keep it real and offer valuable content to your followers.
What do I mean by keeping it real? Well,
my friend Willow is an amazing example of someone who's a realtor and who's not
afraid to share her personality. In fact,
she has a highlight saved to her profile called 'Pop Star Realty'.
She started doing these kinds of videos long before TikTok,
if you're getting TikTok vibes at all.
I'll share with you a couple of her video examples,
but essentially what she would do is go into her listings or showings,
play some music and then lip sync to the music.
Willow told that by sharing her Pop Star Realty series,
she actually gets all of her leads and clients because of that little series she
started on Instagram. Why is that? Well,
Willow is clearly showing her personality and as a potential client,
people are really getting to know and like her. They like her vibe.
They like her personality. And so then it becomes a no brainer to hire Willow.
If you're not quite as extroverted as Willow like myself,
I don't know if I'd have the guts to do that.
You can find your own version of Willow's Pop Star Realty.
What's something that you can do on camera on a regular basis so that people can
get to know like, and trust you? Now, in terms of offering valuable content,
well, you want to make it clear in your bio, why someone should follow you.
And for that, I have a whole training right here.
Go ahead and check it out on how to write a bio that shares the value that
you offer to your followers right away.
The last tip for my fellow real estate agents is to map out your customer's
journey because clearly you need your followers to become leads and clients in
your business. You can't just be hanging out on Instagram all day.
So you have to come up with your plan of how you're going to get your followers
off of the app and into your business as a client.
Erica did exactly that,
which you can see in these examples of conversations that she had with potential
clients in the DMs.
Take a look at how she actually moved the conversation off of the DMs and to the
phone or something in person.
Erica also included a call to action in her bio for people to privately message
her or DM her.
She knew that that was the way to start high quality conversations with people.
For a full training on how to do this on how to craft a customer journey and how
to use Instagram as a sales funnel, there's that F-word,
go ahead and check out this training right here, where I walk you through it.
You can definitely go through it and adapt it to your real estate business.
Want to get real paying clients just like Erica did? Well, in my opinion,
the easiest way is to be awesome at your Instagram Stories,
because when people reply to your Stories,
that actually creates a direct message thread with them.
So how do you know what to share to your Stories? Well, for that,
I have something for you. It's called Story Vault.
It's my answer to your question of,
what do I share as a business to my Stories? You get 800 ideas,
400 that are B2C and 400 that are B2B. So for you,
you'd probably want to use the B2C ideas.
You get 400 ideas of things that you as a real estate agent can share in your
Stories that will actually get replies and generate clients in your business.
Head to StoryVault.co, or check out the link right below this video.
To ease and real estate revenue, I'll see you in the next video.
Thanks for watching today's training on how to use Instagram as a Realtor.
If you liked it,
please subscribe to my channel so that you don't miss any future trainings just
like this one.