Instagram – that’s just for fashion influencers and people who like to photograph their food, right? Wrong.

This visually-driven social media platform, which is owned by Facebook, has evolved a lot in recent years to become an extremely useful marketing tool, for listings, and particularly for personal branding. The addition of features such as Reels, Instagram Live, and Stories and Highlights, along with interactive tools like stickers, polls and emoji sliders, all mean the platform is a lot more flexible.

It also means it’s where your buyers, particularly millennials, are finding the businesses – including real estate agents and offices – they want to work with.

If you’re not sure how to use Instagram effectively in your real estate digital marketing campaigns, we have some tips on the different features and how to use them to achieve different goals.

Reel in a wider audience

By making use of the full suite of Instagram tools you will increase your reach, and find a broader audience.

Instagram Reels are one useful tool for doing this. Reels are videos of a maximum 60-second length, designed to grab attention. They suit content that is planned out and aimed at a particular audience. They work best if you include four or five relevant hashtags so the Instagram algorithm shows them to people, through its suggested content feed, based on their previous viewing data.

Reels are a great way to share recent sales or quick market tips, but they’re also a great way to showcase your personality, approachability and expertise to people who may not have seen your brand before. It’s also a good idea to share a short preview of your Reel to your Instagram feed to further boost your reach.

Reels are different from Stories, which are shorter in length and disappear from your feed after 24 hours unless you save them to your Highlights. Stories are great for on-the-spot moments you want to capture and share and conversational content.

Instagram Collabs is another new tool that could help broaden your reach on the platform by tapping into the audience of someone in a related field. Collabs involve inviting someone to collaborate on an Instagram post or Reel, so both your audiences see it. For real estate marketing this might work well with partners like mortgage brokers, property developers, house moving companies or home staging businesses. To create a Collab simply create a post as normal, tag your collaborator then hit “invite collaborator”.

Instagram carousel posts, which can include multiple images or videos – or even a mix of both, are a great way to promote new listings or recent sales, but you could also use them creatively to offer step-by-step guides such as preparing your house for sale, or preparing for an auction.

Top tip: If you can, add a popular search word to your Instagram name field. This will increase the visibility of your profile via the Instagram Explore page, where users find new accounts to follow.

Build a following

The point of finding a wider audience is to generate leads, but also to grow your own Instagram following. This is essentially word-of-mouth for the digital age. Once you have your followers, you can use the platform to keep engaging with them to build trust and engagement..

To turn casual viewers into followers you need to lay some foundations. These include a good, professional profile picture and a well-crafted bio that tells users what to expect from you and your content. Don’t be tempted to just say “number one salesperson”, tell people a little bit about yourself as a human, not just as an agent.

One of the unique aspects of Instagram is that when people look at your account, they get an “at a glance” representation of what your content includes, displayed through your grid. That’s a good reason to keep your content on brand, and regularly covering the area you consider your point of difference.

Save Stories to Highlights that show off this USP. Stories Highlights sit at the top of your profile so ensure they are up to date. They are a great snapshot of you and your content that can encourage new viewers to become followers.

Spend a bit of time planning out your strategy so you post useful content regularly mixed over different platforms and mix organic content with paid to build a comprehensive digital marketing strategy that will give you good ROI.

And remember to listen as well as talk. Keep an eye on your replies and engagement. Not only will that help you generate leads, it will teach you what your audience wants to hear from you.