Real Estate Instagram Post Ideas with 15 Examples | 2023
Instagram is the 4th largest social media platform and somewhere you can begin content marketing to build an audience for free!
But to content market, you need content.
What do you post to earn 5000 or more followers for your real estate Instagram accounts?
If Instagram is one of the main pillars of your lead generation, don’t let writer’s block stop your creativity. There are too many examples of extremely easy things you can start posting today.
4 Categories of Instagram Post
Krista Mashore is a real estate business coach. She has a podcast, YouTube, and Instagram account with over 40k followers.
Here, she has a no-nonsense video on exactly what you should be sharing on Instagram, and breaks it into 4 common-sense categories:
- Real Estate. Your “obvious” posts, like closings, Just Listed/Sold, video tours, etc. You should still include yourself in these, though!
- Behind the Scenes. This is “A Day in the Life” kind of content that showcases a little of the fun but hectic world of residential real estate. Chasing your tail, managing inspections, door-knocking homes – people want to see it and feel connected!
- Local Content. Just snap a selfie next time you are at the new burger place that just opened up! Tying yourself visually to the local area is a huge way to make people feel more connected to you and your authenticity.
- Lifestyle. Speaking of authenticity, Krista says that this category featuring you should be the lion size share of your content. Trick or treating with your family, kayaking on the creek, Netflixing and chilling. Instagram is all about personality and you need to show yours.
Obviously, there can be a lot of cross-over between these categories. Krista recommends that 80% be personal content and 20% business content.
So let’s look at each category with a list of ideas and a few examples from Instagram!
Real Estate (20%)
Some real estate marketing gurus recommend against including any of this kind of stuff. I still think it makes a lot of sense to include some, as a reminder to followers of what you do for a living. And there are lots of ways to do it creatively in ways that include yourself.
Do an Instagram Reel of yourself preparing the Open House. Or sticking the sign in your new listing. There are lots of ways to take this generic content and give it your personality.
- Closings
- Testimonials
- Homeiversaries
- Market Updates and Statistics
- Contests
- Thank You Posts
- Real Estate Memes (don’t overdo it)
- Video tours
- Just Sold!
- Just Listed!
- Open House!
- Business milestones
Behind the Scenes (20%)
What is it like to be you, a real estate agent in Your Town, USA?
There is no shortage of ideas here, as you can easily do interviews with vendors or local business owners, or just a selfie at the next inspection.
- Inspections
- Lenders
- Appraisers
- Transaction Coordinator
- Your Broker or Sales Manager
- Cold Calling
- Making Videos
- Editing Photos
- Getting Ready to Show Homes
- Prepping an Open House
- Before and After Photos on a Renovation
- Attending CE training
- Attending a convention
- Photos of the office and office events
- Introduce team members
- Drinking coffee
Local Content (20%)
Do you have a “top 10 things to do in [My Area]” blog post on your website?
Get out and take pictures and Reels of you doing those things!
Anything you can do outdoors with recognizable features of your community is a great way to make you the digital mayor of your town.
- Local business interviews
- Pictures of you and your family in the local community
- High school sports games
- Restaurants (even Fast Food!)
- Local landmarks
- Local builders
Lifestyle (40%)
This doesn’t have to have a real estate twist. Just post about you!
Remember, these are most tasteful when you can turn the spotlight on someone else or a cause or idea other than yourself. There is a fine line between captivating glamorization and offputting self-absorption.
The best way to avoid that pitfall is to be authentic. Don’t force it. If your hobby is Warhammer 40k, then lean into the nerdy and own it. There are lots of successful people into that kind of stuff!
- Selfies
- Personal Life (Keep it positive!)
- Family (with their permission!)
- Hobbies
- Interests
- Birthdays
- Anniversaries
- Dating Life (tread carefully!)
- Volunteering
- Holiday photos
- National [Fill in the Blank] Day!
More Ideas: Copy The Pros
There’s no reason to be suffering for social media post ideas.
I created a list of the top real estate agents on Instagram, most of whom have 800 or more posts.
Don’t reinvent the wheel! Copy their social media content!
Scroll through and see which of their real estate content for Instagram is getting the most engagement. Then do the same thing for your brand, personality, and marketplace.
What NOT to Post to Instagram
- Don’t insult competitors. Article 15 of the NAR Code of Ethics speaks to how you should talk about competitors. You aren’t to make false or misleading statements about their business. It’s probably better still to follow the advice of the old maxim of “if you have nothing good to say…”. Also, Instagram isn’t Twitter! Instagram should be a fun, positive, and uplifting place.
- It’s not ALL about you. Yes, you might be in every photo in your Instagram. But it should show you serving others, not just promoting yourself. What have you done for a client? For a teammate? For the community?
- No Politics. Maybe your hobby is politics! Maybe you volunteer for campaigns! Some Realtors are politicians! But I strongly, strongly recommend keeping politics and your business separate. There is absolutely zero reason to prejudice half or more of your potential clients against you for reasons that have nothing to do with buying or selling homes.
- Avoid Fair Housing Violations. Just as a general reminder, your Instagram account is a business account. It is wise to ensure you are holding the content there to the same high standard you do in your interpersonal interactions relating to fair housing and other legal requirements.
- Stay on topic. Obviously you have a long leash on Instagram to talk about whatever you want and show your personality. But stick to themes consistent with that personality. Don’t just post random pictures.
- No stock photos. Instagram is for original, visual content. If you are using stock photos, edit them to include a message or other original content.
- Don’t steal other user’s content. There’s a right way to use user-generated content for your Instagram feed. And there is a wrong way. Learn the difference!
- Too many selfies. Keep the selfies interesting. At an open house. On the way to a showing. Getting ready to go to the association gala. Nobody needs your bathroom mirror selfies in their timeline.
More Instagram Post Tips
- Handle Negative Comments. Replying to comments is a major part of Instagram. But whenever sharing selfies or advice, there are a lot of hurtful things people can say on The Internet. Feel free to delete nasty comments. But if the comments are more thoughtful, or a negative review, be sure to respond, instead.
- Tell Stories. Don’t post “Congrats to the Smiths and their new home!” Instead, tell a story in your photo captions, with a beginning, conflict rising action, climax, and denouement. That’s my same advice for writing testimonials. It’s all about the starting place, the problems encountered, and the happy resolution. In Instagram, you can also use the feature literally called the Instagram Story feature.
- Post Consistently. 1 to 3 times per day. But not too much. You can schedule posts with Buffer or Hootsuite.
- Consistent Visual Brand. You should have your own brand colors and fonts. Stick to those fonts and hues.
- Don’t worry about professional editing. You absolutely can use professional editing software like Photoshop for pictures. And the Instagram photo editing is a little clunky in my own opinion. But you don’t need to overthink things. The native editing capabilities are plenty good to do what you need to!
- Add Calls to Action. Getting likes and comments is easier to do than getting click throughs and customers on Instagram. So be consistent with sharing in your photos, Reels, and captions a CTA showing what you want your audience to do next! (e.g. refer me to a friend, find out your home value, etc).
Conclusion
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out my Ultimate Guide to Instagram for Realtors article. I try to compile a single Source of Truth for all the resources real estate agents need to succeed at Instagram as a pillar of their lead generation.
