As someone who spends an ungodly number of hours on real estate Instagram every day, I have some bad news for you. Some of your accounts are boring. Like, really boring. Don’t worry, I’m not going to name names here, but if you’re not getting engagement, you’re not gaining followers, and you’re not having fun—chances are I’m talking about you.
But since I actually want to see you all succeed this year, I thought some tough love might be in order. Consider this your intervention. I’m going to rip the Band-Aid off and talk about five ways to be the most boring realtor on Instagram. Then I’ll show you how to stop being boring while still posting real estate content that will make your phone ring.
Want more Instagram tips I used to grow my account to over 350,000 followers? Get my FREE e-book, 11 Secret Instagram Tips, here:
1. You Only Post ‘Just Solds’ & ‘Just Listeds’
If you want to have the most boring Instagram in the game, flood your feed with repetitive announcement graphics every time you sell a house, list a house, or put a house under contract. These types of posts guarantee a quick “scroll by” and little to no engagement. They aren’t interesting, they don’t provide value, they aren’t funny, and they invoke zero emotion.
To be clear, I’m not saying to NEVER post them. Of course you should advertise your properties and let people know you’re an active, successful real estate agent. Just don’t dedicate your entire feed to these types of posts.
How to Be Less Boring in 2022: Tell a Story With Your Listing Posts
Instead of posting the announcements as individual posts, do a weekly or monthly “round-up” where you bunch all of your Solds or Just Listed(s) in one post. You can do this as a slideshow style-post, a single template with multiple pictures, or as a video Reel.
Title it “Monthly Round-up” or “Inventory Check” and flash some photos or videos of the properties. This way you are still showing what you have going on without being boring over and over again.
How to Tell a Story With Your Listing Posts
Instead of just mentioning the price a house sold at, tell the story about the property. Talk about the sellers (with their permission, of course), what they did to the house, what it meant to them, why they sold it, the history, the offer situation, or anything else you found interesting about the deal.
Maybe mention something crazy that happened during the transaction or comment on why people fell in love with the house. Was there a particular selling point or something that made the house unique? Just saying it sold “over ask” isn’t cool anymore because everyone sells everything over ask in this market. Talk about how many offers there were and what the buyer had to do to secure the property.
Check out this post from Taya Dicarlo for inspiration. See how much more interesting that is than JUST a graphic? Shoutout to social media savant and friend, Tessa Bella, for teaching us these strategies on an episode of our Over Ask Podcast on how agents can make their Instagram (IG) feeds more entertaining.
10 Agents & Coaches Crushing It on Instagram Reels in 2022
2. You Only Post Real Estate Content
All real estate all the time is overwhelming for you AND your IG followers. You don’t want people to think, “We get it, you’re in real estate.” Posting only real estate content can make you seem like a one-dimensional, salesy, work robot.
How to Be Less Boring in 2022: Show Your Authentic Self
Show the authentic version of yourself. A great way to do this is on Instagram Stories, where you don’t have to worry about engagement. You like the Yankees? Post about it. You hated the new Matrix film? Post about it. You like eating upside down like a bat? Post about it. Here are a few realtors you can take inspiration from:
Sarah Desamours has a great mix of family, real estate, and hobbies like skiing and music festivals. You get a good idea of who she is and what she likes from her feed.
Matt Lionetti, the cohost of my podcast, is a music lover and says he got a listing because he wore a Ramones shirt in one of his IG stories and someone DM’d him about it. A $50,000 commission because of a T-shirt. I just made that number up to drive home my point, but the premise is true. Pretty cool.
Editor’s note: Here’s the picture from Matt’s IG. I thought it would be silly to not point out that while his Ramones shirt is admirably broken in and looks pretty great under a blazer, he was also standing next to the most famous real estate agent on planet Earth. So maybe the Ramones shirt wasn’t doing all the heavy lifting here … but he DID get the client.
Katie Day, an agent in Houston, treats her IG story like a vlog. Following her is entertaining because she posts her entire day from start to finish, showing her audience real estate content and everything in between. We see her workouts, her favorite restaurants, her dogs, and her family + friends. Like Sara, you feel like you really know Katie from following her on Instagram.
Show the places you like to eat and what you like to eat. As simple as it sounds, food content always crushes on IG. An agent I know named Byron Lazine does a “creme brulee cracking” with his spoon at every restaurant that has the dessert. It’s the lamest thing I’ve ever seen, but it’s become a thing on Instagram and his followers actually submit videos of them “cracking the top.”
Looking for meme templates to post on Instagram to spice things up? You can get all my funniest, most viral meme templates along with hundreds of other Instagram templates on Coffee & Contracts.
3. You Only Post Your Wins
When I first started The Broke Agent, real estate Instagram was infested with grind culture: success after success, fitted suits, closings, nice cars, bottle service, motivational quotes, nauseating photo shoots, and so on. It was win after win, suited, and booted professionals. It was like everyone was playing a character of a realtor and that character lived the perfect life.
Showing your success is necessary, but only showing your success is unrelatable and boring.
How to Be Less Boring in 2022: Be More Relatable
Show your losses in real estate AND in life. You’re hungover and look awful? Show people. You lost out on a deal? Film a video and tell your audience what happened. Can’t think of what to say in a property description? Got a bad Zillow review? A buyer’s dad just ruined the deal? Pull out your phone and post about it.
I bet this content will perform better than a more traditional “win” post. You can be educational and provide just as much value by showcasing what went wrong in a deal and what can be done differently next time. Be relatable.
4. You Only Show Off a Luxury Lifestyle
A lot of agents when they first start out make the mistake of thinking their IG feed should look like a highlight reel from “Million Dollar Listing” or “Selling Sunset.” They go to broker opens and film other agent’s listings and act like they are doing deals north of $20 million when they barely know how to put a property in the MLS.
If your brand is luxury and you actually are doing that type of business, do you and absolutely show that lifestyle. But, if your clientele is looking at $150,000 fixers, this might not be the best strategy. It can also be boring for your audience to see the same pristine, unaffordable houses over and over.
How to Be Less Boring in 2022: Show the Lifestyle Your Clients Will Actually Get if They Buy
Show a variety of homes and lifestyles. Better yet, show the lifestyle and market that YOUR clients will likely be selling or purchasing. I know agents who have lost business because their followers think they only do luxury, and think that the agent wouldn’t want to represent them at a lower price range.
Another thing you can do to make your feed more interesting is to show the BAD real estate pics you come across on showings, open houses, and so on. Show shoddy contracting, awful paint jobs, wacky staging, and strange floor plans, for example. Sometimes the housing flaws are more interesting and engaging than the beautiful, perfect houses.
How to Become a Luxury Real Estate Agent—10 Easy Ways to Break Into the Luxury Market
5. You Never Vary Your Posting Style
A feed using the same style of post over and over again gets boring. Unless you’re doing something like podcast clips or news, you should probably mix it up. Having the perfect-looking, uniform IG feed may be aesthetically pleasing, but I can assure you that your audience doesn’t care. They just want to be entertained.
How to Be Less Boring in 2022: Mix It Up
Mix it up. Hit your audience with slideshows, still image posts, text-based posts, videos, Reels, stories, Lives, reactions, and so forth. Look at my page for inspiration: it’s not just memes anymore. I have two to three different styles of posts every day because I know that people like to consume content in different ways.
Also, IG likes when you tap into all of its features and it’s good for their algorithm. I know Reels are IT right now (and you should definitely post as many as possible—it’s the best way to grow on the platform), but filming them and editing can get exhausting. Sometimes a text-only post can get your point across just as much as video.
Mixing up your content shows your versatility as a content creator and keeps your audience guessing. If you post the same style repeatedly, people might scroll right by because they already know what to expect. Variety will keep your audience more engaged and it makes your page way more interesting.
Instagram Stories for Agents: 12 Easy Ways to Drive Engagement
Over to You
How do you keep your Instagram from putting your followers to sleep? Let us know in the comments.
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