Instagram is the perfect social media platform for residential real estate agents. You can display your listings through albums, showcase your personality through stories, and have full conversations with people through direct messages. These are useful features if Instagram is your hobby, but it's not a hobby for you. Since it's an extension of your real estate business, you need to unlock Instagram’s full capabilities. Migrating will allow you to take advantage of features that drive traffic to your website and give you statistics on your followers, content, and more!
In this article, I will discuss three major benefits of having a business account: the ability to add a call-to-action to your profile, add a link to your highlight stories, and most importantly - insights. I’ll show you how to migrate to a business account and implement each of these features too!
1. Add a call-to-action (CTA) to your Instagram business profile
There are 8 call-to-action options to choose from, but only 4 of them will apply to real estate agents. You can choose between call, text, email or book (an appointment). Everyone has a preferred channel of communication, so you should test each of these CTA’s to see which resonates best with your audience. Here's how to set up your CTA on Instagram:
- Navigate to your business profile
- Select Edit Profile
- Scroll down and select Contact Options
- Select Add an action button
- Select one option and press Next
2. Add a link to stories and highlights
Do you know the difference between Instagram stories and highlights?
- Stories: Display on the top of the newsfeed and expires after 24 hours
- Highlights: Stories that can be saved to your profile and do not expire
The ability to add a landing page link to your story is incredibly useful for driving traffic to your website. Before I get started, there are 3 different types of stories that every real estate agent should leverage as highlights: your agent biography, listings, and adventures around your local market. You give people the option to learn more about a topic by adding a link to the end of each highlight – that’s how you drive traffic from Instagram to your website. In order to add a link to your stories and highlights, Instagram requires that your account needs to have at least 10,000 followers or be a verified account. Below are examples of each recommended highlight topic:
- Agent biography highlight: Add a link to your "About Me" page on your website at the end of your agent biography highlight, so people can learn more about you.
- Listing highlights: Create a highlight for each of your listings and add the corresponding link to the end of each highlight so people can learn more about the listing.
- Adventure highlights: Create a highlight of you going to a restaurant and add a link to their website or a link to your restaurant experience blog post (if you have one) on your website.
How to add a link to your stories and highlights
- Take a photo with the Instagram camera
- Select the Link icon from the menu at the top of your screen.
- Select the URL option
- Add your link
- Select Add Story
- View your story and click the 3 dots icon in the bottom right corner
- Select Add to Highlights
3. Use Instagram Business insights
The best part about switch to a business account is the insights. Keep in mind, you’ll need at least 100 followers to view your insights. Below are the different Instagram insights:
- Interactions: the number of times your profile was viewed over a week – broken down by day and compares it to last week’s performance.
- Discovery: the amount of reach and impressions your posts had over a week – broken down by day and compares it to last week’s performance.
- Content: How many backs, calls, emails, exits, follows, forwards, get directions, impressions, link clicks, next story, profile visits, reach, replies, shares, texts, and website clicks each post, story, and promotion received or generated. These metrics can be broken down by 14 days, 7 days, and 24 hours.
- Audience: Shows your net followers over the past week, the top cities that your followers are in, their age range, gender, the hours and days your followers are online (so you know the best times to post).
How to view insights:
- Navigate to your business profile
- Select the 3 Horizonal Lines icon (≡) on the top-right of your screen
- Select Insights
Ready to take your Instagram to the next level? The first step is to migrate to a business account. You improve your viewer’s experience by providing an easy-to-access call-to-action button, drive traffic to your website through stories and highlights, and improve your content through insights. With so many benefits, why not migrate to a business account today? Here's how you do it:
- Navigate to your business profile
- Select the 3 Horizontal Lines icon (≡) on the top-right of your screen
- Select the Gear icon at the button to view Settings
- Scroll down until you see the Switch to Business Profile
- Log in with your Facebook Account
