KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Instagram Mistakes Real Estate Agents Make and How to Fix Them

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

Friday Focus is your weekly mini-series from KGCI Real Estate On Air—a deep dive into one theme, broken into tactical, easy-to-implement episodes. Every Friday and Saturday, we unpack the strategies, scripts, and systems agents use to win more business—without the fluff.Catch every episode in the series to get the full picture, and put these moves into play by Monday.SummaryThis episode provides a powerful guide for real estate agents who are not seeing results from their Instagram efforts. The discussion unpacks the most common mistakes that are costing agents clients and shares a clear blueprint for creating content that actually converts. You will learn how to transition from simply posting to building a high-engagement, lead-generating machine that elevates your brand and positions you as the go-to expert in your local market.Key TakeawaysPosting for Likes, Not Leads: Understand why focusing on vanity metrics like views and likes can be a costly mistake. The episode explains how to shift your strategy to create content that speaks directly to your ideal client and inspires them to take action, rather than simply trying to go viral.The "Accidental Agent": Learn how a messy or incomplete profile, a lack of clear branding, or an inconsistent posting schedule can make you look unprofessional. The discussion highlights the importance of having a professional headshot, a compelling bio, and a consistent content strategy that establishes your authority and builds trust.Master the Art of the Hook: Discover that viewers have a very short attention span. The episode provides a blueprint for creating an engaging "hook" in the first 3 seconds of your Reels and videos to stop the scroll and keep people engaged with your valuable content.Beyond the Just Listed Post: Learn how to create content that is genuinely valuable to your audience. The episode explains how to move beyond basic "just listed" posts and create a mix of educational, entertaining, and personal content that builds a genuine connection with your followers over time.Topics:Real estate InstagramInstagram marketingReal estate social mediaLead generationInstagram for real estate agentsCall-to-ActionReady to get more clients from Instagram? Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast platform and transform your social media game! Ready for more? Subscribe to KGCI Real Estate On Air and grab the Always Free Real Estate On Air Mobile App for iPhone and Android. Inside, you’ll find our complete archive, 24/7 stream, and every Friday Focus mini-series—ready when you are.

Real estate strategy without the spin. Here's what you missed from this week's Friday Focus on KGCI, Real Estate on Air. Have you ever wanted to get really good at Instagram, but you weren't sure where to start? There's so many ideas out there. There's conflicting information. There's noise. Everyone's telling you, do this or this or this. And have you ever just wished that you could have two?

Absolutely ridiculous, awesome experience agents share their insight on this topic. Well, if you feel that in your soul today's show, for you. Allie and Shelby here at your service. Guys, here's what to expect to learn on today's show. Whether or not to create a business account in addition to your personal account on Instagram. Next, how to decide on what to post versus what not to. How to set up your bio, your highlights, and your pin posts. We're going to share some of our own Instagram tips and tricks and stick around to the end for the biggest mistakes agents are making when it comes to Instagram and it is costing them money in the bank out of the bank actually costing them deals so guys

you are listening to the agent goldmine podcast and this is what I used to say about rock stars but now I'm not doing rocksters anymore and Ali actually you tell me if you even like this but agent gold mine the show for agents who've been around the block and are ready to build sustainable scalable businesses not ones that you secretly hate or want to assist escape from. So my name is Shelby Johnson and I'm here with the one and only Ali Garcett. And together we have closed literally hundreds of transactions as agents, investors, and just leaders within this industry. We are both icon agents at EXP. We are bare pocket stars. We're borderline budget crazy if you didn't already know. But you will love us. I promise. And guys, with that, we are going

to jump right in to our show on Instagram for agents. But actually, pause, we are going to do a five minute life update before we do the Instagram stuff. So if you don't want to know about our lives, you could see if I had five minutes, but we're doing life stuffers. So Ali, hi, I love you. It's so good to see you. It's so good to see you too. I feel like every time we spend maybe more than five days without recording, we're just like, I miss you. Literally, that's how I feel. I was so excited about the show today. I was like, oh my God, I get to see Ali. Yes. Yeah, I literally. That's not a little flippant, but I actually do miss you. No, same. And it's not, it's funny that because it's like we don't talk literally all day, every day on WhatsApp, like the whole day.

But it's just something different about just seeing your face in your living room, you know, looking beautiful. Yeah. And seeing your muscles in your office. Oh my God. Well, okay, so that is the little life update I wanted to give, which I'll just go first. Thanks for asking. Please go first.

Yeah, yeah. That was your life, then Shelby. Oh, my God. Thank you for asking. So I was at the beach a couple weeks ago and I was sitting there, you know, reflecting on life, like a distance away from the business. And I was like, damn, like, where is my energy and time going? Is it going where I want it to go?

And that was, in case you didn't know, world, when I decided to stop hosting the real estate rock stars podcast, which is the other podcast that I've been hosting now for a little over a year. And it was, it's not my show. You know, Allie and I own the show together. So it's our baby. That one is someone else's baby, which is totally fine. And it's a big platform.

It was an amazing opportunity. But I was like, yo, I need to reallocate my time, my energy, all this stuff. And so that's when I cut that out of my life, which sounds so bad, love you rock stars. But the other thing that I decided as I was sitting there is like, you know, you know I'm in Lexington, which is a new city and I don't know anyone. And I was thinking back to like my days in Fayetteville when I was first starting out and like where did business come from? And I was like, okay, well, what do I love naturally?

What do I need to do naturally? And how do I integrate that into my life in a way that will get me in front of more people, in front of more local people? because of course we're doing all the digital marketing stuff that we've talked about before. Like the seller YouTube stuff is still on the table. But I mean, if I can get like face to face with people, like I can just rub some frig some fricking charm and maybe a little smelly stuff on them and then they like start drinking the Kool-Aid.

You know what I mean? So how do I get on them, right? And I was like, okay, I need to work out. I haven't done cross-ed in years, but that was like a really good way for me. I have to work out anyway. I might as well go. And so anyway, I decided to get back in CrossFit, which you guys probably also saw on fucking Instagram. Clearly, I just share my live in Instagram.

But I didn't share this. So I got suckered into doing a competition because I went in. I'm not going to hurt myself this time. I'm going to be fucking chill, which there's not really a chill bone in my entire body. But the coach. Last time. Sorry. You hurt yourself last time?

I, it wasn't like a specific area. It was just like everywhere constantly. Have you done CrossFit? You know what I'm talking about. Age. Yes. It's like a whole body. Yeah, it's a whole body thing. But yeah, so I was like, you know, I'm gonna be 34 next month. I'm gonna fucking chill. And then the coach was like, no, you're not. We have this competition. You should do it. And I fought him for half a second. And then I was like, you know, fuck it. And so I emailed him. Because you know, up into this point, I'd have been chill girl. I was like sliding under the radar. I was like, I'm not whatever. So I emailed him. I was like, yo, dude, real talk. I'll do the comp. But you don't know it yet. But I'm actually hyper competitive. The girl does not like to fucking lose over here. So I'm not like to fucking lose over here. So don't put me with some bitch ass weakling. And I said it in very nice Kentucky words because they do not cursier, by the way. They just like really.

It's so weird. And it like slips out all the time and everyone's like very religious and very and I'm just like well, fuck that shit. And I'm like, oh wait, fuck. Oh shit. You know, it's a whole thing. Wow. Proper Lexington.

I wouldn't have known that. Dude. Yeah. Totally. Well, there's some undercover. Doesn't mind. I'm trying to stay relevant to the story. So I emailed him and he's no worries and emailed me back and was like, I got to

the guy for you his name's Alex Carter is to be really fucking weird if he finds this on the internet I should notice that his name whatever um he's like you've seen him on the the leaderboard like he's doing really well whatever I look the dude up he's literally the mayor like the mayor is my partner which is really I never I would never I thought that when I think of mayor I don't think of cross fit me either I think of a snowman looking man yeah just so waves high to the people. Just like a nice. Yeah. And so anyway, all that to say is that my vision of I'm going to get ingrained to

the community, I'm going to make some good connections, like the universe has spoken. And now, you know, me and the mayor are going to be sweating and like doing some weird noises there side by side. It's going to be great. Wow. Okay. Talk about a freaking connection. If you want to have, if you want to rub elbows with the mayor join the local cross spit, it's

It's the only way. Yeah. That's cool. He's in the leaderboard too. I didn't even know that you had like partners in competition. I thought it was a solo thing. So you can't there's solo competitions. This one's not.

It's like a male female partner and I don't know anyone that well there. So that's why I asked him to pair me. And yeah, the leaderboard, oh my God, it's so bad for me because there's an app and you like put in your time and then you get to see where you fall. So it's become a complete obsession, you know, like refreshing seeing people's scores and then you can like in comment on all. like in comment oh my god it's so bad ali wow yeah i think i would get obsessed with that too dang okay that's it this has been way too much of shelby time already ali it is your turn please tell me what has been happening in your life what is going on let's see so my sister is getting married in a month and i'm going back to new york for that so i have been now taking

my fitness journey to the next level. If for those that don't know me, I used to be pretty ripped. I never had abso. But that was like, yeah, that I still post to this day as my own inspiration. I had a photo as my wallpaper like myself. I looked so freaking conceited. I love that. At one point, somebody was like, oh, who's that?

I was like, this is me to remind myself that I need to get my ass into the gym and do some arms. So yeah, I had always kind of in the beginning, I had considered thinking, I'd consider joining CrossFit, but it's so, so me and jumping intensive that I, I don't want to be like that loser in the corner that just does, that modifies it, you know. So I have been considering joining a gym though that isn't, that's more community because I do have two friends now. Okay, we should start with that. I have two friends in the state and I, they're so cool. People are so very, very nice here. So yeah, how did you have friends?

What? Actually, so they were like throwback friends from Brits' upbringing here, like soccer when she played soccer here when she was a kid. So of course, Brit hasn't lived here in 20 years. So again, she like just has removed here because of her dad. So now we have two friends and it's a good group so far. And I'm excited. And they're healthy, you know, like they're like good people with careers because in case any,

If you don't know, it is very, very hard to find, like, as a lesbian, it's very hard to find other, like, lesbian friends that, like, that have all this sounds so bad, but like a career, ambition, drive and the ability to take vacations, you know, and it's, it's so, so hard. So anyway, that's my, that's my, I'm still looking at. Yeah, I'm still looking for a gym. I'm on my fitness journey. I'm going to lose, maybe I want to lose way more than this, but I want to lose 10. pounds by the wedding which is one month away so yeah and i i mean i think i can do it i just need to get comfortable with the fact that i'm going to be hungry i need to be comfortable with a little bit of hunger so yeah it's a lot but if anyone can do it it's you ali you know seriously yeah thank you thank you

and all that of course like still while selling homes in tucson fully getting licensed here i'm in here in minnesota my lender partner just got his license for Minnesota as well. And so yeah, we're taking it's, I'm taking it a little bit slower here because things picked up in in Tucson. Nice. Yeah. I have no reasoning for why I'm taking it slower. But I'm also, you know, one day at a time over here. We're, you know, I like had, I was like, we're going to close 500 homes at no, wait, 100 homes in 500 days. And I think that's still in my bio and I'm like, maybe we should adjust that because your girls. I'm sure you're going to though like even though it's a slow start you're gonna

freaking I hope so I think so I'm like so excited about the steps and the fact that like I wiped my entire whiteboard and laid out the entire new marketing strategy and all of the layers and like step by step so it's really easy for me because you know sometimes like when you're working on things you get so in it that you're like wait is this even what's most important and you're like like so far down into the weeds that you're like, shit. And then you have to dig yourself out and do that big look again to identify what's most important. Well, I like laid it all out.

So that way, if I ever like super in the weeds, I could just like literally look over to my whiteboard and be like, no, no, no, I'm still on track. And this is why. And this is where I'm headed. So it's helpful. I'm really excited. I'm loving fucking real estate things. I really want to see the whiteboard.

Oh, I'll send it to you. I took a picture to Bryson just got a new agent. Adrienne, if you're listening. Hi. Take a picture and send it to him. I'll send it to anyone. Hit me up if you want my picture of my whiteboard, guys. Yeah.

Yeah. Hell yeah. Also, Allie, we lied. Sorry, listeners. We said a five-minute update and we are at 12 minutes, but you know, this is what happens when Allie and I don't get to see each other for, you know, three days. So. Oh, I forgot to ask.

What is your competition? September 7th. You can fly in and you can paint your stomach and you can have a sign that's glittered. I accept. I do. I accept. That's awesome. Cool.

Cool. Okay, that's exciting. Yeah. No, I actually I am. Oh, my God. No, I'm not expecting when I'm really and that's why I was trying to tell the mayor, sir. I was like, sir, I'm really not in prime condition, but I will try my best. I promise and I will leave my dead dead body on the ground. That's how hard I will try. Yeah. Are we good? Yeah. I love that. I'm glad that we were able to catch up. Oh my God, we do. Okay. So point number one is whether or not to create. create a business account. And the reason why I threw this in there, because I know we've talked about this before, it's just because it continues to be a frequently asked question by so many people. So, Ali, what is your take on whether or not

to create a business account for Instagram? For Instagram specifically, I say no, especially said, like I do have different thoughts on Facebook, but today is about Instagram. So I say no, if you're already on Instagram and you already have following, they like you, they know you, they trust you, they listen to you,

otherwise they wouldn't follow you. So start telling everyone you know who will then tell a friend. I think it's it's so much more work, an effort to then create a brand new business only Instagram where people don't care about business only things anymore. First of all, they're on Instagram. They're on social media. They want it to be social. So if you're going to be posting stuff, yeah, if you're going to be posting just like,

just listed or just sold, then that's boring. No matter how cute the Canva is, it's boring and it's overplayed. So you want to be different. You want to stand out. And people want to see personality. There is a reason all these big, huge corporations like Delta, American Airlines, you know, like all these huge companies are hiring these like 20 year olds to take over their Instagram and fully are they getting traction, you know, like using the not just the most recent threads, but the verbiage that comes with being a 20 year old. it's working. So I don't know, not saying that you have to learn what the verbiage is of like 20 year olds,

but being yourself is what people want to see. Totally, totally agreed. There's one thing that I have a question on. This kind of leads into our next one, but before I do that, so if you are out there and you are really committed to the just sold, just listed, just closed, whatever type of thing, if you are going to do it, tell a story. So Ali's totally right.

that the picture, the template that you have in Canva that says just closed with your little head, your folded arms in the front or your hands on the hips, like those classic fucking real estate pictures like dead, no, done, don't do it. Boring, people just flip by and they're like, that's whatever. But if you can take a closing that you just had and tell a story about, oh my gosh, okay, so Allie and you use names or whatever, you know, had this situation and this is what we overcame. And by the end, you know, she saved $4,000.

and whatever, whatever, and blah, blah. So obviously that was a terrible example. But do you get my point? My point is that if you can take people through a journey, because this is more and more social media and YouTube and everything is becoming the art of storytelling, right? People love a fucking story. So if you can take a moment, just closed,

and take your audience through a compelling story, then fucking do your just sold, your just closed bullshit stuff. What do you think, Allie? Yeah, no, 100%. And I'm thinking of ways that if you had, so if you do the just sold, just whatever, you can upload it, but don't upload it by itself, I would suggest. Instead, do like a green screen video of you telling the story with the Canva boring thing in the back. So you can point to the house. You can point to the person.

You can point to, you know, you can put the buyers with their permission or the sellers with their permission on it. And you can say, hey, this is Mary. Mary reached out to me through Instagram, actually. and yeah tell the story of how it went down the ups and the downs and how you help them in the down and just repeat all that in the caption always always i might be getting ahead of myself here but always use captions in the actual real oh my gosh how do i still see people for the ai well i guess that'll probably be in the mistake section but literally every single day i still see people just posting video without captions and they're just talking and i'm like oh my god what is the

stat alley at 70% people don't listen or something 80 80 something percent of people listen to reels videos or i guess don't listen with the sound off they're either at work they're either in bed they're either you know the kid is sleeping like a lot of majority of people like an overwhelming majority of people and like why would you not want to yeah people just forget the captions if you have any redo them like that put that on your to-do list if you have any good ones take keep you can keep it up but redo the same shit add captions to it and use whatever is in the captions of what you're saying in the description yeah and and do those if you don't know what to post do your old ones better yeah so true or go to someone you're trying to copy go to their

reels and see what their best performing reals are and just fucking copy them i literally was doing some research the other day on some hyper local people we're getting again head of ourselves but that's what i did i was like oh you're successful and you know what you're doing what works for you off, fuck, copy, easy. You know, copy the hook. Yeah. Copy literally the caption, copy everything. And they got, you know, 300,000 views.

I'm like, okay, perfect. Did you go for Lexington specific or, or a different? No. And so, and that's the thing. I haven't fucking totally decided whether I'm going to put that on my own page or I just have, it's so funny because you're like, don't create a business page. I have a five pillars team. If you do have a team, I think that's different.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Then you do the business page. But I was just working on content for that this morning and thinking about, it. So I'm not sure where I'm going to head, but the people I were was looking at is move me to Tennessee. So guys, you should look her up. Her name's Marie Lee. I also interviewed her on Rocksters, if you want to hear her whole take. And Alyssa Kernut from Spokane, Washington, those two do

really, really well, actually, Alyssa's hyperlocal and Marie is relocation. But they have a very specific niche for their local audience. And so if you are trying to target your local audience, then just go go to those pages and see what they do because it's pretty great and that's kind of what I wanted to lead into so we decided you know don't create a business page but so the next piece oh sorry yes sorry I do yeah because you brought up a good a good point of you already have if if you're if your Instagram right now has a specific theme to it already so the reason I did not create a business account is because I didn't have a theme it was all about me and that's it so people already liked me. I wasn't selling anything. I didn't have a prior job that was related to me posting about it on

on anything. So, but I do see some people and I, I'm glad that you mentioned this because if you have a specific theme already on your Instagram, then at that point, it may be worth starting a new one. And if you're going to start a new one, make it a, you know, make it a business account. And it will, I guess business account more so is like for Facebook, right? I'm talking professional account. I do have a professional Instagram. The technicality. Yeah. The tech. Yeah. So if you have been selling what XYZ products or if you were or there's so many different ways that this could that this could go. If you are going to be changing the overall theme and the message drastically, then create a new one. You can still incorporate some old stuff of I mean, that's you and your personality.

Specifically what I'm thinking about now is this guy that recently reached out to both of us. a drummer and so like he in in his case he wouldn't need to but he could start a new instagram or if he already had a super super big following he could create a new one incorporate he's still both drumming and being a real estate agent um but really i guess if you have any questions reach out to us you know we're we're happy to like give you do a social media audit and let you know what you could do better we're here for that there are just so many different scenarios that we can go down right now so but if you know that people are reaching out to you specifically for a reason that has not

nothing to do with real estate, then I would consider getting a new one. Same. And that's exactly what I was going to say, too. The foremost people don't create a new one. You have a following. You have people who already love and support you. Just keep that going. But if you are like, no, I understand content creation. I really want this to actually be my lead generation, not just my lead nurture, because that's kind of the difference too. Whereas if you're keeping your personal, what you're doing is you're nurturing those people who are already following you, you're not really going to get a ton of new people all the time because people aren't looking for, you know, Ali Garcid, if they're in

Tucson looking for a house. What they might be looking for are hyper local content or home tours or relocation specialist. And so that kind of depends. So if you're doing, you're keeping your personal and you're posting like what normal real estate agents do slash sharing your story, that is the lead nurture. You're going to nurture anyone who's viewing you. But if you want to make it your actual lead generator, then that is the time like Ali was saying, start a page from scratch. But then you have to be really, really specific in who your target audience is and what you're going to be posting. And those three that I listed are what I have seen in this across Instagram to be like the three biggest ones that agents are finding success in. And that is the hyper local

content. That is home tours. And that is relocation specialist. And what you can do with each of those is you can gear every piece of your content to that very specific target audience. And that will allow you to grow because people are interested in hyper local content. What I mean by that is best restaurants, this business just opened up, this event, things to do this weekend, kid-friendly restaurants, like people are interested in that. Then also with home tours, like people are literally, they want to see beautiful homes, you know, what $500,000 will get you in downtown San Antonio, you know, that sort of content. And then the relocation is the people who are like moving to an area and that's your information on you know all the relocation things

Anyway, so that is the specific page versus the nurture which is the journaling your journey type of thing Did I just talk in circles Allie? That makes sense. No, yeah, that definitely makes sense. Yeah, so think of it in I guess four different buckets like hyperlocal home tours relocation or journaling the journey your journey personal brand Okay, perfect and then yeah whichever when you are that is who you are talking about to within each post and one of the mistakes which we're going to talk about in a little bit but one of the biggest mistakes that I see agents do all the time is they don't know who they're talking to and they're posting all over the place whether they're someday they're talking to you know clients and then the next day they're talking to their family or they're talking to other agents and so when

people come to their page they're confused they don't know what to expect but yeah okay that's all I was going to say now on like how to decide what to post is that enough on how to decide what to post understand your target audience and gearing your content towards them Do you want to do anything else on that specific topic, Ellie? I don't think so. I know that I personally struggle with that. You know, I talked to both agents and clients on my on my Instagram and I,

I swap hard. Yeah. Okay. No, we can we can keep it moving. Okay. And okay, gotcha. So this is this next part we're going to talk about how to how to set up your basically how to set up your Instagram page.

And again, all of this will depend on who you're targeting. audiences. So you really have to do the last step before you do this one. But there are some general rules of thumb that Ali and I are going to share. And I'll do profile picture guys with your Instagram. You want to make sure that you can see your face. You don't want a far away picture. You want people to be able to see high quality of your face. If your pores are there, you got a pimple. You got to let the people see it. You got to get up in there. You know what I'm saying? And then also pro tip, which I just did white on mine, I'm still considering doing a color pop, but is to clean the background, you know, no background, and then have some sort of color pop in the

background, like a yellow or like a pink or whatever your brand should, you know, cohesive brand is because the intent is you want to create that color. It's kind of like color categorizing your calendar. You know, when you see something, instantly you know what it is. That's what you want to create when people see your icon on your stories or on your feed, they want to be like, ah, that's Allie. And you can use Canva to remove the background on your picture. And otherwise, with profile picture, what, and I, like, Allie does a great job being goofy, being crazy, being very authentic. So that is another thing to think of. Like, you want to just be authentically you in every scenario, because if you are like everyone else, you don't stand out. And the,

the idea in this whole marketing industry is to stand out, is to be different. Yeah. Yeah. So if you think that you are, you know, a high D super direct, maybe even an asshole, then maybe don't put a photo of like you smiling and being like a looking friendly. Do like a crisp ass photo of like you just looking, I don't know, mean. You know, just be you. If you are goofy, do a goofy ass photo. Just have it be you. And this is not the time to reinvent your personality because I think a lot of people will will leave W2s, realize that they're now an entrepreneur, a business owner. and I need to get in front of as many people as I can. So who do I want? How can I get in front of people? And then they, they tend to just be someone that they're not, which is okay in the beginning as long as you end up finding your voice and like finding who you actually are. So there is like a learning curve to that, but also like just don't don't think that,

oh, you know what? I want to be, I want to look like that guy, but you aren't that guy. So you're just going to look like a poser if we're still saying that word. Yeah, dude, totally fucking agree. And with, Okay, so that's profile picture. Now profile optimization. Profile optimization. So we have gotten the photo. And the first thing that people see, I'm looking at my Instagram right now for just to keep myself on track, the first of people see is a name. That is what's in bold on Instagram. So more than just your name should be on there. Your name and what you do should be that same line.

It should all be in that line. So right now I have, you know, Allie Garcette, St. Paul, realtor of course with the registered symbol because I don't want to get sued anytime you use the word realtor use the little registered simple so if I would definitely definitely definitely include your city or if you are just a recruiter then have what you do on there because the rest can be your background which I'll get into in a second so as far as the process of verifying your profile do that pay the $14 or maybe 19 whatever it is a month to be very very verified and like in the beginning before I got verified I was like I'm not going to pay for a blue check mark I'm going to look like an idiot who am I to pay for you know to try to because in the beginning of Instagram it used to just be like celebrities that had the verification but now it is a little bit of a pay to play and if you are a business pay and show that you care about your business so that was a mental hurdle that I had to get over and I and I and I see you. still see some people thinking about it.

Like yeah, but you know, other people that are actually celebrities are verified. I'm just a local, a local realtor. Care about your business because if you care, the more you care, other people will care too. Otherwise, if you don't even respect your own business, no one else is going to. So, okay, so that's a verification and that's your name in bold. We have gone over in previous episodes as to how to change your name, but Shelby, do you remember what the processes of that actually? I think it's edit profile.

Yeah, edit profile, but you have to go through the meta account center these days. You can't just do it on. Well, I mean, and I'm not have it pulled up. So maybe that's your handle. No, I think it is your name, your name. And then it takes like they have to do like a picture and then they verify it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So when you're looking at your profile, like visiting your profile on the left hand side, you're going to see edit profile. Click on your name or sorry, at the very, very top it's going to say edit profile is going to take you to the meta verified page. At that point, it's going to give you the option to change either your name, your username, your profile picture, or your avatar. So that's where you do it. And for some reason, it took me. Remember, like, when we recorded this last time, it took me like seven days to get a turnaround.

And it took Shelby seven minutes. So, yeah, so just play around and continue to change it until it's changed. You will have to upload your driver's license or passport or some sort of ID showing that you are saying who you are instead of all of a sudden now I am Sam Smith. So going down the list here from Edit Profile, so we have the name, your username is next. Make sure that your username is something that can also be as it can also be searchable. You know, like I go by Allie the agent on everything. Whether you want to go by Ramon the realtor or you want to do, you know, Tucson real estate agent or anything like that, make sure that your username isn't just a mumble, jumble, collection of random letters and spaces.

make sure that it like makes sense and it's another way for people to realize okay Ali Garcet St. Paul Realtor and then the username is Ali the agent it makes sense you know she's a realtor and I have the word realtor and agent on there so do that any questions about that before I go to the bio Shelby I'm good okay okay cool actually right right above the bio you have a where people can click if you are if you have a professional account on Instagram, you can choose what kind of profession you're in. So choose real estate agent. And then is where you can input your own words, your own like free for all. I suggest you do three liners. The first line, I suggest you do, you have you, you have the sentence starting with,

I help. You know, who do you help? That literally tells people if that if your page is right for them or not. I have I help real estate agents go from five closings a year to 20 plus. So in the beginning of each of those lines, I just have a random like icon for as like a bullet point just to make it less wordy and a little bit more, you know, friendly and Instagrammy. So that's your line. If you help families, you know, downsize or if you help seniors get into their forever home or retirement home, whatever it is, make sure that's that that line is all about your niche. If a stranger jumps on your page and they see that you help, XYZ, will they follow you or will they go away? So some people are very scared in general, not just Instagram, not just this one line.

They're very scared of narrowing down. But the more you narrow down, the more people will realize that you are for them. So make that liner right now. And if you need to change it, then change it. You know, change it over time. But just start with with niching down the beginning. The second line that I have is a call to action. So I have DM, the word partner, to get started. And so yours could be DM home buying guide, or that's kind of a long word guide, you know, St. Louis. to get the local spots to whatever you know whatever your giveaway is have some sort of have a giveaway or have some sort of call to action for people to reach out to you that's great they're going to follow you awesome you are a licensed in kentucky real estate agent great this is perfect for me

because she helps uh people go from their starter home to their forever home this is just for me now what do i do and you are telling them overall in social media people will not do anything until you tell them what to do so tell them dm me the word x Y Z to X, XYZ. That is a second liner. The third liner, I suggest you have a bio and like a short bio of what you have done.

Sell yourself in this one. So I, in my experience here, I mean, I have 100 closings in three years. I'll help you do it too. And so simple. It's short.

It's to the point. And it still maintains that like each one is no longer than one line. So play around with the words. Ask chat GBT to make it more concise. That's what I did. And so that's, those are the three lines for the bio. Anything before I go to the next section? All I would say is that if you were one of those people who wants the home tours, the relocation, or the hyperlocal guide, then look up.

Marie Lee, move me to Tennessee, Alyssa Kurnett, Spokane, realtor. And Isaac, it's Isaac Lightborn. and he's El Paso, Texas. He does home tours. So the reason why I'm bringing this up is because if you want specific examples for what's working for those specific strategies, that they follow very much in line with what Allie just said about your niche, your specialty, you know, up front, the type of content to expect, you know, call to action, a lead magnet in as concise as possible.

People don't want to read a bunch of fucking things. They want it to be super clear, super concise, and then have that lead magnet or a way, you know, call to action exactly like Ali was saying. That's all. Perfect. Okay, sweet. And then after that line, that's where you can have your link. So I suggest doing, I don't even know if you can add more than one link. Do one link. One link, again, simple, clean, because the more confusion that you add, the more different choices that you have, the fewer people will even make a choice. So give people one call to action, one link and have, so have that link. go to whatever you want it to be, you know, your IDX website so people can start their home

search or maybe it's a, if you're targeting sellers, maybe it's a site that goes to your page where they can follow, where they can do an intake form saying, yes, I want to know what my house is worth, whatever it is. So use that wisely. If you're, if you're even going to use it, you don't, I don't think it's like, you don't need it. But it really depends on who you're marketing, what you're doing, and what kind of call to action. If it goes directly in line with your call to action, then hell yeah. Right underneath that is where you can have something called channels, a broadcast channel. So I suggest because Instagram has it available, do it, whether you're, this is a perfect opportunity for you to talk directly to people that

that kind of, you know, just follow you. You can see people have to opt into it. So I have three channels, but I really just focus on one of them, which is for the value that I bring to other real estate agents, especially now as like we're changing with the NAR stuff. So I have members that have joined that. I also have Tucson home buyer and a Tucson home seller as of right now.

But I don't really do too, too much on that. A lot of people super, super utilize this. in order to get those that are, they're pretty much raising their hand. Anybody that joins a broadcast channel, they have to opt in. You see who opts in. You see who is watching. You see who is reacting with emojis. And you can put whatever you want.

You can do a text. You can do a video. You can do a voice message. You can share whatever you have already posted on your Instagram as a reel into your broadcast channel. It's another way to get more views. It's a way for it's almost like in addition to a story on Instagram. where it's another way for you to put your content in front of the people that have already

raised their hands. Speaking of which, I think you raised yours. I have no experience with broadcast channel. So I'm like over here, do I need to do another fucking thing? So my question for this is, so that goes to DMs, right? Because I've seen like other people have invited to your broadcast channel. I'm like, fuck that. I'm not listening to any of you. So that's, it's going to go through their DMs. Like when you broadcast something, it's straight to DMs. Is it in like a channel or does it go specifically to their inbox and then they reply like how does it work so when i post something to my broadcast channel which by the way don't use and abuse if you're going to only post the stuff that you're already posting on instagram people are going to leave because you're not

giving them any any insight value the whole purpose of this is to give them insights it's like an inner circle of instagram on pay you know it's for free so when i post something on everyone else does it goes up as a message but it doesn't show up as a message from ali garcy said, it shows up as a message from the title of the broadcast channel. So I think it'll, it'll be my icon on the left hand side. So they'll know it's from me, but it'll say real estate agents. That's the name of my broadcast channel. If you don't have an audience already, probably not, well, unless I guess you're broadcasting personal things. But like for your example, Allie, you have the buyers, the sellers, and the agents. That's very specific. It's those are a type of

people who are interested in a very specific type of content. So if you right now are just getting into real estate and you are going to just post, you know, journal the journey type of thing, probably, what are your, actually, what are your thoughts, Ali? Because my instinct is probably not the time. Maybe you get your fucking feet weight wet a little bit, but maybe not. I mean, Ali, you are about full sentence. So let's hear it. I, so overall, if you're thinking about whether you should start it, if there is anything that you only want to give to people that have raised their hands. You don't want to give it to the general public. If you want to keep something a little bit more confidential, but that's a value to others, then I would say do a broadcast channel.

So if you have a, you know, some sort of giveaway, but you don't want to give it to just everyone, you want it to give it to those that are actually interested in moving to your city, then you can put that in your broadcast channel. Everything that you put in the broadcast channel, people as they join can see everything that was previously posted. You can also change the settings to where it's only you contributing or you can also open it up to others. What I see a lot of people do at this time is just the owner of the broadcast channel is the one contributing.

What other people can do is they can react to it with an emoji. Again, that's people raising their hands twice. You know, people have opted into your broadcast channel and after the voice message, that you put in about what the latest is with the NAR or how to get how to sell your house for for the most and they're saying and they're reacting with a fire emoji a heart emoji reach out to them that that that's them pretty much begging you like hey I'm interested thank you so much for the valuable information thank you and they thank you with a heart so message them immediately pronto okay do you want

to so is that and I clearly have so little experience with us this is after your link before highlights Yes. Yeah, that's still like in the blurb of that like whole bio section. Gotcha. Okay, cool. So that so now next would be the highlights, which you know what's interesting. It's because I have I have notes on God, things change so fast all the time because now I just went to some of my favorite people and a couple of them have just removed highlights altogether. So I'm like, oh my God, is that the next trend is just removing highlights all together? I mean, fuck. I don't know. But so I'm going to keep my little eyes out for that. But in the meantime, if you do want to do highlights. We have some notes on it for that. But ultimately, like, we haven't even talked about a cohesive, you know, thought through looking brand. And again, this is more important if you are doing those more focused lead generation type of pages, having a consistent look. Whereas if you're journaling the journey and you're just fucking slinging it, it's less important to look like a business because you are a person who is sharing about your life.

your business. So but if you are going the route of the regeneration pillar type of thing, then make sure that you have a cohesive look, that you have certain colors, the color scheme, the type of the way that you do things is cohesive and looks like it's thought through. People are more like, I mean, you've seen it. Those like beautifully aesthetic food pages or travel pages that you just can't stop looking at it because everything is cohesive and gorgeous. It's at least keep that on your on your Pinterest fucking mood board when you're deciding in what you're going to post. But back to highlights, though, this is where you can have a series of literally highlights, where you can showcase your maybe lead magnets. Maybe it's testimonials,

client wins. Maybe it's service areas. Maybe it's frequently asked questions. I really love a frequently asked questions one. Like that one's really, really fun. But this is where you can put your things that you want people to see. So just within them, make sure they look pretty. think about the information that you want to share. Don't put too much. Less is more, just like Ali said, information overload is the way of our culture right now. So think about it, no more than three to five highlights,

cohesive image. And according to Will Draper, 10 stories per highlight. What else on highlights, Ali? Oh, if you don't follow Will Draper, follow him too. He's a fucking, he's great. If you're an agent looking to focus on just both buyers and sellers, I would do three.

I would do one for sellers called seller wins. One for buyers called buyer wins. And one for start here, which is another way for people to click through and know exactly what the next steps are to start working with you. Again, make it so obvious. And so starting with a start here,

I would do maybe just one highlight or one post within that highlight saying, contact me. You're like, if you are a, buyer contact me with the D with the word xyz or here's my phone number and then just make it super super simple but another call to action this time instead of it being in the bio it's a visual so the other visuals that you'll have are the other two highlights which is a buyer win buyer wins

and seller wins for those update as many testimonials as you can if it's a video testimonial from your clients perfect if it's a testimonial of you telling the story you know what of what you did your recent buyer and how much you got them under contract for like below below appraisal below asking price this is your time again to sell yourself because this is what people are going to be seeing instead of scrolling they have it right there available oh what are the wins that how can she help me win as a buyer how can she help me win as a seller so testimonials all throughout the more the better in those two have them have it be have that part be so overwhelming with value of how much you have helped other people that it's a no-brainer to work with you.

And if you were like, how do I get testimonials? Go back and listen to Allie's buyer part one of them. We did fucking six, I think. It's in there. I'd say five. I think it's number five. Where she goes through it's six, part six. Is it six?

Okay. Yep. Then that's where you can find exactly how she does an amazing job capturing testimonials from people. I think it might be the episode right before this too, a called like how to get a fire. I start review every single time. So look up that one. After those highlights, you're, that's where the, the reels come in, the photos come in. So overall content strategy,

right? What do I even pose? I have my bio set up. What do I start posting now? If you're going, the most recent update, by the way, I pay for Adleys like inner circle type thing, which is $200 a month for social media and I share that with those that join our community. but I want to share with you something that I have been sharing with others as well, which is as of August 15th, 2024, Instagram is, there's a key metric in Instagram that's now focused on views specifically. This is new, by the way. I thought this was like always a thing, but this is new. So people are now looking as, they're quantifying a view as when a real starts playing, and when an image shows up on someone's screen.

So back to when Instagram was first starting out, it was just photos, then it turned into like just reels. Now it's even Steven. So if you want to post photos, do that. And that's going to have the same weight as someone watching a reel. So you know long, if you never really liked videos, then maybe now is your time to post even more photos. And have that photo be engaging, of course, but a view is a view.

And if they get a view just because your photo popped in front of them perfect. This may be an opportunity to maybe even start paying for like boosting some ads on Instagram. That's just a photo. So think about that. And also just know, side note, if you're, if you're going to be paying for boosting anything on Instagram or on any platform, if you're doing it from your phone, you are paying an upcharge because likely you're paying the Apple store majority or like a good 30%. So if we're going to be boosting anything, do it from your computer where you don't have to then pay if you're going to be putting like 50 bucks into an ad out of that 50 bucks if you're doing it on your phone not all 50 bucks goes to the actual pushing your content it's going to be

a large chunk is going to the apple store but unlike if you're doing it on a computer any questions on what a view is shelby that's not know that for the sorry for the boosting i did read diligently the post that you did on our social media chat the other day you did it cool stuff okay awesome awesome awesome yeah reals engagement are more on Instagram for the updates. Reels engagement is is continuing to grow. Recommendations are up to 50%. So what that means is Instagram is pushing smaller content.

So if you are a smaller content creator, this is your time. Post and post and post. Don't wait for what's perfect. Just fucking post it. What is the recommended, do they have a posting frequency recommendation for that or what? Yeah, they do about.

two to three times a week. And what the group, the social media group that I'm a part of, it focuses more so on getting revenue from, from videos that you post. And it's not so much ads. You're not selling anything. It's really just satching the eye, appealing to the masses, like prank stuff,

because you can make a fuck ton of money from that. Obviously, I'm trying to incorporate what they're teaching into real estate. So what they're doing is actually three-minute long videos. So that's where you make the most amount of money. money especially like on Facebook. So they do about two to three like quality videos a week. Okay, perfect. And then did they talk about story frequency? No. No, they don't. In our social media challenge, we are doing three posts a week plus three stories a day.

What are your thoughts on that? Do you think three stories a day is good from the alley assessment? I think it's good. It's always as long as you always have a story gets my blessing because you're, you know, story puts you literally at the top of someone's feed. So the more is just another way for you to stay top of mind, but also be mindful. Don't just put dumb stuff. You know, don't do a story just to make a story that you don't even think would help anybody. If you find it funny, post it. If you think it's helpful, post it because it's you. But if you're posting something that's, I don't think that anybody's going to care, nobody's going to care. Very true. And stories is another way, Ali talked about this on the broadcast channel, but like stories is another way to

see who's opting in because you can go and see who views all of your stories and especially if you have multiple see who is watching it all of them in a row who's there on that last one those people are bought in they want to know what you're doing you know if they're always liking your shit those are the people you need to be reaching out to which we're going to get to in just a little bit about prospecting just a little bit just a tiny a little bit but yeah okay and and my my last thing about stories is what i do i actually got this from a different content creator in a different niche is I now on Sundays am deleting all of my stories and I'm only posting one. So I delete, I delete all of them and then just immediately after I post my one story that I'm

going to have up for the full 24 hours. That makes sure that people don't just like swipe through accidentally if that one story, which is important. And I'll tell you why. So I don't want that one story to be mashed in the middle where people think people saw random stuff and they're like, I don't really care about Allie's stories today. I want this photo to be the only thing that they see. So in that one story that I do on Sundays up for 24 hours by itself is a call to action.

A call to action mixed with a testimonial. So I'll have, you know, Tyler Good, a realtor out of Fayetteville, North Carolina that joined us, came out the gate setting up appointments, like the first week that he was, that he joined us because of our resources. So I, my next post this Sunday is going to be about Tyler and about maybe like some others as well saying, dude like this they're getting appointments month one like multiple appointments month one of joining us so testimonials and then with a call to action again making it super super simple look at this person look at this person look at this one DM me if you also want to close 20 homes a year plus and so I'll keep that up for 24 hours and then the next day I will post even more testimonials but it'll be back to my normal three

a day okay and my last thing on polls I mean shit stories look at me for and slip. I don't know if that's the right term for that. But it's polls. I love polls for just engagement in general. And I have an entire sheet sheet on how to post polls that pull out opportunity for you to talk about real estate. So if you do want that, hit up Allie or I, very happy to share that so you can just copy and paste all of those specific polls. Because again, polls are a way for you to they're raising their hands and if you do it in a specific way to target real estate focus then all the better yeah oh that's super super good yeah pull polls are so important even if it's like the that bare minimum even if it's hey are you living in your dream host dream house right now yes or no

that's it you know at a bare minimum and obviously the ones that say no reach out to them they already answered reach out to them yeah okay what else we're going to talk about okay so the biggest mistakes that we see agent making across the board are I'm gonna do a few Ali's gonna do a few so not keeping that target audience in mind changing audiences all the time is really hard for you to grow or people to get engaged with your audience because they just don't care they don't know what to expect if you're all over the place so you got to think about that in the beginning another one I see all the fucking time outside of captions which we've already talked about but it kind of goes along with video

is bad audio. Like, if you're going to upgrade anything, really, audio is, like, the most important. So, and that, I mean, that is way more important in long form than short form, but still in general audio. And the last thing that I'm going to say before I hand it over is not posting videos. And I fall victim to this. And I'm so glad that the fucking algorithm is accepting pictures again.

So I can use my pictures from two, three years ago. that Alex took of me. It's fine. I'm shameless. But in general, the opportunity of when you don't post video, you are missing out on people being able to fall in love with you without you ever meeting them. Because there's this rule. It's the 7-4-11 rule where people need seven hours of your face plus four different channels and 11 touch points, whatever. That's not important. I'm harping on the seven right now. You have to give them the opportunity to spend seven hours with you or else you're going to have to actually spend those seven hours with them, but you can cut the chase so much more by sharing video of your face. Speaking, talking. Okay. Allie, you're up. The biggest mistake that I

see people make is starting videos and wasting so much time to get to the point. This is not YouTube. In YouTube, you can waste as much time and people are there, like, munch it on their popcorn for all day. in social media on Instagram, you have one fucking second to get their attention. So nobody gives a crap what your name is. Or if they do, they already know what your name is. So don't say it. Don't say the reason of why you wanted to get on. What you were just doing before you'd had this thought and whatever.

Say the main point up front. The bottom line needs to be what you start out with. And that bottom line has to be strong. So if you're saying, sellers right now are dumb start with that you don't leave that to the very end you know or like the smart the smart sellers are still going to be paying buyers compensation or you know there's there's a way to make that wave stronger but whatever your your bottom line is make sure that you start out with that and start it strong and start it clear have that's that first liner be so

obvious of should the buyer click away or not because if you started out with saying what everyone else does which is hey guys I just wanted to pop on here I'm a real estate agent in Tucson Arizona I just want to pop on here because I was just thinking about this and this and that nobody freaking cares like it like irks me and I tell this to everyone yet they still do it and it's hard it's hard to to start a sentence out the gate saying fuck you know but you need to so just start it strong that's the biggest thing but I have a lot of other mistakes too another mistake is not going live if you never ever ever go live um it's almost as if i mean your stories your

stories do so much they get you to the top but when you're on instagram the what you will always see at the very beginning before you even see someone's stories are those that are live at that moment so the more you go live the more people you're getting in front of all the time and when you do go live always have some sort of topic that you're talking about so that way you're not just sitting in silence. Until you are a content creator that has like tens of thousands of followers that will just initiate their own questions, then you can just start alive. But otherwise, I highly suggest doing lives.

If you are nervous, all the more reason to do lives, because the more lives you do, the more comfortable you're going to be on a camera for a normal reel. And you don't have to share the burden by, you can share the burden, I guess. So if you want to have a lender partner, go live with you, or another real estate agent or client would be perfect. You know, have your client get on Instagram live with you. Tell them how the process is going or a past client, do a live testimonial, which you could always save,

download, send your editor and put into an actual good testimonial that you then put on your highlights. But I suggest going live. And the third mistake that I see is after, even if your message is strong, there's a lot of dead space. in videos. You want to send your,

you wanna post videos that are just like back to back to back sentences, barely giving people a time to even register what you're saying as you're saying that sentence. So that makes sense. As you've already started the next sentence, they're registering what you just said to keep it fast pace because that's what social media is. So delete all the ums, delete all the transitions,

make it go, whether you're using cap cut or captions, they both allow you to do this. So delete all that fluff. And as you're actually recording, make sure that your head is in the top third, we have gone over this previously in other episodes as well. Your audio is clean that you have the background you could use to your advantage. Being that a lot of people view that view Instagram reels without any sound show an action.

The action doesn't even have to do about doesn't have to be real estate related at all. Actions speak louder than words. So if your content is boring, then add something to your video that gives it. it a random twist. Like, why is Ali holding a ginormous sweet potato when she's talking about listings? Hence, one of my videos that I just did. So it was huge. And we still have the sweet potato. It's been like two weeks. Like, we're still eating it. It's probably way bad by now. And as you're editing the video, this is my last mistake. People don't do transitions enough. So they don't do a slow zoom in or a zoom out or a change of scene. As you're,

recording videos even if you are just like looking over to the right make it seem as if you have multiple cameras just to keep people like on their toes because if it's a talking head video which a lot of real estate agents will do because it's education and we have a lot to say in a short about of time you know in 30 seconds change up the scene be inside be outside be holding something weird and and just keep it's it's entertainment that you need to combine with education and it's hard but you need to get used to it so those are the mistakes that i i see is people just rambling on and on without any change without any edits and the bottom line takes forever to get to those were fantastic thank you Allie and guys that is

all we have for today unless Allie is there anything that you wanted to add when it comes to this topic no reach out to us for for the giveaways that we have Ali the agent the Shelby show and I can let you close out the show it's been a while since he closed it out I think be a bro and share this show bye