Many agents are making mistakes when it comes to building their presence on Instagram. Marketing coach Michelle Berman Mikel shares her essential tips for making your friends your followers.
September is Marketing and Branding Month at Inman. Tips for better branding and in-depth features on how to take advantage of marketing tools provided by Zillow, Redfin and other platforms are all in the works in addition to insights from experts. You’ll find it all at Inman, as well as our two-day virtual, flagship event, Your Playbook for the Fall Market, in October.
Facebook and Instagram are not created equal. Therefore, worrying about someone who is friends with you on Facebook seeing the same content you post on Instagram should not be an issue.
Many agents fear that a Facebook friend might be annoyed if they see the same piece of content they post on Instagram, but their focus should be more on ensuring that the messaging they share on both platforms sings the same tune to the viewer. Perhaps the best compliment is someone telling you, “I see you everywhere!” And the agents who do it the best are the ones who are excited when someone says that.
So how does one ensure they can cross-pollinate their following on both platforms?
Part 1: Don’t copy and paste without a hyperlink
Perhaps the biggest issue with Facebook and Instagram is that when you post on your business Instagram (which, if you are trying to generate business off Instagram and you aren’t a business account, you are doing it wrong), it automatically posts on your business Facebook account.
Why is this an issue? Put simply, business Facebook accounts get very little traction unless you are paying for traffic to them. This is the opposite of Instagram, where you can generate enormous business just from being active and engaging.
Therefore, if you want to make sure that your personal Facebook following is also connected with you on Instagram, then there is one big thing you need to know and one big thing you need to do.
What you need to know: The number of people you are friends with on Facebook is different than on Instagram and therefore should be treated as such. If you have 5,000 personal Facebook friends and only 300 followers on Instagram, then choosing to promote by sending them to Instagram will likely cause very little, to no, overlap.
What you need to do: Create a post on Facebook that says something along the lines of “I am stepping up my Instagram game, and I want to make sure we are connected on both!” and post a hyperlink in the copy that, when clicked, sends then directly to your Instagram feed. Not a specific post, but your entire account.
Don’t just put your Instagram handle in the copy and expect to get the traffic. Use the hyperlink, and you will have more success.
Feel free to duplicate this approach many times throughout the month while sharing details on the type of content you are sharing. For example, if you have just created a new series on getting a mortgage with crypto and posted it on Instagram, that may be a good time to share the hyperlink directly to the post itself on your personal Facebook.
Part 2: Edit your copy when you post to the respective platforms
Another crucial way to get people from your Facebook to your Instagram, and vice versa, is remembering that the platforms are different, and how the copy is shared should reflect that.
Facebook’s function for hashtags doesn’t work the same as Instagram. Therefore, sharing hashtags in your post on Facebook is unnecessary and will show your lack of understanding of the platform to the avid user.
The key in all social marketing is to establish credibility, create confidence in the user, and establish a connection between you and them.
When using certain social scheduling tools like Planoly or Later, you can simply edit the post features for Facebook compared to Instagram. There is a function in both programs that allow you to edit the body of the copy for Facebook while leaving it the same for Instagram. So edit those hashtags out with one click of a button, and you will be good to go.
Michelle Berman Mikel is a nationally sought-after Instagram Content Development coach, speaker, Owner of Berman Media PD and Creator of the Instagram Power Method Program. You can connect with her on Instagram and LinkedIn.
