If you’re ready to revamp your instagram page and attract new followers, you’ll want to take a look at this article! Building a successful social media page can be tricky, but if you understand these 5 fundamentals, you’ll be able to create a successful social media page that’s full of engagement.

1. Understand Your Theme

First things first - understand the theme of your page. Your theme can include the color palette, content and the physical arrangement of posts.

For example, a florist’s Instagram page will be all about the world of flowers. This page would include posts about different types of flowers, ways to care for flowers, signs your plant is thriving, etc. This page is ultimately a great resource for those who love flowers and want to learn more about them. As a realtor, you want to create a great resource for those who want to dive into the world of real estate, which extends into the category of lifestyle that we’ll discuss later.

As mentioned, your theme also includes the color palette and order of posts. You can make your color palette the theme of your company or you can choose what colors you believe compliments each other best for your page. This is creative work, meaning you have more freedom in choosing your preferred aesthetic. Once this is settled, it’s good to decide if you want your posts to be ordered in a way that creates a pattern on your timeline. For example, some accounts like to have quotes on the left column, their main content in the middle and another form of content on the right. This creates a continuous pattern throughout their entire timeline. If you don’t mind not having a pattern, no worries - a lot of accounts prefer not to follow the timeline pattern rule, as they simply find the content itself the most important.

2. Have a Variety of Content to Post

The great thing about real estate is that it fits in the broad range of lifestyle content. With this content, there are various mediums to explore and pieces that almost everyone enjoys on some level. With this, your page has the potential to reach a wide range of followers because the content provided will be universally enjoyed. What kind of content would thrive most on a realtors page? Content such as home DIYs, quality listing photos, info graphics etc are all great things to choose from. Ensure that the images and videos are good quality and write captions that will compliment them well.

You can also make graphics that allow the viewers to choose from A, B, C or D. For example, you can post a graphic that has four different bathrooms. Ask your viewers to comment which bathroom they prefer. Posts like these are engaging and fun for viewers. If you don’t get much feedback on these posts in the beginning, don’t stress. It takes time to build an audience and we will hash on that further down in the article.

3. Interact with Your Followers

Be sure to interact with your followers no matter how small (or high) your follower count may be. People love hearing back from an account they follow. Interacting with them will make them more likely to engage with your content and share it to other pages or social media platforms, which is great for your business.

The comments section also serves as a great way to provide customer service. If you can have healthy dialogue with customers and help alleviate any of their issues related to real estate, you build credibility and create a welcoming environment for others to trust your services. Be sure to help all accounts with related real estate needs, be friendly and handle any ill-comments with composure.

4. Be Patient

Growing a page can take time. Don’t be discouraged if your page experiences slow growth. In order to have a successful social media page you need to be consistent and keep patience at the forefront. It’s an algorithm that takes time to develop.

A successful social media page can be large or small and each has a period of growth that’s unique to that page. You can watch videos or read articles that dive deeper into marketing in order to help the growth process, but even with those resources, being patient is still key. Even bigger companies have little return on their social media posts. Why is this? This is because they also have to play the waiting game with their social media pages. This rule isn’t exempted from any account. Be patient and consistent. Your page will grow with time.

5. Take Inspiration from Other Pages

Lastly, have an inspiration base to serve as a guide for your page. Find various instagram pages that you feel do a great job of presenting their content and interacting with followers. You can find different accounts by searching hashtags with related content or finding accounts through other social media platforms such as Twitter, Pinterest or Youtube.

In our last article “Spring Cleaning Tips”, we stressed the importance of finding inspiration through Youtube channels. Using this method you can find a great outline and template for your Instagram platform. Just as you used Youtube videos for inspiration and guidance, use various Instagram accounts the same way. Take note of the various pieces of content they post, when they post content and how they interact with their followers. You can also check out how well various pieces of content do on that account. For example, quality photos of listings may outshine other pieces of content, meaning they get way more traffic than let's say a video. Check out to see what works for them and find inspiration in their social media structure.