On this episode of The Snapshot we welcome back Chelsea Peitz to talk about Instagram. We cover best practices for Instagram, including the different types of Instagram accounts; the algorithm; hashtags; Instagram profiles; and how to build a long-term sustainable strategy of putting out content that engages your audience and builds relationships.
Links Mentioned:
The Voice of Social Sales Podcast
Made to Market: Marketing In A World Focused On Sales
You can listen to this episode here, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
TRANSCRIPT
Gayle Weiswasser:
Welcome to the Homesnap Snapshot, a podcast about digital marketing for real estate agents. I’m Gayle, the host of the show. In each episode we talk to agents just like you who are successfully using some type of digital marketing to build their brands. When it’s over, you’ll walk away with concrete ideas that you can use in your own marketing to help grow your business. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe using whatever app or platform you use to listen to podcasts. And I’d really appreciate it if you take a minute to rate and review the show. It helps us get new listeners. Now let’s get to today’s guest.
Now let’s get to today’s guest. Today’s guest on the show is Chelsea Peitz, who is a real estate social media strategist and consultant. Chelsea, welcome back to the show!
Chelsea Peitz:
Oh, thank you so much, it’s so great to be reunited and see you again! Thanks so much for having me, I appreciate it!
Gayle Weiswasser:
Oh, we’re happy to have you back! If my listeners spend any time at all on Inman or on social media, they I’m sure are familiar with Chelsea, who is an expert and a genius when it comes to social media marketing for real estate. She knows a ton about it, she writes a ton about it. She’s going to be managing the Marketing Track at the Inman Connect Show in Vegas next month. I’m going to date stamp this episode. I do this all the time now because in the pandemic, things changed so fast. So we’re recording this show at the end of September and next month at the end of October, she will be out in Vegas hosting the Marketing Track, which is a very good fit for her.
So Chelsea, before we jump into today’s topic, which is going to be Instagram, and I know I talk about Instagram on the show all the time, but that’s because it deserves it. Talk about what you do and your connection with real estate, and give us just a little bit of an overview on how you’re using Instagram for your own business.
Chelsea Peitz:
I’ve been in the real estate industry for over 22 years, and I always tell people, “Hey, I was not a digital native. I didn’t grow up with the internet of things. I graduated college before Y2K.” So I am somebody who had to learn and really there wasn’t a lot of places to learn how to use social media, and so I decided I was going to sort of pick that apart and I was going to share everything that I learned because I wish that I had had that when I was trying to figure out the socials. And I was a Realtor, I was licensed for 18 years, and in that time I worked in new home sales, I worked in residential, I experienced all the foreclosures and the crash and all the things. And then after that, I pivoted into staying in the same realm after the crash and working with agents, helping them understand how to market themselves through social media, to create real relationships and to honestly understand how to use technology to be more human. So that’s what I’ve been focusing on for the last number of years. I’ve written a couple books along the way. I do a lot of speaking, podcasting, all of that sort of thing.
Gayle Weiswasser:
I love that sentence you just said, teaching people how to use technology to be more human. It’s a funny sentence just because it seems like an oxymoron, but I love it because it really underscores so many of the things we talk about on this show, which is about the power of social media to create authentic relationships between humans and to humanize people. And I trumpet that time and time again on the show about how important it is to show who you are, make people want to work with you, make people get to know you and you just summed it up right there. I love that!
Okay, so today we’re going to talk about Instagram. We talk about Instagram a lot on the show, probably every four episodes, every five episodes, it’s devoted to Instagram. And I don’t think that’s overkill because I think that first of all, it’s a super powerful platform, and secondly, I think there’s a lot of different ways to approach it. And people use it in all kinds of different ways, there’s no sort of set playbook for how to use Instagram. And that’s why I love having people like you come on who know a lot about Instagram, know about a lot of things, but specifically about Instagram and who can share their own perspective on it because it may be different from another person’s perspective. And people have different comfort levels with what they share and different sorts of comfort levels with the technology and photo editing and all of that stuff. So I’d like to have a lot of shows on Instagram because I think many people can get different things out of each episode.
So, what we’re going to talk about today are just really some sort of best practices and some of your thoughts and some of the advice that you have on Instagram. So first of all, what do you think is the most important thing that you want people to know about how to use Instagram for real estate marketing?
Chelsea Peitz:
I think what you said about there being so many different areas of Instagram to use, it’s almost a blessing and a curse. I love it because there are so many different things that you can do with it, there are so many pockets and surfaces that if you don’t like to do this, you can do this. If you like short form or long form or writing and all the things, but that can also be extraordinarily overwhelming to people who are like this is just too much going on in here, and it’s constantly changing and we’re constantly doing something new and it’s really difficult to keep up with. So that being said, I think that the most important strategy is one that I teach. I call it the 3G strategy — It’s getting found, getting followed, getting leads. And a lot of us want to spend time getting leads, which is our content and our engagement, the shiny objects, but we don’t spend time in how do we optimize to get found and to get followed, because if those two things don’t happen, good luck getting leads. So, I think the not exciting two things that I always, always teach foundationally is make sure you have the right type of account.
There are three types, personal, there’s the professional, which has business, and creator. You don’t want to be personal, if you’re generating business and brand. You can have a personal private account if you want to, you can have one that is open and public and that’s your professional account, but to unlock all of the great things that you can use with Instagram, you need to have one of those professional accounts. The second piece of that is you have to optimize your bio and your content. That means you have to think in terms of keywords, relevant keywords, that not only describe what you do in real estate, but also are words that your ideal customer is searching for. Because guess what? In real estate, they’re different. If I’m a realtor, I might be using words like realtor, real estate agent, things like that, to describe what I do. Perfectly fine, acceptable. We want Instagram to know who you are, what you do, but your buyers and sellers are not coming to Instagram typing in realtors of Instagram. They’re just not. They’re looking at location specific content. So those keywords need to be throughout your profile, they also need to be in your bio section, and they need to be in your captions of your posts as well as your hashtags.
So the nice thing about Instagram, it’s changing now, as of November of last year. It’s kind of like being in grade school where you’d have that one test that you totally failed, but the good news is, is that it was looking at all the other stuff you turned in during the year and it averaged out so you didn’t have to worry about one thing. That’s the same thing, it’s like the one thing is the magic hashtags, right? It’s looking at everything. It’s looking at the accounts you follow, the keywords, what’s in your photos. So if you are consistent and you are continuing to show up and be in your niche, Instagram is going to understand how to sort and serve your content. So those are the places that I start first.
Gayle Weiswasser:
So I like that you mentioned the niche, something also that we talk about in the show, which is considering whether you want to have a niche and then all the benefits that come from that, that it helps with things like search, it helps with branding, it helps with finding the right audience. And clearly, Instagram is one of the platforms that really helps facilitate the benefits of a niche. It really gets you in touch with the right person. And I think that’s such a good point that in your bio you’re sort of tempted to just describe who you are and what you do. What’s your profession, how do you define yourself when you go to introduce yourself at a cocktail party to someone you’ve never met before. But you’re right, that’s not what people are searching for, they’re not searching for “San Diego real estate agent”, they’re searching for “San Diego real estate”, “San Diego homes”, things like that. So I think that’s great advice!
Talk to us about the Instagram algorithm. Is it a big black box the way the Facebook algorithm is? I mean, obviously, they’re the same company. How does it work? And you’ve talked a little bit about keyword searching and captions, but give us a bigger picture about how Instagram connects people on the platform with the content that they’re serving up?
Chelsea Peitz:
Yeah, I always put an asterisk when I’m talking about algorithms or hashtags, because the thing of it is, at least in my anecdotal experience, is I personally feel in my opinion, if there was one magic formula for hashtags, for the length of your Reel, for the combination of a trending song and all of this, all of the best practices, right. All those best practices are clues and data points that we can put together and make better content. But to my knowledge, there isn’t one magic bullet. There isn’t one formula because if there was, my gosh, don’t you think somebody would be selling it by now if that worked for everyone? And I just spent a year testing Reels, and at the end of that year, I just decided that a lot of it is random. A lot of it is just completely random, which I really did not think that’s how that year was going to turn out. I thought by the end of it, I would have it nailed and best practices. Did I learn some? Absolutely.
So with that, the asterisk is knowing what the algorithm wants per Instagram or what Instagram is saying the algorithm is looking at. Again, we can only go off of what Instagram is saying. Do we know if they’re being truthful? I would assume they are, I hope they are, but that’s all we have to go off of, and they have been putting a lot of the information in writing, which I appreciate. The algorithm is basically going to be custom to you. Whatever you are interested in, whomever you are interested in, it’s going to make an effort to take that data point. That data point means a DM. If you are sending someone a DM or you’re responding, it’s looking at that as a data point and it’s saying, “Okay, well these two people are talking to each other so we’re going to assume and predict they might want to talk to each other in the future. So we’re going to make sure that content moves up a little bit to the front of the feed or the front of the stories feed.” And so it’s really important to be thinking about who are you proactively engaging with? What content are you engaging with? Because you have to give data to the system so that it can give you data back. And so their algorithm is based on interests. What are you interested in? Do you like fitness? Do you like recipes? Do you like hiking? Et cetera. And if you don’t see things you’re interested in, you need to tell it by typing in words in that explore page. And also if you press down and hold on anything you see in your explore page, a little thing pops up that says not interested. If you press and hold, tell it you’re not interested. Sometimes it gets wrong data points. You’re looking at something randomly. You need to train it and say what you’re interested in. Then it’s going to look at your relationship with the people you’re talking to. Those that you like, engage, comment, DM, et cetera.
And then there’s a few other things like how often are you going in? Are you a heavy user? Are you following a lot of people or a little people? But essentially each one of us is going to have a custom algorithm designed to what we are interested in. Yes does it take into account likes, comments, shares, saves on your content to see if they should serve it out? Yes it does. It has not in writing, because I have looked everywhere, it has not talked about a weighting or ranking system. Meaning is a share worth more than a comment? In my mind, a share should be more than a like or comment, but there isn’t anything in writing that Instagram says we are weighting shares more than X, Y or Z. We’re taking all these data points into consideration and we’re putting it through the system. So essentially you get out what you put in, which means you have to be the proactive engager and really work on training that algorithm so that you are going to show up in front of the people that you want to be in front of.
Gayle Weiswasser:
Got it. Okay, let’s talk about getting people to click that elusive follow. So you get people who say, I want to subscribe to this content. I want to see everything that this person is posting. What is the best way to do that?
Chelsea Peitz:
So the profile again is responsible for a lot of that. It’s responsible or has a large part of responsibility in you getting found. Now of course your hashtags will also help you with that as well. But once they get to your profile, maybe they see your Reel and they’re curious about you. So they click on your name and they go to your profile and I really consider your profile, your website. It just happens to live on Instagram instead of living on the internet. Just like a website, you have to optimize it, you have to give people within one or two seconds the spiel on who you are, what you do, how you can help them. Most people, as you said, stop at who you are, what you do. But they don’t talk about how I can help you or about the person who’s reading it. And if I don’t know who you are, I want to know how you’re going to help me first before I get to like, know and trust you. So we have a very short amount of time, one to two seconds, and about one to two sentences or 150 ish characters to communicate all of that, which is challenging.
And so that bio section in your profile is fairly responsible for that follow, where people are going to skim. They’re going to get that first initial impression from your profile. They may look at a few like the first nine or 12 of your posts. They skim through that. But that bio is really saying, “Here’s what I do and here’s how I can help you.” Or “here’s why you should follow me. What’s in it for you.” And then they’re going to click that follow button. And then once they click that follow button, hopefully they’re going to deep dive into some of your content, your highlights and all of that. Going through your different tabs. So that’s why you have to really think about what is in your bio section. And does your bio section have an additional call to action? Does it say “direct message me for something specific, click the link below for something specific” so that they know exactly what is in it for them. Usually a freebie or a download or some compelling reason that they should take an action. Something getting them into your ecosystem and start building that relationship.
Gayle Weiswasser:
What a good piece of advice to tell people in your bio, what you can do for them. That’s such a simple thing and I don’t think a lot of people do that.
Chelsea Peitz:
I think of it in terms of, what’s your superpower in real estate. And that could also be thought of as your niche. So what is your superpower? What is your niche? And then how does your superpower help your customers? That’s the hard part to think of. It’s really hard to think about all the great things about ourselves. And so it’s hard to also distill that into one sentence. So my bio basically says, “Hey, I share uncomplicated Instagram tips.” That’s my superpower right? Okay I could stop there. But I said “If you apply them, you’re going to grow your business and make more money doing what you love.” There you go! So yes, this makes sense! Learn how to use Instagram and yes, I want to grow my business and not lose my mind while I’m doing it. I want to enjoy the process.
So I didn’t just start with that, it evolved. And that’s okay to have a starting point and start thinking about how you can articulate in very, very, very simple language, how you can help people. And guess what? It may not be your real estate acumen, because you might be new to real estate. What did you do in the past? What is your superpower? My superpower doesn’t necessarily have to do with social media. It’s because my brain needs a couple of times to figure something out and I learn differently and I have to break things down in very small pieces. And apparently that’s helpful to other people too!
Gayle Weiswasser:
That’s great! A lot of this is just putting yourself in the mindset of your audience. Just pretend you’re them and think about what would you do in their shoes and then acting accordingly. Okay, so when we started the show, you said “People want to get something, get followers and get leads.” I forgot what the first thing was.
Chelsea Peitz:
Yeah. Get found, get followed, get leads.
Gayle Weiswasser:
Found. Okay, get found, get followed, get leads. Let’s turn to that third one, the shiny object you mentioned from the beginning. So let’s say you’ve got the established presence. People are finding you, people are starting to follow you. But now what you need to do obviously is convert them into people who are going to pay you. What is the best way to do that?
Chelsea Peitz:
So this is a long term strategy. I wish it was just as easy as a bullet point. The other two are fairly easy, but this is the long term strategy. And I want you to think about it like marriage, you want to find your soulmate, you want to get married. But you can’t just go out tomorrow, find that person, and even if you did run into that soulmate tomorrow, you can’t just get married the next day. That’s not usually how it happens. You have to create the relationship, you have to build trust, you have to show up. And that’s the same concept. A lot of people think about social media in this very different mindset of, because there’s inputs and outputs and I can pay for ads, I should have a formulaic response of X amount of posts, X amount of time, equals X amount of transactions. And my friend, Sarah Stall, who just wrote her book, it just came out on Amazon. I’m looking at it in front of me. I want to give the title. It’s called, Made to Market: Marketing In A World Focused On Sales, by Sarah Stall. Anyway, I was reading that book on a plane and she had this great description of social media that people always say, “Well, what’s the ROI of social media? When can I expect to see something?” And she said, “You know, that would be easy if it was just metric based. But social media is people based. And guess what? They’re totally different than numbers and metrics.” So the getting leads part is a long term play. It is showing up consistently and posting content that is going to help your ideal audience. It’s either going to educate them, it’s going to entertain them, or it’s going to engage them. And you may not get a lot of vanity metrics, measurable metrics do not equate to business for you always. Just because I got a million views doesn’t mean I have a million dollars that’s coming into the bank account. And you’re going to have days where you put your heart and soul into something. And it doesn’t really get a lot of engagement. You’re going to have days where you just throw something up without thinking of it and that one is the one that takes off. But you have to show up in a long term, sustainable strategy of talking to people, putting content out that speaks to your audience and knowing that it’s about human relationships. And if you get one, two or three connections that are human beings a year, that has value. So unfortunately the lead thing, it’s a larger strategy of just remaining active.
And it’s not all about creating content. It’s about using your comments as content. I’m a big believer in commenting over contenting, even though I wrote a book about content. Because that takes the stress away. You don’t have to get on a camera to talk to someone. You don’t have to think about hashtags to communicate. And at the end of the day, we’re all in sales and marketing and relationships. And it’s all, how many people did you talk to? How many conversations did you have? How many people did you talk to today? That is as old as the day is long. That’s the old sales strategy. So that’s really about a long term mindset of engagement and creating content over time.
Gayle Weiswasser:
I love so many of the things you said, to go back to the main lessons that I’ve drawn from the show. One is that social media is a long game and there’s no way around it. And that’s one of the things I love about it, is how it pays off over time. I have worked in social media for about 15 years now, and I do not think social media and ROI should even be used in the same sentence. It’s just, it’s a different way of approaching marketing and the old metrics don’t work. I’m not even sure the old metrics work for traditional marketing, but they certainly don’t work for social media because all the reasons you said, it’s just, it’s really not quantifiable. You can’t look at a post and look at a number of likes or look at the frequency of posts or something like that. And this is across really all of the different platforms. And you can’t, then, translate that into some linear extrapolation of what it’s going to bring for your business because a lot of it is random and it’s personal and it’s subjective and it’s human. It’s not a machine. You also talked about creating authentic connection through content, but even beyond content, it’s through behavior and it’s through … It’s just like real life. You can go out talking, talking, talking, and even if what you’re saying is really interesting, if you’re not interacting or asking or listening, it’s not going to get you anywhere. It’s not going to lead to real relationships. So this business is so relationship driven and it’s so personal. And the reasons why people go with one agent over another can be very surprising or the reasons they may return to one agent or they may reason they may recommend an agent can be very surprising. So I just think lots of great things that you said there.
Okay. So let’s talk about content for a minute. There are so many different things people can post. And I’ve talked about this on the show a million times. Do you post personal stuff? Do you post specific things about your neighborhood? Do you post things about the real estate process? Do you post beautiful pictures? Do you put up a recipe? There’s a million different philosophies and approaches about content. What do you recommend for someone who wants to figure out what content mix works for them? How do you decide what’s the best thing that’s not going to be onerous, that’s going to feel fun and natural for me to post, but that will also be an appropriate mix for the audience I’m trying to hit?
Chelsea Peitz:
Yeah, you’re right. I mean, content can be really, and is really personal from the aspect of what format is it going to be in? Am I great on video? Do I hate video? Am I great at using my voice? Am I an amazing copywriter? I am not an amazing copywriter. I loathe writing, which is why I do a lot of video. So you have to one, lean into what you are better at. And we all have different things that we are better at doing. I’m not saying you should avoid all the things because you do need to be on video, but there are things that we tend to be better at. So you have to honor that.
And then the other thing is that I think no matter what, if it’s quote, air quotes, “professional content”, human content always wins in my opinion. So if you are doing a professional market update, you in it, with your face and a video, ah I think that’s amazing! It’s an amazing way to be human and have your content. And that’s a way to humanize content very easily. So, and then the last thing I would say is that you have to do some kind of content that is going to bring you joy. You also have to have some kind of content that is going to speak to your audience, right? So you may not love doing your video market update or your carousel post market update. That may not be super fun for you, but you may love making a Reel. You may love making something that’s graphic and fun. And I’m a big believer in having some fun, doing the content. And a lot of people will look at my content and they’ll see that it’s fun content and educational because if I personally don’t do the fun, I don’t want to do the educational because I’m like, “This isn’t as fun for me!” So you do have to kind of look at your style, honor your style and your preferences and lean into what you’re good at. But there are going to be times that you’re just going to have to do stuff that you don’t love as much as other things. And that’s just part of marketing and part of doing your prospecting, but you don’t want it to all be drudgery because then if it is, you’re not going to want to do it. You’re not going to want to do it. It’s not going to be sustainable long-term. You have the right to pick out what your favorite section is, what your favorite platform is. I personally like talking to people and making Stories those are my two favorite things. And that’s what I do the majority of the time. And then I realize, “Oh, it’s been a while since I’ve been in the feed. Well, if I want to grow out, I have to do that. It’s been a while since I posted a Reel. If I want to grow, I have to do that.” I’m human, just like everyone listening. I fall out of the patterns too.
Gayle Weiswasser:
Right. Right. All right. Let’s talk about hashtags. So hashtags in the caption or hashtags in a comment?
Chelsea Peitz:
Well, I did not know that this was going to be such a controversial Reel that I posted. And the funny thing was I was quoting and … I was delivering the news. I was quoting directly from Instagram. I was like, “This isn’t me saying this.” So this was a big discussion point. And it’s a larger discussion point of what Instagram is calling interest search. We mentioned this a little bit earlier in the show in November of last year, they kind of, I would say, quietly started talking about this change. And I think because it wasn’t shiny like Reels, as exciting, people didn’t really talk about it, but I was really focused on it because I knew this was a really great thing for all of us creators.
So historically it’s been sort of like an exact keyword matching system where if you were looking for Scottsdale real estate, you had to use the hashtag “#ScottsdaleRealEstate.” If you were using “#ScottsdaleHome”, sorry too bad, we’re not going to serve you up because it’s not an exact keyword match. Well, that’s really limiting! So now what they’re doing is they’re looking at all the things. They’re looking at the caption, the text in your caption. They’re looking at your profile, your category, your hashtags, everything, which is great because now it’s kind of giving these context clues about, “okay, they didn’t use this exact hashtag, but clearly it’s probably about this topic.” So they’re going to start kind of serving up general topic search, which I love. That’s going to give us all a chance to get found more often without having to really just think there’s this magic formula for hashtags. Do hashtags help? Of course. Their data points. My best recommendation with hashtags, we also mentioned this earlier, is to be really relevant. What are your customers looking for? You need to have a mix of what you do and what they’re looking for because if it’s just all about what you do, real estate stuff, it’s probably not going to be as easily found by the right people. And as far as a number, gosh, there’s sooo many articles. I’ve personally talked to Instagram about this and Instagram told me specifically, this is for Reels. I did not talk about anything else. So just take that with a grain of salt, they said, “Less might be better.” Didn’t give me a number.
Gayle Weiswasser:
Interesting!
Chelsea Peitz:
So yeah, but you can have up to 30. You know, I just kind of look at them in my mind like data points, again would I want to have more data points to give for more opportunities to try to get sorted and served? I think your data points need to be in the same category. If you have dog hashtags and food hashtags and real estate hashtags, well then it’s all over the place. So I think that they should all be in the same relevant categories. And as of August 25th, because now I have it burned in my brain, on direct quote from Instagram, we’re just the messengers. Instagram said in writing multiple places that they said, “If you want to optimize your content for search, include your hashtags in the caption, not the comments.” Now, sidebar. This was not in the article. My opinion or what a lot of us are assuming, again, assuming, is that, why would they say that? Technically it should work if it’s in the comment or the caption. If you go to their home health page, it says you can put hashtags in the caption or the comment for exact word matching. I believe, again, I don’t have this confirmed, that the reason they wanted in the caption is for this new interest search. But if you want to get kind of served up and to related words, you need to have them in there. So I don’t think that it’s not going to work in the comments. I think it just maybe broadens your opportunity. It’s kind of like Pinterest, where you put in Thanksgiving and it gives you Thanksgiving decor, Thanksgiving recipes, and it gives you all these things related to that topic. That’s where Instagram is going. And so that’s why Instagram has said “keep it in the captions.” So I’m just going to keep mine in the caption. Do you need to go back and delete everything? Absolutely not! Do you need to panic if you haven’t been doing that? No!
Gayle Weiswasser:
Yeah, got it. Okay. And how frequently should you be changing your hashtags? I mean, I know that for me when I post, I usually stick my hashtag list in a notes file on my phone and then I just kind of cut and paste it. And I try maybe once a month to mix those up. Is that important? Is that a waste of time?
Chelsea Peitz:
I think if you’re really niched down and focused, that makes sense. You’re going to have a bucket to pull of hashtags that are location specific. Maybe you work in a couple of different cities in your area. And so you might have a couple of different buckets depending on what you’re posting about or what small business or what area you might be swapping some of those out. And then you’ll probably have some that are fairly regularly put in there that describe what you do. And so I would say mine do change, not drastically, but depending on what my content is about. So if I do something that’s a little bit more personal in nature, but maybe I’m still giving sort of an Instagram tip, but maybe there’s a picture of me or a picture of my dog or something like that, or my family, I might lean into more of who should see it, too? Who should see this content, not just describing what I do and what the content’s about, or if I have a picture of my family and I’m talking about, I don’t know, work-life balance, which is basically kind of work related content, I might put something in like #mompreneur or #momCEO, which kind of speaks more to me, and what am I describing myself but also who my community would be. And so I do think it’s important to switch up a little bit depending on what your topic is. Your Instagram isn’t going to blow up if you use the same hashtags over and over again, so nothing bad will happen. But I think you need to be cognizant that your content probably should change a little bit, but also if you’re in the same very narrow niche and you’re really focused, you’re probably going to have some of the same ones. If you’re talking about the five favorite local businesses that do X, Y, and Z, well, if they’re food related, you might use some local food hashtags in addition to your real estate hashtags. If you’re talking about your listing, you’re not going to use food hashtags. You’re going to use real estate and legal hashtags.
Gayle Weiswasser:
All right, well, we’re getting close to the end. There’s so many things I want to ask you and there’s so much to talk about. Let me ask you this one last question though, about Instagram. Do you see any major changes coming? I know that they’re constantly tweaking and you’ve mentioned some of the things that you’ve followed over the last couple months. But do you see any big sweeping changes to Instagram coming in the next couple years?
Chelsea Peitz:
Oh, I’m sure that there are going to be huge sweeping changes. The only reason I say that is, yeah, you’re right. It seems like everything changes every day. Now, what I’ve personally been seeing is a lot of small changes. But I think for me and the majority of users, the big, “sweeping” change that happened recently was of course the addition of Reels and the focus on that, the focus on microvideo. I think overall as a trend to become the new normal, I think microvideo in general is it. And I think a lot of people are not thinking about it in terms of the behavioral design and thinking, “Well, it’s a trend and it’s for people that want to dance, that want to lipsync, that want to be humorous and entertaining and that’s not part of my brand.” I know many, many people who are doing extraordinary things with TikToks and Reels and shorts that are purely educational, not using anything that’s trending, that is positioning them as a credible authority in their space. So, truly you can be successful with it. But what I will say is that this particular format, short, under 30 seconds, full screen vertical, typically, typically, asterisk, not all the time, typically more edited and typically leaning a little bit more entertaining, which calls on a different part of our creativity. We almost have to think in terms of, “Okay, scene one is this, scene two is this.” And it also takes me a little bit more time to make. That is not going away. Our brains are getting trained to want to consume short, short, short, short. I would rather consume 10, 10 second videos than one 10 minute video. And that’s just where my brain lands. It’s on every single platform and I think people should really be thinking about how can I make a strategy where I can learn some of this editing and I can maybe embrace some of the shorter form videos. Don’t abandon your long form video. But that is something that is not going to just be a trend.
Gayle Weiswasser:
Got it, all right. I like that trend, so I’m happy about that! Spoken as a TikTok addict.
All right, so before I let you go though, I am going to ask you my signature Homesnap question, which I asked you years ago. So, I’m sure that they’re different this time. I asked you about some apps that you’re using, that maybe our audience hasn’t heard of and they can be for fun, for productivity, for marketing, whatever they are. Last time I asked you, you mentioned Canva, which is probably the most frequently mentioned app. You were definitely on the early side of that one, but I think every two or three episodes, someone talks about Canva. And you also mentioned an app called Feedly. Do you have some new ones you might want to share this time?
Chelsea Peitz:
I do! Okay, so my favorite app, especially with TikTok and Reels, TikTok is great with editing, but Reels took a while to catch up. So, I had to do, at the beginning, a lot of editing outside of Reels and I love an app called Videoshop. And I believe they have a freemium where it’s a free version, but you can upgrade to get some extra bells and whistles. I am using the paid version and I love it. It has a lot of the editing features, if you’ve ever seen a TikTok and you’re like, “how did they do that? How do they get that to edit like that?” So, I’ve been playing with that and have learned a lot. And I’ve learned that I probably won’t do one…I try these trending edits and I’m like, well, that took me too long. Now I know how to do it, but I don’t want to do it again. But Videoshop is really fun! I personally love the voiceover. I like it more than the voiceover for Reels, which I find glitchy. There’s a lot of things that are kind of glitchy there. So Videoshop, love that and they do have a free version.
Another one that I like, and I’m hoping that this will actually become something we don’t even need in the future, it’s a captioning app, I think it’s called Captions: Speak To The Camera. It’s a purple icon with the C. And I think captioning is so critically important with so many people watching content without sound or increasing that inclusivity and accessibility for those who are unable to hear. And it’s also giving you data points that the system is reading. And so it’s critical to have your closed captioning on your videos. Unfortunately, it’s not built into Facebook yet. It is coming and rolling out with Instagram, and so I’m pretty sure that all of the systems and platforms will have captioning built in because it’s really, really important. And the other one that I just started using, I frame it a little bit more intimidating when it comes to learning the edits, but this is more sort of like an advanced editing where you see those advanced edits on TikTok. It’s an app called Videoleap. So not Videoshop, Videoleap. I think Videoshop is easier to use just because I’ve been using it longer, but for some of those extra advanced edits and things that you’re seeing on TikTok, apparently they’re using Videoleap to do those.
Gayle Weiswasser:
All right, good. Okay. Well, we’ll link to those three. Videoshop, Videoleap and caption…What was that one called?
Chelsea Peitz:
Captions: Speak to the Camera.
Gayle Weiswasser:
Captions: Speak to Camera. Okay, all right! I will link to those in the show notes and I will also link to that book that you mentioned as well.
Chelsea Peitz:
Oh, awesome!
Gayle Weiswasser:
Yeah, all right, Chelsea, tell the world where they can find you online.
Chelsea Peitz:
The best place to find me of course is Instagram. You can find me by just looking for my first and last name. Of course, I’m on all the socials, but that is the best place to connect with me. You can go to my profile and from there, you’ll be able to find my free downloads, links to my books, podcasts, et cetera.
Gayle Weiswasser:
Wonderful! All right, well thank you for all this fantastic Instagram information. Really, really helpful. Lots of great, very actionable stuff in there. And hopefully it encourages people who may be hesitant or not using the platform to its full potential to explore a little bit. So, thank you — I look forward to seeing you in Vegas for Inman!
Chelsea Peitz:
Yeah, thanks so much! We’ll see you there!
Gayle Weiswasser:
Sounds great, have a good week!
Chelsea Peitz:
Bye.
Gayle Weiswasser:
Bye.
Gayle Weiswasser:
Thanks for listening to another episode of the Snapshot. I hope that you enjoyed what you heard today. If you have a moment, please leave us a review. It really helps us get new listeners. This podcast is part of Industry Syndicate, a curated media network containing the highest-rated real estate and mortgage podcasts. Find other excellent real estate content at industrysyndicate.com, home of real estate’s first media network.