Most agents already post their new listings to Instagram, but there’s a meaningful gap between posting a listing and actually getting engagement from it. A handful of adjustments make a bigger difference than most agents expect, without needing a bigger marketing budget.

Lead with the shot that stops a scroll, not the floor plan

The floor plan and the full gallery both matter, but they’re rarely the strongest opener — a striking exterior, a twilight shot, or an aerial view tends to perform far better as the first image, since it needs to work as a still image competing against everything else in someone’s feed.

Use location-specific hashtags, not just generic ones

Broad tags like #realestate compete with millions of posts, but suburb-specific and Sydney-region tags reach a much more relevant, smaller audience of people actually interested in that area — worth pairing a couple of broad tags with several specific ones (the suburb name, the local region, “Sydney real estate”) rather than relying on volume alone.

Reels outperform static posts for reach right now

A short walkthrough or highlight reel, even 15-20 seconds, is currently getting meaningfully more reach on Instagram than a static photo carousel, largely because the platform is actively promoting video content. If your photographer’s videography package includes short-form cuts, this is exactly where they should be used first.

Post at the right time, not just with good content

Even a strong post underperforms if it’s published when your audience isn’t online — for real estate specifically, weekday evenings and Sunday afternoon (right around typical open-home browsing time) tend to outperform early morning posts, which is when a lot of agents default to posting out of habit.

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