It was inevitable really, Instagram engagement rates have started to decline in 2019. But this was always going to be the case wasn’t it. It happened with Facebook last year…Facebook owns Instagram… So you can’t be entirely surprised. We are going to look into the reasons why the engagement rates are declining and how you can tackle it.
In 2017 Instagram had 25 million businesses using the platform, up from 10 million the year before, now we are in 2019 that number will be significantly higher. That means there are potentially 40-50 million businesses fighting for competition on Instagram alone, with so many different companies trying to gain more screen time on people’s feeds.
It’s led to a drop in engagement as there is only so much scrolling people can do in a day, plus with the algorithm change the feed no longer goes in chronological order, instead, it shows posts from their most engaged pages what the user likes the most. That means if they don’t engage with your page, you’ll be stuck way down there feed and may not reach them at all.
Facebook started out by giving brands plenty of organic reach. But eventually, that reach started to decline, then decline further, to the point where now it’s very difficult to maintain any type of non-paid connection with the majority of your Facebook Page audience – Socialmediatoday, 2019
It’s only a matter of time before Instagram transitions to the point where you have to start paying to reach people. There are two ways to counter this change, but one method is much easier & produces quicker results and when utilized correctly can be extremely cost-efficient.
Making simple changes to your content can keep your engagement levels at a high level allowing you to avoid the dip everyone else is experiencing. This is the route you can go down if you have the team and resources to invest time into producing strong quality content. First, you need to understand who is actually engaging with your content, is it an older demographic, are they male or female.
This way you can tailor your content to your most engaged audience. This way you’re not posting try to appeal to your entire following and instead focusing on the 10-20% who are. Then instead of getting 2% of your following enjoying the generic content, you will get that 10-20% to engage with it instead. Once they start engaging consistently your posts will start appearing on the top of their feed (without having to spend anything).
If you start posting content that enriches your follower’s life, whether that be through education, humour, etc they will have a connection with your agency. If they feel like they know you personally they will become an advocate for you, recommending you to friends, tagging friends in your post…Which of course leads to more followers and engagements.
If you want to learn some quick & easy tactics to increase your organic engagement and reach you can download our free ‘social media hacks‘ guide.
This scares a lot of estate agencies because it sounds like the route where you have to invest thousands every month to be seen. It couldn’t be further from the truth. Social media platforms like Facebook & Instagram are one of the most cost-efficient marketing platforms (for now) to use in 2019. A marketing campaign can be done with as little as £100 being spent a month.
Obviously the more you spend the higher your results will be, but it is all dependant on how big your estate agency is and how many leads you can manage within a month, how much traffic you want reaching your site & so many more variables.
Facebook & Instagrams business manager allows you to produce adverts that fit specific criteria. So if you want to reach more people, if you want more direct messages, more post engagement, more followers, more leads, more traffic to your website, more leads generated. The possibilities are endless!
You don’t have to randomly target everyone, you be extremely precise with who your adverts reach. You can target people based on their income, location, age, gender, interests, actively spending. You can even retarget people who have been on your website before, down to specific pages! So if you want to capture those people who may have fallen under the radar, adverts are the best way to reach them.
Here at Property Webmasters, we produce structured social media campaigns that aim to raise awareness, website traffic & lead generation for our clients and we have received exceptional results across the board that continue to grow month after month. Clients spend between £100-£400 a month on their adverts and can generate 1000’s of website visits & up to 50 leads a month (dependant on external factors).
If you want to see what Property Webmasters can do for your social media campaigns, download our social media strategy to view all the services we provide.
By Ben Spowart
By Millie Taylor
By Ben Spowart