Our Guest: Jenn Herman

Join us with returning guest and Instagram extraordinaire Jenn Herman!

Wednesday, April 7 @ 1:30 Central Time.

Show Transcript:

0:00:01.0 Geoff Stertz: Hello, and thanks again for joining us for another Fathom Live, a live  stream show dedicated to giving you tips and insights from experts in and around the real estate  industry. I’m your host, Geoff Stertz. Glad to be with you today. She’s back. We have Jenn Herman  with us today, your Instagram guru and blogger, and expert, and all kinds of other things. So Jenn,  glad to have you today. We’re gonna be talking bio and hashtags, and call stacks, all kinds of stuff  today, so we’re looking forward to getting into that in just a few minutes, but good to see you.

0:00:34.0 Jenn Herman: Good to see you too. Thanks for having me back.

0:00:36.0 GS: Alright, before we jump in, real quick, check out gosocialagent.com for your social  media needs. Now, we’re gonna be talking about strategies and stuff today but here’s a great  resource for you. If you wanna just get that regular content on your social media feeds, as well as  help getting your accounts set up, they’ll do all kinds of stuff. They offer buyer and seller  handbooks through Houseopedia that have your branding on it, they’ll help set up campaigns for  you as well, all to help you grow your online community and generate leads. Again, you can head  over to gosocialagent.com to get started. Hit that notification bell, if you don’t mind. That way,  when we go live, you can participate in the conversation. We already have a bunch of people  watching on Facebook and YouTube, and shout out to Caitlin Meyer, Wendy Holcomb, Alicia  Abdul, Sarai, Pallavi. I don’t know if I said that name right but guys, thank you so much for  watching and feel free, during our show, to interact with Jenn, with myself. I’ll probably just point  the questions right to her since she knows all this stuff. And if you missed last week’s show or last  episode, we had I guess, two or three weeks ago here. We had it with Thomas Hubbard. Make sure  you go check that out. Great show on customer service.

0:01:47.5 GS: Alright, well, that’s it. Let’s jump right into things. Jenn, now, one of the things that  we didn’t do last time, and I’ve been negligent in this, is we usually have some interesting fun fact,  something to get to know our guest. And we already knew you were smart but now I know that  you’re way smarter, so tell us why?

0:02:10.5 JH: I love that, I’m even smarter. So I actually have two science degrees. I have a  bachelor’s in biology and then I have my master’s in forensic science.

0:02:18.7 GS: Okay. And she wasn’t just voluntarily… What’s that?

0:02:21.7 JH: I said, people always laugh because I teach Instagram marketing but I have all these  degrees in science. [chuckle] 0:02:27.0

GS: Yeah, no, we’re talking earlier, our in­-house social media expert here at Fathom has a rocket engineering degree, master’s as well, so it just must be… There’s some sort of in the Venn  diagram between the sciences and social media, there’s some overlap, and it is a science, which is  somewhat what we’re gonna be talking about today. That there are things that you just need to do  that are gonna be surefire ways to help you move that needle along toward lead generation, but  there you go. So instead of crime scene investigation, now you’re trying to figure out how to get  people to click likes and…

JH: Exactly. 0:03:05.9 GS: And then reach out to you to make money. 0:03:08.0

JH: Exactly. 0:03:08.7 GS: That’s good. So let’s jump right into it. And by the way, she didn’t just volunteer that  information just to tell me how smart she was. I asked her, I asked her about this, and so there you  go. So last show, we talked a lot about just content, the pictures, that kind of stuff. Today, we’re  gonna be talking a lot more, I don’t wanna say technical stuff and scare everybody away. This is just really practical tips, so you can take this away and literally, today, be using it. So maybe starting  with bios, your account profile bio, which seems irrelevant to this conversation but it’s not. So what  is it and why is it important?

0:03:50.6 JH: Yeah. So the Instagram bio is probably one of the most important components of  your whole Instagram profile. So typically, what happens is we log on Instagram and we scroll  through the feed or watch some stories, and you don’t really go to a lot of people’s profiles, so you  don’t think of the value of that profile. But if somebody finds you, whether it’s through a search,  whether someone tagged you, or someone else’s comment or post, and you go and look at that  person’s profile, all these sorts of things, there’s all these ways that you can get found in search and  you wanna make sure that if someone finds you, that you are appealing to them in the best way  possible. So we want that profile bio to really appeal to first-­time visitors. It’s important that it’s set  up to tell them who you are, what you do and essentially, what’s in it for them. Why would they  care to follow you? Why would they care to work with you? Are they gonna get a certain value out  of it? Is there a coupon code they can get? Is there a link to your bio to purchase or move through a  process or anything? So it’s really important to think about that bio, which is only 150 characters, so it’s not a lot of space. But to be able to put that key information up there for those first-­time visitors, that’s gonna help you grow the followers and ultimately, drive website traffic in the long run, but  yes, it’s actually an incredibly important part to really build your Instagram presence.

0:05:18.5 GS: Okay, so for you note takers out there, and you should write this down, it’s who you  are, what you do and what’s in it for the person visiting your bio. Those three things. And you’re  saying, we can put your own website link in there, so you…

0:05:33.0 JH: Yes. So there’s only one link available on Instagram for the most part and that is the  link in the bio, so this is for business and or creator profiles. You can’t do this on a personal profile  and you should not be using your personal profile. You should be using a business or creator. Quick myth disruption, there’s no negative impact. You’re not penalized for being a business profile on  Instagram like you are on Facebook, so you only have that one link and it’s really important that you set that up for driving traffic. One of the things a lot of people do, they just put their homepage on  there, their first page of their website. The problem with that is that, because Instagram doesn’t  really allow link dropping or links anywhere else, if you just send somebody to your homepage and  they’re looking for your blog or they’re looking for your opt­in to your newsletter, or they’re looking for all your listings of properties you have available, or whatever it is, if they go to your homepage,  they’re like… It’s overwhelm, it’s more searching they have to do, and they’re less likely to follow through with that transaction.

0:06:41.9 JH: So, you actually wanna create, either you can use tools like Linktree or there’s Link  In Bio, there’s a lot of third­party tools. I actually recommend you just recreate that on your own  website, create a dedicated landing page on your website, and if you go to my account, which is  jenns_trends, how you can click my link in bio, see, mine is by no means great or perfect, but you  can kind of see where I have up few options available. You tap on any of those and it takes you to  that very specific page within my website, which allows me to get people to go exactly where I  want them to go.

0:07:17.0 GS: Gotcha. So you can put multiple links, you’re saying in your bio?

0:07:21.0 JH: It’s one link, but you’re putting it to a landing page…

0:07:24.0 GS: I gotcha, I gotcha, alright. I thought you were saying that at first, and I got confused.  So, unless your homepage is a lead funnel page, which some people set it up that way, where you  either have a pop­up or something that makes you fill something out, or right away you’ve got a  form with calls to action, which we’re gonna talk about in a second. Then find some sort of squeeze  page to get them in, to get their information and just keep that two­way relationship going there.  And as far as… My brain’s doing something here, so I notice… I looked down, Yvette Ruiz is  watching right now, she was a few minutes ago when she gave us a shout out. Yvette has watched  several shows, and I think has been a live show winner before, but her name popped up, when we  did a random selection here, and you win today, Yvette. You win another prize for watching the  show for our drawing. So if you are watching right now, make sure you give a shout out, ask  questions. If you ask a question and it gets used on the show, we actually enter you into the drawing five times, which increases your likelihood of getting it. So you can get yard signs, you can get  Gosocial lead service, or you can get a photo listing package, all up to 200 bucks worth of stuff  each.

0:08:46.8 GS: So yeah, anyways, I just thought I would throw that out there, so if our viewers are  watching, give us your name or just make a comment and we’ll automatically add you to that. So  bios, who you are, what you do and what’s in it for me? And just as an example of that then, so real  estate agents are pretty hyper­local, not that they couldn’t do a big metroplex or anything like that,  am I wanting to say, “Hey, Geoff Stertz, realtor in the Collin County, Wylie.” Put those kind of  keywords into my bio where I live. Is that what I’m thinking?

0:09:25.7 JH: Yeah, so there’s a couple of things to keep in mind with that. I mean, like you said,  most real estate professionals are working in a relatively small space, whether it’s a very specific  community or even up to a city size, but usually a relatively small space. I would highly  recommend you put that geographical location in your name field. So your username is the @  symbol followed by your username, in my case @jenns_trends is my username. If you go to my  profile, it says “Jenn Herman Instagram Expert” as the name field. Now, the name and the username are the two primary search criteria that Instagram looks at when someone comes to Instagram and is looking for something. So if someone is looking for something in a specific geographical area, you  want that geographical name to be in the name in the username. So for example, I’m in San Diego,  if I was a realtor here, I would wanna put, San Diego or pick the specific area within San Diego that I serve. So there’s all these subcommunities and little cities within San Diego. So that’s something  that you would wanna put in the name field for searchability. But then, yes, you’d also wanna put  that within the bio, maybe getting more specific in terms of the actual communities you serve,  something to that effect.

0:10:44.5 JH: So that’s what you do. You are a real estate professional in x­-community, in y-­city,  whatever it is. But then you also wanna add in some of the, who you are is gonna be not… Because  your whole bio should not be… It’s not a resume. Okay, we don’t want it to be this laundry list of  award­-winning, sold three million Solar homes. We want it to be personal, because it’s a personal  connection on Instagram. They’re connecting with you as an individual, so mentioning your  hobbies. Are you a parent? Are you born and raised in that city or that location? What is it about  you that makes you unique? Do you bungee jump for fun? You can put bungee jumper in your bio,  we wanna have that personalization to it.

0:11:35.4 GS: Cool. By the way, I can hear some people objecting maybe saying like, “I don’t  wanna limit it to just my area, I’m so desperate for leads, and I would rather just say San Diego.”  What would you say to that?

0:11:53.5 JH: Go for it. Honestly, you know your industry, you know the situation best. I have a  client of mine who lives in Texas, but she is a relocation specialist. Most of her clients actually  come from California, going to Texas. She puts that in her bio description, but in terms of a  geographical term, she doesn’t use really either one because she’s not specific to either one, and it’s  not like it’s just one area of California. So you can do it however best to your audience and what  you think people are looking for when looking for someone like that.

0:12:30.9 GS: Right, right. Right. If people aren’t just searching for Dallas, Fort Worth homes or  San Diego homes or a realtor, don’t put that in there, put where you’re at and you’ll serve yourself  better than just casting such a wide net.

0:12:46.9 JH: Yes.

0:12:49.4 GS: Kind of moving on then, captions, we talk a lot about what you wanna put in a  photo. What about what I say about it in the caption area, do you have some direction for that?

0:13:01.3 JH: Yeah, absolutely. So like I say, I always tell people photos and the videos, the visual  component of Instagram, that’s what it’s based on, that’s why people go to the platform, and that gets people’s attention. The closer they see, they see a photo they like, they stop and watch a video, that  gets their attention, but captions are where you make conversions. So, most people are not going to  navigate to your profile and design up for you is based on a photo. Maybe a video, there’s a call to  action or something of value in there, but for the most part, that visual in and of itself is not gonna  drive your result, that’s where the captions come into play. So a couple of things to keep in mind.  First of all, you’ll notice if you’re scrolling through Instagram, you’ll see the visual component and  then you’ll see username, two lines of text dot dot dot more, it gets funky, it gets cut off if someone  doesn’t click dot dot dot more, they do not read your caption. So we wanna make sure that first  sentence in your caption is an attention gift, you can use emojis, you can use capital letters, you can ask a question, you can make a bold statement, say something quirky or almost kind of a cliff  hanger.

0:14:15.0 JH: Think like blog post title, or email subject header kind of thing, something that’s  gonna intrigue people enough to be like, Huh, I wanna know more. And they click dot dot dot more. And now they’re reading your caption because we want the caption to take the story that much  further, get their attention in the photo, caption tells the story, tells the background, maybe it’s  actually outlining the details of the home, telling you when the open house is available, telling you  how to make a reservation for showing, but they’ll never see that if they don’t click the dot dot dot  more, so we want that really good, powerful sentence that always grabs our attention.

0:14:52.4 GS: Right. Cool. So it’s like, I hate this kitchen dot dot dot, because it’s not my own,  something like that, you know, the real, awful, cook fake, kind of stuff, but you can do that, if you  want to. It isn’t necessarily that you don’t wanna have a long caption, right? Like you’re saying, I  can fill it with the whole ton of details if I want to, is there a limit that you like…

0:15:16.5 JH: Yeah, and this is one of those like, I can never give the best answer to this question,  because it really depends on so many criteria, most people on Instagram are not there to read a  novel. So most people prefer shorter captions, one to three short paragraphs is usually gonna be an  ideal range, typically if you’ve got the photo and you scroll up, if your caption extends beyond the  length of the screen, it’s probably too long. Now, that being said, I max out my characters all the  time, but I’ve started using Instagram as a micro­-block and my audience expects that and they  appreciate it. So it’s okay for me, and I don’t do it on every post, right? And you have 2200  characters, is your max limit, not words, 2200 characters, so normally, I’m not gonna recommend  you go that long, one to three short paragraphs is usually going to be ideal, but put as much in there  that you need to as a value, if you can do it in two paragraphs, great. If you need four, that’s fine  too, as long as it’s all value-­add and it’s there for a reason.

0:16:23.7 GS: Awesome, awesome. Alright, so for the first few sentences are key, and then just  make sure everything else is stuff that you wanna read that not just plugged garbage ’cause…

0:16:32.7 JH: And I always tell people, especially in the real estate space. Try to tell things more in a story method, so we are often very conditioned, especially in the real estate space, bulletin, you’re  like three­-bedroom house, four baths, large yard, that’s not selling anybody on  Instagram, I promise you. If instead you said something like, wouldn’t you love to walk into this  beautiful three­-bedroom home with a massive yard overlooking the Canyon? Now it’s like you’re  getting a visual component, right? So don’t list that, it’s okay to have some bullet point details in  there, but when you’re writing these captions for Instagram, think more of the storyteller  components, think more about how can you convey an emotion and a feeling that makes people  want to walk into that home.

0:17:25.3 GS: So you said that you can’t put links in your captions, correct? Straight up text, so if I  want somebody to take some sort of action, just for the viewers, if you’re not familiar, there’s a term in marketing called CTA or call to action, Hey, we can just talk generally what that is, so how do I  make that happen if I don’t have a website? Well, first of all, What is this call to action?

0:17:58.1 JH: So the call to action is literally a call to take an action, it can be something as simple  as tag a friend below, that’s asking them to take an action. It can be call me to make a reservation,  that is a call to an action or the most common one on Instagram is, click the link in my bio, so that  is the most common CTA that you will hear or see on Instagram because you have that one  clickable link in your bio, so you can’t put a link in the caption, you can simply say, see link in bio,  click link in bio, go to my link in bio, some version of that, and so you’ll have whatever your  caption is, let’s say you’ve got no pop­ups coming up, so you give the fun exciting details, talking  about the property, list a couple of details about when, where, that sort of thing. And then your call  to action would be, to book or showing, click the link in my bio, or you could say something on the  lines of, join us on Saturday between noon and 3:00 PM. So, even just saying, “Join us,” or “Come  by” that is a call to action. You’re asking them to do something of action. Or it could be to click a  link in bio if you wanted them to book a reservation for showing, any of those sorts of things.

0:19:15.1 JH: So that link in bio is how you’re getting people to your website. That is gonna be,  like you said, the most common call to action that you will see on Instagram, and that’s why, again,  it’s really important to have a good landing page, or a good destination, because if they scroll over  the feed, they see your photo or video, that caught their attention, now they click more, they  actually read your caption, now they see your call to action, they go, “Okay, I’m gonna follow  through.” Now, they can click on your profile photo, now they’re on your profile. The last thing we  wanna do after they’ve taken all of these intentional steps, is send them to a rabbit hole of  confusion, and you’re like, “I got them, let’s go.” And then you’re lost. So having that dedicated  landing page gives them the chance to say, “Oh, okay, reserved showing listing.” Click on that  button, now they’re on that form page, they’re filling it out, boom, transaction complete.

0:20:06.9 GS: Right, right. And a good rule of thumb too is, send it to a friend and say, “Does this  make sense?” Or a family member.

0:20:13.2 JH: Yeah. [laughter]

0:20:13.3 GS: Because you know what you’re supposed to do. Because you created it. But time and time again, and you see this across even bigger companies, there’s sometimes that failure to see  where you start and where you end. And if there’s any point of failure along those six possibilities,  goodbye or leave.

0:20:34.0 JH: Exactly. 0:20:35.1 GS: I mean, fallen off the cliff. And just also, just putting a marketing hat on here.  Always, always, always, viewers, put a call to action on your marketing stuff. Always, always,  always. It seems so simple. Like if I just put my phone number on something you would think,  people would go, “Oh yeah, that makes sense to call.” It doesn’t. You have to put, “Call me at, Tata­ta­ta­ta.” Now, you’ve taken brain calories off of my mental workout, and I just have to just do  what you just told me to do. And so, with that though, should I ever put my phone number on there  and say, “Hey, you wanna see this, give me a call at blah blah.” Can I do that in my caption and is  that a good idea?

0:21:20.7 JH: Yeah, absolutely. If that’s something, if that’s your goal is to have somebody call  you, you can put that in the caption. You could even say, call me at da­da­da, or click the contact  button on my profile. Because you can set up your contact buttons on your profile to allow call,  text, email and direction.

0:21:38.0 GS: Oh, cool. Well, there you go.

0:21:39.0 JH: So you could even have that, and that way they don’t have to try to remember the  number, they just go to the contact button, choose call, and it will automatically open the phone app on the phone, and allow them to call you. So yes, you can absolutely use that as your action as well.

0:21:54.0 GS: Alright. Hey, I’ve only got a couple more things here to talk about, but if you’re  watching and you wanna ask Jenn a question, she’s standing by here, so feel free to jump in the  conversation.

0:22:03.9 JH: Drop them in.

0:22:04.0 GS: Yeah, let’s mix things up. So kinda moving on, then, hashtags, I think we may have  touched on it a little bit before, and I know if you go back and watch Julie’s episode, we talked a  little bit about hashtag strategy, but real quick, what are they? And why do I use them? A lot of  times people use them in a humorous sense, like hashtag CrazyDayAtTheOffice, or hashtag  MomOfThree, or whatever, and they’re not really actually using them as a way to index what  groups or feeds they’re a part of, they’re just kind of making a joke with it. But from a lead Jenn  standpoint, what are hashtags and what do you use them for?

0:22:44.1 JH: Yeah, so in terms of Instagram, hashtags are pretty much vital to success. It’s  probably singlehandedly, the best and most significant way to get new people singing your content.  Location tags work, yes, and search criteria works, and all these other things are at play, but  hashtags are probably the single best means to reach new people without having to actively track  down those new users. So what you wanna do is add a series of hashtags to all of your posts, all of  your posts should always have hashtags on them. And you can use up to 30 hashtags. Now, people  think that’s overwhelming, and it’s crazy, but it’s Instagram. It is not overwhelming, and it’s not  crazy. It’s actually expected. So if someone told you, “Don’t… We only use two… We only use five,” the thing with hashtags is that if you don’t use them, you don’t show up in search, so if you only use  two hashtags, you’re only showing up in those two searches, if you use 22 hashtags, you’re  potentially showing up in 22 searches.

0:23:50.8 GS: Okay.

0:23:51.3 JH: I’m gonna go with the latter. Because it’s more chance for more exposure.

0:23:55.5 GS: Right. 0:23:56.1 JH: So the key is to use the right combination of hashtags. So, first of all, we wanna use a combination of popularity. I typically don’t recommend using hashtags with more than a million  posts associated with them. So if you go to Instagram and you look at a hashtag, it will tell you how many posts are associated with that hashtag. So you are not going to use hashtag RealEstate,  because that hash 80 zillion posts associated with it. And no one is looking at hashtag RealEstate  that is actually looking for real estate. They’re gonna look for Real Estate City Name, or City Name  Real Estate. So, hashtag SanDiegoRealEstate possibly. They’re not gonna look at just real estate,  which is a global terminology, right? So you wanna get more specific in terms of that. Think about  things with the geographical terminology in there, you also wanna look at things that are related  moreso to what people are doing on Instagram. So for example, most people probably aren’t  actually going to Instagram to find properties for sale. They’re gonna go to MLS Listings, they’re  gonna go to Zillow, they’re gonna go to Redfin, they’re gonna go other places.

0:25:13.4 JH: But what people are doing on Instagram is searching for inspiration on things like,  hashtag DreamKitchen, or hashtag BathroomGoals, or any of those sorts of things. So if you have a  beautiful property that has an amazing chef’s kitchen, you could use hashtags related to your chef’s  kitchen, and dream kitchen, and kitchen goals, or any of those sorts of things, that is more likely to  appeal to what people are doing on Instagram, that they’re actually gonna see that property. I’m not  saying they’re necessarily gonna come and buy it, but you’re more likely to get in front of the right  audience, and at least start to expand that growth in that way.

0:25:53.0 GS: Very good. Thank you. I think that covers enough to give people a place to go and a  to­do list to do. And by the way, if you want more in­-depth content, viewers, jennstrends.com is  where you’re gonna wanna go, and we’re early enough in the month of April that you could say,  “Hey, by the end of April, I’m gonna take one of Jenn’s courses, and I’m gonna learn a lot of stuff  about Instagram to help me lead Jenn, and become a figure on that platform.” So go to  jennstrends.com, make sure you do it. Do it just to help her out and say thank you for being our  guest today. But then go the next step and educate yourself and take one of her courses. So okay,  use a bunch of hashtags, make sure that they’re relevant to what people are searching for in local,  and don’t be afraid to use a bunch of them, so very good. So the last thing I wanna talk about is  stories. Stories, we see them on Facebook, we see them on Instagram, so they seem to be, at least  from my perspective, and I’m sort of your probably average lay Facebook user. I don’t do a ton on  there, but I see that people are using stories more and more and more, so what are they and how can they be used from in a business standpoint? From a business standpoint?

0:27:23.2 JH: Yeah. So Instagram Stories in general, and just stories on pretty much every other  platform as well, are 24­hour short form vertical content, so they’re either photos or videos, they’re  shot in the vertical 9 x 16 format, and you upload them, they’ll last for 24 hours and then they go  away. So it’s not content that lives on your profile forever, although we can get complicated and say you could actually turn them into highlights and then they can be archived and actually live on your  profile, but the average story in and of itself disappears after 24 hours. So a lot of people are like,  why would I create content that’s gonna disappear 24 hours later?

0:28:00.6 GS: Right. It’s a lot of work, right? Yeah.

0:28:03.6 JH: So you really have to think about the value for you in terms of that return of your  time and the investment of resources into creating it. And the reason why we’re seeing stories being so popular across most platforms is, that typically stories have a greater recall rate than most other  content, and it’s because when you’re consuming short form content, your brain is so laser-­focused  on that image and reading those couple of pieces of text or watching that video, because it’s gonna  flip like that. A photo will last six seconds on Instagram and a story, and a video is up to 15  seconds, so you are hyper­-focused, you’re not glancing away from the screen, you’re not listening to something in the background, you’re not mindlessly scrolling, so you actually are giving better  attention to that content, meaning you’re more likely to remember it, you’re more likely to pursue  something as a result, so most people, not everybody, most people tend to see better conversions  from Instagram Stories because they have that better attention span. So again, you have to wait this  out, you can’t just do one story and be like, “Oh, it didn’t work for me and I’m not gonna do it ever  again.”

0:29:17.3 JH: You wanna test this over a period of about four to six weeks with regular content.  Some things you can think about are gonna be, do a quick walk through of a home, so if you know  you’re gonna have a showing or an open house on the weekend, go out prior, take some photos and  or videos walking through the main entrance, walking through the backyard, walking through the  kitchen, maybe the master, and maybe a living space or something, and a family room, game room,  something like that. Create a little short from content, put that up 24 hours before the open house, so now you put it up right before the open house, anybody who’s looking at that is now like, oh, that  looks amazing, I wanna go see that property. Oh, look at that, the open house is tomorrow at noon.  So if you’re setting it up as a means to tease something in another way, it’s also great for just  showcasing a bit more about your personality because typically what we show on Instagram is very  polished, very professional, and it can be really, it can be really, I don’t think corporate, but very  professional kind of things. When you get on Instagram stories, we kind of let our hair down, right?

0:30:29.3 GS: Right.

0:30:30.7 JH: We show a little more of our personality, we show our lifestyle, our family, our kids, any of those sorts of things. People can hear your voice in the videos and it builds a better trust  factor, even if you’re just showcasing what you did on that weekend or what you’re doing to  celebrate a holiday, any of those sorts of things.

0:30:47.6 GS: Speaking of personal life, is that your little one in the background?  0:30:50.4 JH: That is my little one. She just walked away from the desk.

0:30:54.9 GS: She’s been so well behaved.

0:30:56.5 JH: This is actually not well behaved. She’s about to get like the death glare from mom,  ’cause usually she’s not even in here. She knows, don’t interrupt mom [0:31:01.9] ____ And I’m  like, “Mm­hmm, no, you don’t.”

0:31:07.0 GS: No, no, no. Give her a pass today. She’s been so quiet, she’s been so stealthy about it, and so there you go. That’s adorable. So Britney asked, is posting hashtags in the first comment of  your own post instead of the caption, more or less effective?

0:31:25.4 JH: So great question, and this is the question that I could retire on if I was paid every  time I answered this question. So here’s the thing, it honestly does not matter. From an algorithmic  perspective on Instagram, the algorithm doesn’t care, you don’t get better performance one way or  the other. Your audience honestly doesn’t care, it’s only us as marketers and people creating the  content, who ever really seem to worry about this, but that being said, there’s two caveats that do  have an impact on performance, so one is if you’re using super popular hashtags and those are the  ones with well over a million posts associated with them, you wanna leave those in the original  caption, even a 15 or 30­second delay in the time it takes you to put those in a comment can lose  incredibly valuable time and almost render them useless if you’re using popular hashtags, which I  just told you not to do, but if you want to use them, just keep that in mind.

0:32:23.9 JH: And the other caveat is that if you have an audience that you know relies on screen  readers and accessible technology, having hashtags in the caption can be a huge distraction because  now the screen leader has to read the entire caption, including all of those hashtags, and for most  hashtags it’s reading each and every character, ’cause it doesn’t recognize words, so it’s gonna read  all of your hashtags, and so the screen reader is basically locked on your post for the next three  minutes, and that’s just annoying. So in that sense, it can be beneficial to put them in the comment.

0:32:58.8 GS: Gotcha.

0:33:00.0 JH: Other than that, it honestly doesn’t matter.

0:33:01.9 GS: Awesome, well, thank you, thank you for answering that. Any other last bits of  advice here, this has been a fantastic… There’s so many takeaways people can go and use right now  on their Instagram account, but anything else you wanna share to close this out?

0:33:16.6 JH: I would just kinda remind people to have fun, that’s one of the things that I always  tell people is make sure you’re having fun on Instagram, it is not meant to be a professional  platform, even though we use it in a professional capacity, so showcasing more of the personal side  of your life, showcasing things that are fun about pieces of property and less so about the marketing component can always make it better. And as you mentioned, I do have a course, Instagram for real  estate, which is a whole course dedicated just to all of you as realtors, and it walks through in six  hours of content, pretty much everything you need to know about all things Instagram from start to  finish, that you can start using it effectively, and that’s a really, really good resource for you if you  wanna check that out.

0:34:01.5 GS: Okay, do it folks. Go over to jennstrends.com and check that out. Jenn, thank you so  much for doing this, this really is twice and giving us a wealth of information. If you missed our last episode, you can find it over in fathomcareers.com. If you look at our Fathom live, library or our  new Fathom Life blog, you can sort via our Fathom Live show and find it there as well. Jenn, we’ll  let you go and be easy on the kid, just for what that’s worth but anyways…

0:34:31.4 JH: I will.

0:34:31.6 GS: Thanks. Thanks for coming on the show. All right. If you’re still watching, do head  over to fathomcareers.com, if you haven’t been over there yet and check us out, see what we’re all  about over there. We recently are into another state in the union and continue to grow our markets  as well, but we are a company that works for you the other way around, giving you the tools and the technology and the service that you need for your success, fathomcareers.com, and we’ve got some  great guys coming up. Our next guest is David Knox, a real estate expert that’s been in the business  for a very long time and has offered tons of advice, and so you wanna take notes with him. He’ll  speak very fast, and he’ll give you a ton of stuff. So he’s gonna be on here, not next week, but in two weeks. And then we have a couple of agents. We have Aziz Shabazz as well as Colley Bailey  coming on in May, so looking forward to having them. And we’ll see you next time.

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