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Before we jump in today, if you're an agent who doesn't have full control over how many new clients you get every month, I'm hosting a free 30 minute masterclass that you're going to want to attend. I break down the new way that top agents are attracting five, six, even seven deals every single month for free, without relying on Zillow, without buying Google leads, without referrals or anyone else giving them business. This masterclass is completely free. All you have to do right now to register is go over to clientsfromsocial.com and reserve your spot. That's clients from social.com in this first episode of 2026, I have eight brand new Instagram hacks for you to help you Crush it in 2026. Let's jump into them right now. The Massive Agent podcast. We lead generation tips and strategies to give you more leads and sell more homes. I love to buy houses. I like to sell houses. It takes brass balls to sell real estate. Wait a minute. The leads are weak. You're weak. I've had better. Have I got your attention? Now? Here's your host, Dustin Brome. What is up, guys? Welcome to episode 420 of the Massive Agent podcast. I am your host, Dustin Brome here in Salt Lake City. And if I was 18 years old again, I would be giggling uncontrollably at the fact that it's episode 420. But I'm 42 years old, so it's not that funny. But still noteworthy, which is why I'm. Which is why I'm talking about it. Anyways, episode 420 of the show. First episode, no, second episode of 2026, because the first one came out on New Year's Day. So I lied earlier, I think in the intro. Anyways, I'm going to break down eight new Instagram hacks that absolutely matter right now. That they're. Each one of these is super tactical and you can implement them today in the content that you're doing, in your stories, in your posts, in all of it. Some of it you can use on other platforms other other than Instagram. There's a couple of them that are specific to Instagram that these features, these hacks, if you will not exist on other platforms, which is very unfortunate. But if you want to do better content and attract more followers, attract more, attract a bigger audience. And ultimately, because the whole point of all of that is to attract more clients to you, you are in the right place. And this episode is the episode you've been waiting for all year. You've been waiting for this all year now, okay, some tough love here to start the year. Most agents are living in a state of like lead dependency where you are relying on someone else for your business. You are reliant on some. I was about to get kind of graphic there for a sec. You're really, you're relying on someone else to feed you your clients and your leads and your business. Okay, and, and look, I understand for some of you, that's all you want and you're good with that. Cool it. If you're trying to build a business that, that has longevity and that scales and that you can make go from 50 sales a year to a hundred and a hundred to two hundred and so on, you've got to have control. I mean, the problem is most agents depend on portals, you depend on luck, and you depend on platforms that you don't control, that you don't have any control over at all. And it's exhausting. And frankly, it's no way to run a business in 2026. It's 2026 and pretty soon we're going to be halfway through 2026 and we're going to be talking about 2027 and shit is just accelerating so fast. It' your business as a realtor. Seriously, if you're not already, and if you are, let's double how serious you take it. That sounded better in my head, but I think, I think you get the point. I want to give you the gift of certainty this year. Okay? I, I'm pulling back the curtain on how to win, how to get actual business from social in 2026. So I'm going to give you the gift of certainty. I'm pulling back the curtain on a free masterclass that, that I've been doing to show you the new formula for social media dominance. I'm breaking down the brand new strategy that top agents are using to net 5, 6, 7 deals every single month without spending all day on their phones and without spending any money on Google Ads or Facebook ads or giving your money to Zillow. Consider this the best gift you could possibly give yourself to start your new year. And honestly, it's the best gift you can give your future self is knowing this new formula, this new way of crushing it on social. So I'm, I'm taking this training down soon. You can attend it for free while it lasts over@clientsfromsocial.com. do not go another week, do not go another month saying, oh, I'll do that later, or if you did Attend it. And you only watch 10 minutes. What the hell? It, it's a 30 minute training. You, there's some really good shit there in the middle and the end. So get back on the horse. And by the way, like, do it when you have 30 minutes. Attend this when you have 30 minutes to actually pay attention. If you're just like, I'm going to pop in for five minutes and hopefully he gives me some magical thing that solves everything in my business. I mean, you might get a little tip, but I think you want more than the tip, right? This can go sideways fast. So I'm going to retreat from that statement immediately, dive in, commit, attend the master class for free over@clientsfromsocial.com and do it when you have 30 minutes to attend the entire training. Because I'm telling you, the best comes at the end. I tie it all together at the end. Clientsfromsocial.com okay, now, if you're still posting, let's get into the show. If you're still posting the same way that you were a year ago, you're already falling behind those who are up on all the new trends, the new strategies, the new hacks, the new features of social media. And today we're specifically talking about Instagram. Yes, some of this, some of these concepts apply on other platforms for sure, but some of these features are only available on Instagram, which is kind of a bummer. It is what it is. Now, you're not falling behind because you're bad at Instagram. You're not, you're not behind because the algorithm hates you, and it's not because social media is too hard or too saturated. It. It's not. Okay, what, what has changed over the last year and especially the last two months? The last two months, I'd say the last quarter. Okay, the, the, the last three months, the last quarter, what's changes how people who are consuming Instagram content decide whether or not to watch you or ignore you or leave your profile forever. Forever and never come back. Like, you need to understand consumer behaviors and what makes them do those certain things. And I'm going to break that down for you. So if you're wondering, how do I get people to watch my stuff, I'm going to break that down and I'll give you some specific tips. And by the way, the free masterclass at clients from Social.com dives really deep into that. Like, really deep. So in this episode, I'm going to break down the exact shifts that are quietly separating the creators, the accounts that grow in 2026 from the ones that stall out or fizzle. Even when you're posting consistently, you. You can be spending a ton of time posting consistently, doing all the right things as far as, like, checking the box like, I'm posting and still get zero results. And that sucks, and it's frustrating. And so we're going to fix that today. We're going to start with some tactical stuff. And it's not theory. This is not motivational stuff. This is not conceptual. These are practical, actual adjustments that can change what happens in the first few seconds of your content, the first swipe, and the first click. If Instagram is feeling harder now than it. Than it used to be, you're not alone. Okay? But stay with me. This episode is going to rewire. You rewire your brain on how you think about content. The first hack that I'm going to give you, the first tip I got, I got to be careful. I told you I was going to retreat from the whole you want more than the tip thing. But here we are. Here we are again, saying it again. Damn it. Okay, number one, you have to make your grid, your profile, bingeable. You have to make your profile Bingeable. This does not necessarily apply to Facebook. Now, you. You do need to have a bunch of information that makes you interesting and lets people know what you do, where you do it, and all of that. If people land on your Facebook profile and they don't know what you do and where you do it, you're failing. You're what we call a secret agent. So go fix that shit. But Facebook doesn't have all your content in one big grid the way Instagram and TikTok does and even, to a certain extent, YouTube. Right? But this is really for Instagram and TikTok. Your grid, your profile, needs to be Bingeable. So when you look at it, I want you to go look at your Instagram grid. Just look at the top nine images, those thumbnail images. Is there anything there that would make you click it out of curiosity or interest if you didn't know you. If you were a stranger landing on your account, like, oh, here's a. Here's a real estate account, or here's this person or educational on this, that. And they land on your account expecting a certain thing. Is there anything about your thumbnail images that will make them click? If not, you need. You need to add text. You need to add interesting scenes. Go look at mine as save agent. There's a reason why every single one of mine has text. On it. Some of you might think that doesn't look very pretty. It doesn't look all aesthetic. Well, no shit. It's not meant to be a museum. It's meant to get people to click and binge the way they do on Netflix or whatever. Right? They're going through Netflix or at the wine store. You're looking at all the labels and you're choosing what you're going to get based on the price and the label. Right? It's the same thing when you're scrolling somebody's Instagram profile. The thumbnail needs to be interesting, it needs to grab attention, it needs to make them curious, and it needs to make them want to click. So add text hooks to your thumbnails for all of your content on Instagram and, and TikTok. And do it on Facebook as well. Because actually when they click into reels or videos, they can see all of your content in a grid on Facebook too. So, yes, just make it a habit. Wherever you're doing short form content, make sure you pay attention to the thumbnail, the preview image, and put text on it. So there's a text hook that makes people think, oh, that looks interesting. I'm going to watch that. Number one is make your grid bingeable. Number two, obsess over the start of your content. The beginning. The way that your content starts out is everything. If you do not grab someone's attention in the first one to three seconds, they just scroll on to the next one and then you could have had such a beautiful, like incredibly like so educational, like so moving and touching and beautiful and like the, the most. Maybe you, you, you blacked out and you communicated better than ever before in your life. But it happened 45 seconds into a video and it starts out slow and no one ever freaking sees it. You have to obsess over the start of your video. You have to get very good at hooks. Again, I highly recommend if you don't. If you aren't great at hooks, you would go to clientsfromsocial.com and attend my masterclass and let me teach you some of these things. Hooks. Learning how to do hooks, it takes a little practice and it takes a paradigm shift for some of us because you have to think about content in a different way. Instead of thinking of it as, hey, here's what the video is about, and you just tell them the topic. You have to grab their attention with something that makes them interested enough to stick around to find out the topic. So the hook is what somebody sees and or hears in the first one to three seconds. And you have to obsess over the way your video starts. So do not introduce yourself. Introducing yourself is the kiss of death for content. First off, it's wildly unnecessary. Why are you introducing yourself to a stranger? They don't care who you are. They just care about what the video is about. They don't know you yet. And if they do know you, why are you introducing yourself to someone that already knows you? It's a massive waste of the first three to 10 seconds of a video. Like the most valuable, important part of a video you're wasting by introducing yourself. So knock that shit off. At a minimum, just start saying the thing you want to say. And ideally you take a little extra time and practice on how to come up with a great hook. So pay attention to those who do great hooks. I think I do pretty good hooks, so you can take some of mine or go into my. Actually go to. If you're not attending the masterclass or you already have, go into my Instagram bio, click the link in my Instagram bio and somewhere in there I have a opt in thing to get my list of a hundred, 100 hooks for real estate videos. Go get that and use that and practice. Number three. We'll be right back. Now obviously, I think my new free masterclass, Breaking down the Way to get five Closings Every Month is pretty great. But don't take it from me, okay? Take it from Stephanie, one of the first agents who attended my masterclass. She sent me this message the other day. She says, you probably won't believe this, but I have a new buyer already. Smiley face emoji and five more convos from just one post. Just followed your advice in the webinar Fire emoji. So I guess you could say it's okay. Hahaha. Look, I want to teach you those same tweaks too, because Damn it, if 2026 is going to be your best year, you have to know some things that you don't know yet. In my completely free masterclass, I'm going to break it all down for you. I'm going to show you exactly which tweaks Stephanie made. Just go to clientsfromsocial.com to save your seat. That's clientsfromsocial.com and now back to the pod, the third hack. Don't. Oh, this goes I. I was genius when I wrote these actually, because number three. It's the perfect segue from number two to number three. Number three is do not give away the topic right off the Bat don't tell them. Today I'm going to talk to you about FHA loans. Today I'm going to talk to you about this neighborhood. Today I'm going to talk to you about my new listing. No, that's not the way to do it. Let's use that. FHA loans one. Okay, I'm going to give you an example here. Instead of saying today I want to talk to you about FHA loans and did you know that you only need three and a half percent down? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay? If you start a video out like that telling them what it's about, what if they don't care about that thing? What if you tell them this is about FHA loans and they don't give a because they have no interest in buying a house. Instead you want to teach them how about the low down payment and what that can do for affordability and home accessibility and all this stuff, right? Empowering buyers to get into homes with as little out of pocket as possible. That's what you want to teach them, right? So instead you started out by saying, here's how to buy a million dollar house for 35k. That's going to get anyone's attention. Whether they're currently in the market to buy a house or not. That's going to get their attention because they're going to make them curious. And, and then you go on to explain that with the FHA loan they only need 3 1/2% down. And then you could explain 3% down is an option and 0% down or whatever. But the whole point is that you can actually get into a house, a million dollar house for just 35k out of pocket. But it starts with that hook. Here's how to buy a million dollar house for 35k. That grabs their attention, stuns them a little bit. It's a bold statement. And then you've got them and then they keep watching to find out how the hell you buy a million dollar house for 35k. Number four Instagram stories in your story. Use story captions to for your stories to stick out. Okay, so I don't know if you guys have noticed this, but if you're, if you're watching a story, if it has a caption in the bottom left, if whoever posted the story added a caption to the bottom left, it shakes a little bit as like once the story progresses to that one, it, the haptic, the haptics in your phone shakes a little bit and you can feel it and it pops up like so it moves, it pops up, and it. It shakes the phone just slightly, just like a little vibration. That haptic is an extra way to grab attention. So if you want. If you really want someone to see your story, and try not to use the captions in all your stories, because then it's just, you know, if you use it too much, people to start to. To tune it out. But in stories that you really want people to see, use the. The caption. So there's been like, I'll use the caption thing. And by the way, as you're creating the story, look in the bottom left on Instagram and it says, add a caption. Just says, add a caption in the bottom left. You can do a call to action there where it's like, comment the word master, reply the word master, and I'll send you a link to my masterclass. It could be. It could just be like an emoji with like two. Two eyeballs, like the look emoji. It could be whatever. It could be some fire emojis, it could be a statement. It could be telling them to do something, but it's there to just grab a little extra attention. It helps your story to stick out more when somebody's watching a bunch of stories. So use story captions to get that little haptic and that shake. I'm sure you've experienced this if you've been watching stories, but have you used it? Is the real question make sure you're using that feature. It's incredible. It may seem small, it may seem minimal, but it's a big deal. Number five, link to other reels. Instagram will now let you link to other reels. So if you're doing a series where maybe there's four videos that you're teaching a certain concept or. Or like a certain. Yeah, a certain series. Like, if you. If you've seen my ridiculous. You know, DMs in real life, where I'm. I drive up and then drive away. You know, that whole thing, I've done like 20 of them. And so it's become a series. And I can link in each one. I can link to the next one or the previous one. So if there's a. If you have a certain video that pairs well with another one, or you just want to get somebody to watch a certain video after they watch whatever, and you just want everyone to watch this one video, you can just link to it. So as you're creating your reel, you scroll down in the options right below the caption, and as you're you're, you're choosing whether or not you're going to schedule it. You're adding tags and all the stuff right before you actually hit post. Look in there for the, the link to story. It's actually right under the caption. So it's, it's not buried. It's right under the caption itself for the post. Right? Like the text of the post, it's right under there. It says link to link to a reel. And use that because when someone's watching it in the bottom left it says watch. And then you can title it whatever you want. That's a great way to drive more traffic to more of your content. Instead of, you know, what's most likely is they'll watch your reel and then they'll be, you know, someone else's reel will be suggested right after number six, the story views reset hack. If you like anyone else who does stories regularly, you watch your stories start to get stagnant or stale and the views go down. Let it expire. Let your story expire. Wait 12 to 24 hours and then the very next story you post could and should absolutely go crazy. Do a story that's highly engaging. So something people don't have to think too much about. Maybe it's a poll, maybe it's a bold statement. Maybe it's like one of those tweet. Like a hot take tweet image. For some reason, those just crush it. Like those outperform all my reels. Or sorry, those. Those outperform all my stories. I don't know why, but I know other creators do it because they just outperform. When you let your your stories expire, you wait 12 to 24 hours. The next story you do after should be highly engaging. Something that makes people reply or give you their opinion or say yes or no or whatever. Just make sure it's engaging. It doesn't have to have anything to do with real estate at all. It could have to do with anything at all. And then the next story you post after that can be more intentional, like you have a call to action in it or you're promoting something. But to get the story views juiced like you can seriously 10x your story views if you post something highly engaging after they expired and reset. So that's the story views reset hack number seven. Make your content as short as possible. Meaning if you're asking how long should my videos be, how long should my content be? It should be as short as it possibly can and not a second longer. It needs to be as long as it needs to be and not a second longer. If you can get the point across in four seconds, then you have a four second video. If you can get it across in 90 seconds, great. But shorter content works better on social media because, well, there's a few reasons. People have short attention spans and they don't necessarily want to watch a three minute long reel. They don't necessarily want to swipe through 20 carousels, which by the way, carousels are doing very, very well right now. A lot of creators are saying carousels are outperforming reels. I'm seeing that sometimes. So I'm absolutely trying to do carousels and reels. But as, as far as being short as possible, if you, a four second reel could be, could be perfect and get the point across. But people want to watch shorter stuff, they want quick hits. And think about it this way too. The algorithm is looking for completion time. So if you, if you do a 30 second or a, a 15 second video and you're getting a ton of people to finish it, as opposed to a three minute long video that only, you know, people are only watching 10% of because it's long. The algorithm sees that and they see the completion percentage. They're like h only people are only watching 10% of this video, but they're watching 90% of this one. That's the better one. It's the 90%. So retention and view time is key. As short as possible. Number eight. Number eight. Do I have eight or nine of these? I can't remember if I said up front if I have eight or nine, I have nine. So I think I said up front that I have eight hacks for 20, 26. I have nine. I took nine. I took nine. Okay. Number eight is if you are, if you have a lead magnet, like a local guide or a seller guide or a neighborhood guide or any of these guides that you're creating as a lead magnet, where people trade you their email address to get the guide or to get the thing. Print it out. Print out the thing. Because when you think about it, if you can see that something is tangible, when you see it with your eyes, you're like, oh cool, that's a real thing. Instead of just, hey, I have this guide, I'll send it to you and you hope it's real. It's like this, okay, this theoretical neighborhood guide, this theoretical, you know, the whatever. So print out the guide or at a minimum, just take, take the time to do a, a cover for it in Canva or whatever, print that out, get some other papers and just show it so that you, you have something visible and tangible and actual that you can show people for the guide. Take a picture of it, show it, hold it up as you're saying, hey, DM me the word, the word home and I'll send you this guide. Let them actually see the physical guide. Your, your conversion on that will go through the roof if you can show the guide. So print out those lead magnets and number nine, mix the types of content that you do. Entertaining stuff. And by the way, if you're just doing educational stuff, there has to be entertainment in it. There. Ha. Shout out to Bam and Eric, the broke agent. He's done a ton of content about this recently. But he, he says, and he believes just entertaining stuff is kind of dead. And I, I agree. You have to end. What does he call it? Edutainment. You have to educate while entertaining. So if you're going to be educational, it better be interesting and entertaining. So entertaining content, green screen stuff, put some personality into it, but give your opinion. Give your two cents on whatever it is behind you on the green screen memes. If you have a funny meme about the industry or about this, that, or about your, your local area or about the potholes in the middle of Main street in downtown or whatever, share that stuff because other people in your area will relate to it. Blind ranking videos where like, hey, I'm going to blind rank you just have somebody off camera throw you some stuff and you rank them. You could do that. I've done a bunch of those on my Instagram recently. Whiteboard reveals where you, you have a list of five things or whatever. You, you have a tape or a piece of paper over them and you just reveal them one by one. Here's what's cool about the reveals, people. As long as you show the whiteboard or the blackboard, whatever, behind you, people are wondering what's. What's. What is that? So just the visual of the stuff covered up on the whiteboard is a hook because it makes people curious. I wonder what's under there. I wonder what those five tips for buying my first investment property are. And then they stick around because they're like, I wonder what she's going to pull off. So mix up your content. Try different things. If you see myself or any other creator do something and you're like, you know what, that's cool. I'm going to do my own version of it for my, for my audience. Do it. By the way, that's all any of us do. That's all I ever do, is I take inspiration and ideas from others. Maybe it's bits and pieces here or there, or maybe it's an entire concept and I just make it relevant for you guys, for my audience. So try out different types of content and have some fun with it. Have some fun with creating content. Because if you're not having fun with it, if you're not enjoying it, people can tell people can tell that you're bored with it. And if you're putting out boring shit that bores you, that's a problem. So there you go. Now, last week I committed to to doing for the I think it's a third year in the row, I committed to doing one YouTube video a week over on the Massive Agent channel. And I'm proud to admit that the first one is already up. The first weekly video is already up where I break down a simple hack for 10 x ing your Instagram story views quickly. If you want to know how to 10x your story views, I dive deeper than I did in this. In this episode. Much deeper. I give you a few more put more meat on the bone. Give you a few more ways to do it. Super, super powerful. If you want to 10 extra story views, go over to the Massive Agent YouTube channel and check that out. And I will have a new video on YouTube every week that is highly freaking tactical in addition to the podcast. So thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. I will see you guys next week. Episode 421. Episode 420 is in the books and I didn't even get the munchies. Take care.