5 Secrets To Turn Your Instagram Profile Into A Listing Machine

Larry White: Trent Stonehouse, a friend, a mentor, especially on the social media side of things, is back for his third time at this point. When we had Trent on the first time, everybody was like, oh my gosh, when can we get him back on, right? Like he absolutely crushed it. I think we were talking about how to build your Google profile, like how to get the most exposure on it. And then we came back. So look, Trent has over a decade of experience on the social media and SEO side of things.

Larry White: This guy has built a company that is endorsed by Tom Ferry, which is not an easy feat to do. If you want to partner with Tom Ferry, you have to go through about ten people before you ever talk to Tom Ferry, wait in lines around the building and so on. It is not an easy process to get up there on stage, to get on TV and stuff like that. But he has done that. Trent, what’s going on, my man?

Trent: Hey, thanks so much for having me, Larry. I’m excited to be here, man. Always a great crowd, a great time. And it just keeps getting better, right? We keep bringing in more talented agents, and that’s the beautiful part of this community — the better people we bring in, it elevates everybody.

Larry White: I appreciate all of you guys being here tuning in. How are we going to add value to everybody here today, my friend? What are we going to be talking about?

Trent: Every time I come here, Larry, I want to get everyone so much material that they can walk away with and apply instantly. Today we’re going to be talking about Instagram and how to really optimize it. The title of the talk is how to turn that Instagram into a listing machine. I’m going to give you exactly the things you need to do and apply to your Instagram account, and everything is something you can take action on today by yourself. It’s going to be a lot of material — grab a pencil, get something to take notes on, get your phone ready to hit screenshots. There’s going to be some of that, and just pay attention because there’s going to be a lot being thrown at you.

Larry White: Go get after it, buddy. You have the ability to share your screen — whenever you’re ready, let’s dig in.

Trent: Let’s rock and roll. I don’t know if anyone’s been messing around with Claude Code, but I am very addicted to this thing, and this will be the first time I’m presenting with it. Trent and I were actually talking about this this morning — he’s having a hard time sleeping because he can’t get off Claude Code at this point in time. It’s true. I’m not sleeping much because of this, and I’m just having so much fun with it. There’s so much you can do with it, and presentations are just the tip of the iceberg, but this whole deck was built with code.

Trent: So this is my five secrets for turning Instagram profiles into a listing machine. Larry, if you see any questions come in and want to stop me and jump in, that’d be great.

Trent: In the next 60 minutes, I’m going to give you the secrets that most realtors are struggling with that they don’t actually find out. Typically someone that’s been a marketer before would know these things. So I’m not going to be surprised if some of you really know some of this. But I really follow Instagram. The five things we’re going to cover — you can write these down — are profile optimization, algorithm mastery, content that converts, paid boost strategy, and a posting rhythm. I’ve got multiple free gifts in this one. Usually I do one or two; I’ve got several. You’re going to have to stick around the whole time to actually get those, okay?

Trent: I want to take you to what I’m calling the pain island. A lot of realtors stay here. They go on vacation here. They think they’re going on an awesome cruise and then they get stuck and stranded. You’re paying a $500-a-month agency — maybe even more — to that nephew or cousin saying they could hook you up and do a lot of great marketing for you, and then nothing happens. You’re still spending 10 hours a week on your socials trying to create content. You’re struggling with stale growth, no new followers, no new deals. A lot of realtors take that cruise ship and get stranded there. My whole goal right now — especially for Instagram — is to get you off that island. If you guys like what you’re seeing, Larry can always bring me back and we can talk about YouTube and other platforms too. But today it’s really about Instagram.

Trent: Quick bonus while we’re here. I use a tool called Wispr Flow. It’s such a good tool — go ahead and write that down. Wispr Flow is a huge time saver. You can talk to your computer like you’re Iron Man talking to Jarvis and you don’t have to type anymore. It’s nothing like Siri — it’s a thousand times better than Siri. You can even download Wispr Flow on your phone to replace Siri — you can literally whisper to it and it picks up everything. So pro tip number one, guys: go check out Wispr Flow.

Trent: Now the pleasure island. I want to take you to where the people I’ve worked with have achieved. Gladys Park — in her first month of really working with her she was able to do about $835,000 in sales. That is $22,000 in commissions. Amy Beckum became number one in her local market after about three months. And Jennifer at least — we got her about a 300% phone-call increase from a pipeline she was already using, which was Google and socials. So this is one element of it, and that’s what we’re showing you here.

Trent: Quick story. In 2012, this was me. I was a YouTuber. I started on my channel like a lot of other people, not really clear directions or anything, but I was able to build up about 30,000 subscribers and 6 million views, and over 20,000 followers across my socials. I got picked up by BBTV, a big talent agency located in Vancouver, Canada — where I’m actually from — with big artists signed to them. I had that label deal and it was a great experience. However, I did eventually lose the channel, and it forced me to pick a new direction with my life. From 2016 onward, I’ve really been just dialing in and helping small business owners build their socials and channels, helping them crack that system, and it’s been mostly dialed in for realtors for the last five or six years.

Trent: Today I have well over 1,000 realtors served — closer to 2,000 — over 800 just last year alone. We’re rated 4.9 on Trustpilot, ranked number one for video editing and number one for SEO in North America. We’re an official vendor sponsor partner of Tom Ferry, as well as trusted by people like Club Wealth, Glover U, Lab Coat Agents and Build Pipes — these are organizations we’re associated with. So this is something I truly believe in: every realtor deserves to own your social media. A lot of people rent it because they entirely rely on someone else, and that someone else doesn’t care. The idea here is when they’re gone, that’s it — you don’t have the resources or tools to continue. That’s exactly what I’m trying to eliminate. I’m trying to give you everything you’d need to do it.

Trent: There are some myths. Some of you will resonate with this. Common ones I see: “I don’t know what hashtags I should be using to get reach.” Look — keywords replace them in 2026. So that’s good news. If you’re familiar with Google and your Google business profile, you already know how to rank that because it’s all about keywords — you’re ahead of the game. Hashtags don’t really matter. Get that out of your head.

Trent: Next: you don’t need to go viral to get deals. I would rather see you get a thousand local views, because if you do that, that will beat one million random TikTok views all day. It doesn’t matter — if you’re the local celebrity of your community, you win, you win all day. And then volume alone wins. A lot of people have this conception: “I just have to put out so much content, I can’t keep up.” There is truth that volume helps. We’ll discuss that at the end. However, if you learn the algorithm, you can manipulate it and do really, really well without having to do so much volume.

Trent: Now the five secrets again — profile optimization (the discovery engine), algorithm mastery (what Mosseri actually rewards), content that converts (two formats and the two jobs they do), paid boost strategy, and posting rhythm.

Trent: Profile optimization. I took one of my friends here — I hope she’s okay with it — and I Photoshopped what an optimized profile would look like. She’s a realtor: ‘dog lover, mom, world traveler, realtor.’ If you look at the difference at first glance — we’re going to dive into it — it’s significant. She has a lot of work to do. We’ve got to dial it in because now it’s about how many keywords you have in your profile.

Trent: First: your username. This is something all of you should be doing right after this; it won’t take you long. Your username should be your full name. I see this wrong all day. Your name field — right next to it — is the searchable layer. That’s what Instagram picks up and reads. That’s also what Google looks at because Instagram is indexed. So you have to stack keywords there — ideally “realtor” and the city you service. We want that picked up because we’re not trying to go national or international — we’re going real local. We want the local eyeballs. We’re going to own that city. Put your city in there — the main one, preferably the one that aligns with your Google profile. When you set up your Google profile, you have to give it an address. Whatever city is associated with that address should align. Make it just flow. Stop me with questions, because this is very important.

Trent: Some of you have a real estate agent label turned on. Turn that off. You can have a category, but click the hide option. You should hide it. Why? Because it gives you an extra line to write on. The whole bio body is also searchable — it’s also somewhere where you need to put keywords.

Trent: In your bio, very important: three lines. Line one: what you do. “New construction sales and real estate investments” — that’s a strong niche and strong keywords. Line two: who you help. “I help young families create wealth.” Great keywords. Everything now with AI is wild. Whatever you say and put out there is now picked up. People used to say about the internet, “whatever you put out there stays forever.” Now it really, really does. That’s how the algorithms work.

Larry White: Real quick — someone’s asking about putting “realtor” in there. Are you saying don’t use realtor, or put a category but turn it off?

Trent: There are categories and ‘realtor’ isn’t one of them, but ‘real estate agent’ is. You want a category selected; if you don’t, select one — then hide it. There’s a hide option, because you want more room to write in your bio.

Larry White: Yeah — you’ve got to do what applies to your local rules and regulations, too. If a board contacts you saying you have to change ‘realtor’ to ‘real estate agent,’ just change it. Get everything else done, and we can go back to legal and find out what we can use.

Trent: Right — there are other words for realtor: real estate agent, agent, anything like that. We want signal words that are being searched.

Trent: Line one: what you do. Line two: who you help. If you’re like ‘I help everyone’ — let’s get niche. Think about your ideal client. That’s who you help. Line three: why should they trust you? Something you’ve achieved. 200 homes sold. A top-block sales award. Some sort of proof you’re legit. 50 Google reviews. Resident for 50 years — you know the area. You need proof you’re legit.

Trent: Final line: end with a call to action. But this is where I’m going to challenge some of you. I don’t like ‘visit my website.’ Preferably you download something called ManyChat. ManyChat is about $20 a month, highly recommend it. You can automate your messages so when someone follows you, they instantly get a message saying ‘hey, thanks so much for the follow.’ You can have it so when someone DMs a keyword — like ‘wealth’ — on your story or post, you instantly send them a resource. It’s a Meta product, so you don’t have to worry about breaking any rules. Highly check out ManyChat.

Larry White: Question coming in: if your current IG profile doesn’t have your last name?

Trent: You don’t have to start a new one — you can edit it. And if you’re struggling to change your username, just get your name in there — your first name. We just want it tied to you. If you can’t fit your full name in the name field, prioritize keywords like ‘real estate agent, realtor, city.’ Cut back where you have to. The name field is the searchable area.

Larry White: Kathy is asking — her profile is ‘Kathy Ryan home group.’ Should it just be ‘Kathy Ryan’?

Trent: She can keep ‘Kathy Ryan home group’ in her username. The username isn’t the discoverable part anyway. The name field is what matters.

Trent: Secret two: algorithm mastery. Adam Mosseri at Instagram has said this before — these are the metrics that matter most. Almost like a competition: the more of these you get, the higher it gets ranked, and the more they share it. Shares are most important — shares through DMs too. Then saves. Then comments. Then likes. Likes and comments — where so many realtors obsess — are actually less important than saves and shares. Followers don’t matter as much. Never buy followers — that will ruin everything on your account.

Trent: Larry — you have a powerful community here. I’d recommend you all discuss this at a later time, but it’s called engagement pods, or Instagram pods. Everyone has to participate; if you don’t, you’re out. These can fall apart fast if people don’t participate. But what you can do is on Telegram or somewhere similar: share your video for that day into the group; everyone shares it into a DM, everyone saves it. You get those metrics moving on your post, which helps it move within the algorithm. A little hack for you all — if you’ve got a good community, this is a solid one.

Larry White: I’m thinking the apprentice-program accountability call — 25 to 30 of us every morning — could be a good place to start. We’ll talk about that next week.

Trent: Secret two continued. I have a setting that increases engagement 20–40% with a single toggle, and once you turn it on you don’t have to do it again. This is Adam Mosseri talking about it: when you upload a Reel, you have an option to turn on translations. You pick what languages — just use all of them — and Instagram will translate what you’re saying, create new audio that sounds like you speaking in that language, and make your lips look like you’re actually speaking those words. So it sounds and looks like you’re speaking Hindi, Portuguese, Spanish or Tamil. Their internal studies have shown engagement increases 20–40%.

Trent: Steps: take some screenshots. Most of these settings you can only turn on from your phone. Open Instagram, act like you’re going to post a Reel — lift your phone, talk to it. Click ‘more options’ at the bottom. Go to Accessibility and Translations. Scroll down and turn on Translate Reel. Then click ‘modify your settings’ and turn on all nine languages — the preset is only about four. Make sure you include lip-syncing. Once you turn that on, you shouldn’t have to turn it on again for any other Reel.

Trent: Algorithm mastery recap: you know about pods, you know what the most important types of engagement are, and you have a setting that alone makes a big impact.

Trent: Secret three: content that converts. Two formats, two different jobs. Reels and carousels are for reach. Fun fact: as of 2026, carousels are out-performing Reels. So you still want to do Reels, but carousels are leading. And some of you prefer photos — you’re in business, no excuses. Photos are also out-performing for some accounts.

Trent: Reach is how you get discovered by strangers who should be your clients — especially when you’ve optimized your profile. Trust is through stories. A lot of people think their story is for attracting clients with calls to action — that’s not what you should be using stories for. You should use them to stay top of mind and strengthen relationships. They deepen connections. Those aren’t my words — they’re straight from Adam Mosseri.

Trent: When you make a Reel or carousel, what’s the marketing strategy? You actually just need a hook. That’s it. Five things you can do to increase your reach: number one, you need a hook. Give me a reason to keep watching the first three seconds, so I don’t keep scrolling. You need it for carousels. You need it for Reels. You’ve heard it time and again — why aren’t you doing it?

Trent: And stories. The best way to maximize reach is to post Reels or carousels to feed. But stories are an important way of engaging accounts that already follow you. They’re not going to help you get new followers — they don’t help you reach accounts that don’t follow you yet — but they deepen your connection with people who already follow you. Mosseri’s data backs this up: creators who post more stories see lasting follower growth. Stories are for you to be personal there. It’s not for resharing your videos. I want you raw, authentic. As a realtor, you know this already — it’s a relationship game. You’re not trying to dance on TikTok. You signed up to own the local market as the trusted realtor of your community.

Trent: Bonus prompt — take a photo of this. Here’s the hook prompt. I’m telling you to use Claude. It’s superior in every single way for writing. Fill in the green parts: ‘I’m a realtor who helps [ideal avatar]. Their dream result is X. What they don’t want is Y. I’m making a video on [topic]. Take this topic and give me three hooks with three variations for each, with some context around the hook. One negative hook (‘never do this,’ ‘stop doing this’), one ‘is it possible to’ hook, and one desire hook (‘if you want X, follow these steps’).’ Plug it in and you get nine or ten solid hooks tied to your topic and ideal avatar in ten seconds. You don’t need to know your client avatar yet — write it down. You should understand your ideal person: how much they make, what they look like, where they work.

Trent: And you don’t have to get every single word right — you can stumble in your videos. There’s a movement toward more authentic content anyway. Pull up the camera, hit record, use hooks. You can also take these hooks and put them in carousels.

Larry White: Question — in terms of reach: Reels vs. posts vs. stories. Which has more reach? I’ve mostly been doing posts. Should I be doing more stories? How do you categorize posts?

Trent: Posts, Reels and stories are all different formats. Reels and carousels are for reach — that’s the basis for getting discovered. As of 2026, carousels are out-performing Reels. Stories are for deepening connection day-to-day: life at the office, family, the open house, the closing. Show people the life there — give them a window into you.

Larry White: Should you be sharing your Reels and posts to your stories? Does that help?

Trent: Absolutely — it doesn’t hurt. Adam Mosseri has a video where he talks about this. You can share Reels to stories — you will get more engagement that way. However, he encourages stories to be used for engagement because the data shows that’s how you get more lasting followers. Both are true: share to stories, but don’t neglect raw, authentic, personal content there.

Larry White: If we were to share a regular post or Reel to a story — with a hook overlaid, like ‘guys, the five things you have to do to optimize your IG’ — does that make sense?

Trent: 100%. As Mosseri said, you can share Reels and posts to stories and a hook on top of that is great. Just don’t forget to balance it with personal life on stories — you’ll see the overall benefit when you use stories that way.

Trent: Going viral is a lottery. Boosting is a system. Secret four: paid boost strategy. You’ll hear from Meta-ads experts — ‘never boost, run ad campaigns instead.’ I agree with them. However, to do that you need technical skill, and I don’t expect you to learn how to be a Meta-ads expert. So I’m going to tell you how to do it really, really easy. Is it 100% the best way? No. But it’s effective. You don’t need a million views from strangers. You need a thousand from people within five miles. Lots of people are like ‘we’ll go 15, 20.’ Dial it in. Own the local market. Own it. You’re not Pitbull — calm down. We’re going local.

Trent: Exact boost settings — I see people mess this up all the time. Goal: visit your profile. When you go to your video, Reel or carousel, hit the boost button. You’ll see options. Don’t pick ‘more engagement,’ don’t pick ‘people going to your website.’ Pick ‘visit your profile.’ What we’re actually setting up — marketers will call this a follower campaign — is a campaign whose goal is followers from locals. So if you ever hear ‘follower campaign,’ this is it.

Trent: Number two: create your own audience. Don’t use Advantage+ — build your own. Number three: target a five-mile radius. Don’t type in cities. Click ‘local’ and turn on location — it’ll ask if it can track you, then it will look at where you are and put a five-mile ring around you. It’ll default to about 15 miles — dial that down to 5. Then paste in the Gemini keyword stack — we’ll talk about that. Number four: duration and budget. Run it for seven days at a time, one post a week if you can. Spend $20 a day ideally. If $20 is steep, do $10 a day. If you’re a smoker, that’s less than a pack of cigarettes — is your business worth a pack of cigarettes? Hell yeah. Stop smoking and boost your Reels more.

Trent: Here’s the prompt you give Gemini. Contrary to popular belief, ChatGPT is not your answer to life. There are other AIs you should be using. Gemini is plugged in directly to Google. Google is still the number-one search engine — superior to all AIs — with 73%+ of daily search traffic and 8.6 billion searches per day. Use Gemini because it has the data. Prompt: ‘Give me 25 interest keywords a homeowner in [city] considering selling in the next 12 months is most likely to follow. Mix lifestyle, local and finance categories.’ It’ll give you 25 interest keywords. When you set up your targeting in your five-mile radius, you can target interests — and now you have them.

Larry White: Quick heads-up — we have about eight minutes left and 13 slides. I’ve got a hard stop. You guys can keep running, but I have to drop. Trent, this is huge — these are pro tips you don’t learn without years of experience and talking to Google and Instagram. Run it however you want.

Trent: I’m going to speed it up. Secret number five: the three pillars of a $100,000 GCI feed. Lock in. Pillars that repeat daily — no guesswork, no blank feed. Number one: connection. Value. Social proof. Connection: that’s you, your life, your community. Value: teaching, market updates, neighborhoods, schools. Social proof: wins, testimonials, closings. Some of you are like ‘I don’t like flexing.’ Start flexing.

Trent: These prompts and the schedule are part of the multiple gifts I’m giving you. Take them — you’ll forget about them otherwise. If you really want to go hard, this is how much content you make every day. But you don’t have to do every day — once a day for a video or carousel and a story will suffice as long as you’re following all the algorithm stuff I’ve told you.

Trent: Bonus I forgot to cover earlier: add keywords into your descriptions. Whenever you post, try to add keywords because that helps your content be discovered. Hashtags aren’t really a thing anymore — it’s about what you say in your description. Whatever keywords are relevant, put them in the description of your specific video, carousel or post. Instagram and AI will pick up on it.

Trent: Mondays we hit social proof: people just finished the weekend, everyone’s a little lazy — hit them with flexing, with wins. Then we hit value. And then stories — four stories a day, easy because you’re going about your day anyway. I won’t go through every day, but it’s a lot of content, and you really need to start putting it out there. Notice I only put two calls to action a week — you don’t want to call to action every day or people feel like you’re selling them 24/7. And see what color shines the most: it’s purple — connection content. That’s your job as a realtor: connect with people.

[Replay continues with the Rising Star offer and a live Q&A on AI headshots, video editing turnaround, and gift-page setup. Watch the full session above for those segments.]