Ultimate Guide to Instagram for Architects

There’s no doubt these days that Instagram has moved on from a tool just for personal use to one that businesses have managed to harness its potential to help attract potential clients and market their products and services, and architecture is no exception.

Instagram for architects is important for many different reasons, namely due to the fact that it allows them to showcase their work to a wide audience, connect with potential clients, and stay up-to-date on industry developments and trends. It serves as an important platform to communicate their ideas and engage with the public, allowing them to share more about how they work, their inspirations and can serve as an important tool to strengthen their marketing and branding efforts.

This guide will go into exactly how Instagram for architecture can be harnessed to its fullest potential, firstly going over the mistakes that architects often make with Instagram, how to take top quality photos, and our personal tips on how to maximize your presence/effectiveness on Instagram as an architect. Don’t forget to check out our blog on the best real estate marketing tips for additional insights.

Instagram Strategy for Architects – 5 Most Common Mistakes

1. Not Posting Regularly Enough

To excel in Instagram marketing as an architect, you want to win over Instagram’s algorithm, and one of the keys to doing so is by posting regularly. The main reason for this is that the higher number of posts you create, the more likes you will likely receive (if you’re not then you need to look at the quality of your posts), meaning that Instagram will show your profile/posts to more of your followers, and maximize your chances of getting featured in the top posts sections for any architecture hashtags your targeting. Even if you have 10,000 followers, this doesn’t automatically mean that all of them will see your posts, so you want to maximize the chances of this by posting on a regular basis.

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2. Being Lazy with Descriptions

It’s easy to assume that putting the effort into writing a decent description is a waste of time, but now that we understand the importance of engagement with followers is a key to getting more visibility, writing decent descriptions seems more important than initially thought. Writing a decent description can provide context around a project or image, can provide opportunities to include keywords & hashtag and allows you the chance to write in a way that encourages followers to comment and like your post, thus increasing engagement and therefore the visibility of your content.

3. Worried that you don’t have enough content

One of your initial thoughts when looking at this post was thinking that this all sounds great, but I don’t actually have enough content to post on a regular basis. It’s common belief to think that in order to have a high quality instagram profile, you need to have carried out 100’s of projects. Whilst there’s no doubt that the more projects, the better, you can still post regular content with the same projects and have a great profile. Taking photos of parts of a project that you would typically miss (e.g staircases, hallways and other intricacies) can be a nice way of spicing up your instagram profile. Secondly, you can use existing photos for multiple posts by zooming in and cropping out parts – an easy way to create more content for your instagram. Lastly, you can share your inspirations by sharing information about other people’s projects (just make sure to make it clear that it isn’t your work), as well as using architecture hashtags for instagram.

4. Not using Hashtags for Architecture

There’s no doubt that doing hashtag research isn’t the most fulfilling task in the world, but despite this, it does actually make a big difference when it comes to the visibility of your posts. Firstly, by adding proper hashtags to your post, you have a decent chance of someone finding your post when they search for a particular hashtag, thus increasing your visibility to users who could be interested in your work. Moreover, Instagram’s algorithm takes architect hashtags into account when it comes to showing users posts in the explore page, meaning that with the right architecture photography hashtags your post can appear in this page thus connecting you with new users.

5. Not Engaging with your Followers in Any way

Engagement, engagement, engagement. You can’t reiterate how important this is for an Instagram strategy for Architects. Luckily there are several ways you can do this (some more obvious than others) and we’ll go over this later on in this guide. Even if you have the best image in the world, if you fail to connect with your followers then you’re massively limiting yourself. If there’s one thing to take from this post, it’s that proper engagement makes a huge difference when it comes to maximizing the success of your Instagram strategy as an architect.

Architecture Photography Tips – How to Take Great Photos

Despite the importance of other factors mentioned above, none of this has much point if the quality of your images isn’t up to scratch, meaning that making sure your content is visually striking is a must. As an architect there’s a good chance that you’re either using 3d renderings (more on that later) or photos to showcase your work, and if you’re using the latter then these architecture photography tips below will help you increase the visual impact of your photos:

1. Make Sure the Lighting is Right

Light plays a crucial role in architectural photography, and getting this right can be the difference between a fantastic photo and a forgettable one. To capture the perfect shot, it’s important to find the right light for your particular photo, meaning that factors such as choosing the right angle and making sure the sun is in the right position is also important.

2. Have Pictures at Different times of Day/Different Weather Conditions

Elaborating on the point raised earlier that you can use the same project to get more content for your Instagram, taking pictures of the same project at different times of the day and in different weather types can help solve this problem. When people think of taking photos at different times of the day, sunset shots are the most obvious, and are a nice choice, but it’s also worth trying out different times such as sunrise, early morning and mid-afternoon and to also get photos in more overcast/wintery conditions to add atmosphere to your photos and create a contrast from those sunny blue sky shots.

3. Choose the Right Angle

It’s great to get photos of a project from different angles as it gives you extra content to post on your Instagram. That being said, some thought needs to be taken into this as just randomly taking photos of a project at different angles isn’t quite going to cut it. It’s easy to focus on eye-level shots, but looking up at a building, or looking down on it can portray the project in a different light and help showcase features that would be otherwise difficult to notice at eye level. Also it’s tempting to just focus on the front of the building, but be more creative and get some shots of the side/rear, and focus on intricacies such as staircases, ceilings etc. For an introductory guide to different camera angles, we recommend this post.

4. Use Post-Processing tools

The thought of learning to use editing software may seem daunting at first and just for pro photo editors, but the truth is that it’s actually not that difficult to learn the fundamentals and a few simple touches can make a photo look significantly better. The two main tools used for editing are Photoshop and Lightroom, and both of these are great for architecture, and although there’s no doubt that these pieces of software are complex and take time and skill to master, with a small about of time invested into learning the basic, you’ll already see significant improvements to your photos. Download the software, watch a few tutorial videos and play around with a few photos, and you’ll see exactly why.

5. Get the Right Equipment

You can be a great photographer but without the right equipment you’re going to struggle to get the best results. Yes, you can take decent photos with a high quality iphone camera, but professional equipment is on a completely different level, and allows for much more options.

Below are few things that can help you out significantly:

Tilt-Shift Lens -This can help correct perspective of a photo and can also keep consecutive lines stay straight without much distortion. To get a visual idea of this, check out this video.

Tripod – You might have the steadiest hand in the world but having an actual tripod allows photos to be taken with small apertures and little ISO sensitivity, allowing for a super crisp photo.

Full Frame Camera – This allows for the creation of images that have a range of detail between highlight and shadows, which allow for higher quality photos and reduce the amount of time needed to be spent in post-production

Game-Changing Tips for Instagram in Architecture

Ok so now you have great photos, it’s time to make use of them so that you can avoid the mistakes mentioned previously and get great content. Here are 8 tips to follow:

1. Show Behind the Scenes

As a successful architect, you can be sure that there are others who aspire to be like you, and want to learn how to replicate your success. With this in mind, showing them what goes on behind the scenes can inspire your users and offer them useful and practical advice which will make them identify even more with your profile. Give them a sneak peak of your design creation, give them a tour of sites, and show them why you choose a particular solution over others. Showing ongoing projects can be another nice idea, as you can keep users in the loop of your projects, right from the start to finish, thus peaking their interest.

2. Proper Engagement with Users

Bearing in mind the importance of engagement when it comes to improving your instagram there are a few steps we can take:

Respond to Comment and Messages – doing this shows that you value your user’s time and opinions and will thus encourage them to interact even more with your profile, recommend you to other people and even potentially work with you.

Giveaways and Contests – This is a great way to get more engagement and new followers. See here for a complete guide on how to do this.

Use Stories – As well as showing behind the scenes and reposting content you’ve shared on your feed, Instagram stories can be a creative way to connect with followers in an interactive way. You can use polls, quizzes, ask questions and ask for users’ opinions which is a surefire way of getting users to engage with you and your brand.

Post Consistently – There’s no need to go into too much detail here as we went over this in detail at the beginning of the post. Just see this as a reminder of how important posting on a regular basis is, both on your feed and stories.

Collaborate with other accounts – Reach out to other accounts and businesses in your niche and brainstorm on different ideas to connect with followers.

Instagram Live – Another great way of engaging with followers, this allows you to create a real-time broadcast which you can use to share more about your design process, show behind the scenes and carry out Q&A sessions.

3. Post at the Right Time

Another factor that will play an important role when it comes to visibility of your posts is the times you decide to publish. You want to make sure that you publish at a time when there’s a good chance that your users will be active on Instagram and thus engage with your content. For stories, posting at users’ lunchtime during the week is a good move as this is likely a time that users are browsing on Instagram.

As for actual posts, you may see articles online vehemently stating that a certain time is the best to post on Instagram, but the truth is that this depends on the industry and the behavior of your audience. The only real way to know for sure is by experimenting with different times and seeing which ones get the most engagement compared to others. Another smart move is to closely follow your top performing competitors and see what times they are most successful at.

4. Use Hashtags for Architecture

Finding the right hashtags for architecture can be a daunting task, but is one that makes a big difference. A good way to start with this is to again, look at your competitors who are performing best and see which hashtags are using. Then once you’ve got your initial group of hashtags, it’s time to dig a little deeper to figure out which ones are the most suitable. You can do this manually, by individually typing a hashtag for architecture into the search bar, seeing which ones perform best and then finding even more hashtags from the posts on which these keywords are successful. If time is an issue, then an even more effective way of doing this is by using a tool such as All-Hashtag or Ritetag, which help find new keywords that are suitable and effective for your niche.

5. Streamline the Process as much as possible

If you’re an architect trying to create a successful business, then there’s no doubt that there are more effective ways of dedicating your time than spending it creating social media posts and carrying out hashtag research. That being said, it’s important for you to gain a decent grasp on how Instagram for architecture works, so that then you can successfully hire someone else to take care of the process successfully. Getting someone who takes care of your marketing sounds like the most obvious solution, whether this person is full time or is outsourced, and this can be a great solution, especially if that person has a creative side and can find innovative ways of creating content for both stories and your feed. As well as this, there are also many things you can do to automate the process. Tools such as Hootsuite allow you to essentially automate posts and stories so that you can do everything at once, for posts to be regularly published over a certain period of time.

6. Don’t put all your Focus on Instagram

As seen in this post, Instagram for architects is a fantastic tool for enhancing your brand, getting more visibility and attracting new clients but it isn’t the be all and end all of Architecture marketing. As well as using other social media platforms besides Instagram, it’s also important to try out other methods of marketing, such as SEO, expanding your professional network and word of mouth so that you can expand your reach and clientele.

7. Enhance your look with CGI Renders

Photos are a great way of showcasing your projects, but problems arise when you want to publish a project but it isn’t ready yet. In this case, using 3d renderings is a brilliant tool, and in many cases, these can actually look better than photos. Moreover, the same principles apply to renderings as to photos in the sense that you can use close ups. Bring those creative projects to life as well.

Our Instagram Strategy for Architects Conclusion

Implementing a strong Instagram strategy for architects is crucial for success in today’s digital age. Remember that engagement should be your primary focus when posting content, as it plays a vital role in improving your Instagram game. Ensuring the quality of your visual content, whether it be through captivating photos or impressive CGI renders, is essential for making a lasting impact on your audience.
Don’t underestimate the power of creativity in your content creation. You don’t need an extensive portfolio to achieve success on Instagram. By following the tips mentioned in this post and leveraging the potential of reusing old content and finding innovative ways to create new content, you can maintain an engaging presence without solely relying on new projects.
For architects looking to boost their online presence, mastering the Instagram strategy for architects is a must. Additionally, interior designers can also benefit from incorporating social media into their marketing efforts. To explore more insights and strategies on social media for interior designers, be sure to check out our dedicated blog. Elevate your architectural or interior design brand’s visibility and connect with your target audience effectively through a well-crafted social media strategy.

Author – Eddie, an experienced Sales & Marketing professional, joined NoTriangle in 2018 and has been an invaluable asset to the company’s growth. With his expertise in real estate marketing and as a communication specialist in the 3D Industry, Eddie has a keen interest in sharing his knowledge through writing, offering valuable insights and practical advice to readers.