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Instagram, which has become the preferred social-media tool for many New York residential real-estate brokers, is beginning to show up more in the commercial real-estate brokerage business as well.

Commercial firms and brokers remain much heavier users of Twitter and LinkedIn for such things as leads, contacts and recruiting. But the largest firms—including CBRE Group Inc.,JLL and Cushman & Wakefield—increasingly are using photography-intensive Instagram for branding purposes.

CBRE, for example, relaunched its Instagram site last year, and today has more than 4,500 followers. Its recent offerings include photos of world capitals, employees, inspirational messages and historical shots of people like Edward S. Gordon, founder of the eponymous firm that eventually became absorbed into CBRE’s New York office.

JLL, which had been focusing on Twitter, LinkedIn and SlideShare, recently started experimenting with Instagram as a way of marketing listings, according to Paige Steers, a JLL spokeswoman.

“You can tell a good story with a visual,” she said. “If I’m selling a building or leasing space and I have a beautiful photo that says it’s the first time on the market and it’s eye-catching, it will be shared and it will be spotted.”

Meanwhile, some brokers who handle both commercial and residential property are applying some of the Instagram tricks they’ve learned to both types of real estate. For example, Eric Rohe, an active Instagram user at Citi Habitats, said he used it recently to market a small retail space in the East Village and quickly got a half dozen responses.

“I figured that whoever was going to take the space was young and hip,” he said. “I needed to reach out to that sphere of influence.”

Launched in 2010 and acquired by Facebook in 2012, Instagram was the first major social-media service focused on sharing photographs. It soon became a hit with residential brokers to list properties for sale and rent.

Apartments and houses on Instagram also quickly became eye-candy for people who like to look at designs, decorations and views owned by others. “Real estate is a voyeur’s paradise,” said Leonard Steinberg, president of Compass, a technology-fueled real-estate brokerage based in New York. He has more than 28,000 Instagram followers.

Residential brokers who are active on Instagram also use Twitter, Facebook and other websites. But most say Instagram is the best for their business because of its ease of use, focus on the visual, and popularity in the residential-property world.

“I always go with Instagram first,” said Fredrik Eklund, a high-level residential broker at Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

Some residential brokers have successfully used Instagram to combine their personal and professional lives. Consider Mr. Eklund, who also is a former pornographic actor and star of the Bravo show “Million Dollar Listing New York.” He has attracted 319,000 Instagram followers by interspersing photos of his listings with friends, family and vacation highlights.

“The company wanted us to split our professional profile with our personal profile because, God forbid, kissing someone is not something that our real-estate clients wanted to see,” he said. “I said no.”

Generally, commercial brokers are staid compared with their residential counterparts. Some, like Jeffrey Roseman, of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, have developed strong followings on Twitter, which they use to get their deals in front of decision makers. “It’s a great way to send a message to people we can’t reach in other way,” Mr. Roseman said.

But few have personally used Instagram as a marketing tool and say it’s unlikely it will ever reach the kind of use seen in the residential world. “Residential is more visual than commercial,” Mr. Roseman said.

Instagram, rather, is gaining traction in commercial real estate more on the corporate level. CBRE’s new Instagram focuses on its use for branding beyond the narrow world of commercial real estate. “We’re not using it as a selling tool,” said Paul Suchman, CBRE’s chief marketing officer.

He added: “Once we gave it permission to be a point of elasticity for the brand, creativity began to flow.”

Cushman & Wakefield’s Instagram account promotes the firm’s brand through photos of employees doing such things as attending corporate events or volunteering for charity work.

JLL marketing executives say that, as they’ve ramped up use of Instagram over the past year, they’ve tried to differentiate it from Twitter and LinkedIn, which are used more to promote company deals, announcements and research.

“We highlighted so many other things on other platforms,” said company spokeswoman Cara Chodash. “We took [Instagram] and just focused on our people.”