By Haley Ingram, Founder and CEO of Coffee and Contracts
If you want to know which post is going to perform, look for the one you're hesitating on. In my experience that's usually the one that ends up doing the best.
We get to help more than 6,000 agents with their content, so we see up close what actually works.
The two examples agents keep sending me
Lisa DuBois is an agent in Northern Virginia who hides in her listings. She films herself tucked into closets and crawl spaces, ASMR style, showing you the best hide and seek spots in the house. One of those has done 14 million views.
Breanna Banaciski in Tampa went all the way into comedy with her home tours. It's snarky in a way real estate purists probably wince at, and it's worked for her career in a way a well-behaved post never could, because people remember her. They know exactly who she is before they ever talk to her.
Agents send me both of these constantly, usually with some version of "I could never." Then a bunch of agents try the exact format and it goes nowhere.
What they're actually doing is a series
Neither of those is one brave post. Both of them built a signature series, and the series is what made them explode.
A one-off viral post gets you a good week. A series is what gets people coming back for episode two, and then episode nine, which is how a viewer turns into someone who knows your name.
Hiding in closets isn't the hard part. The series is hers, and that's the piece that doesn't transfer.
Keep it tied to listings or local
The series that work for agents are almost always about the listings or about the city. That's what keeps it connected to the business instead of just being entertaining.
- Day 1 of trying every coffee shop in [city]
- Episode 1 of finding the perfect backyard in [city]
- Hidden [city]: the spots locals gatekeep
- Best of [city]: [area] vs [area]
- Episode 1 of [city] listings that'll be gone before school starts
The naming is doing a lot of work there. Day one and episode one tell people there's a next one coming. And a name gives you permission to post the same kind of content for a year without it feeling repetitive, because the format is the point.
Pick something you'd still want to film in October. Lisa shoots eight to ten of hers in a five hour session with a creative partner and posts two or three a week, so the idea has to survive being done that many times.
It has to come from something already true about you
Candice Carcioppolo said something on the Above Asking podcast that stuck with me, that you don't invent this from scratch. You already have one, you just haven't named it.
Her shortcut is to open your calendar from the last 90 days and look at how you actually spend your time. That's usually where your series is hiding.
If you're at a different coffee shop every morning, that's a series. If you can't stop talking about backyards, or you know every dog friendly patio in town, that's a series. Nobody has your exact version of it, which is the only real protection you get.
When every agent has access to the same templates, the same trending audio, and the same design tools, strategy becomes the entire game, and personality is a huge piece of that strategy.
Shoot it like it's real
This shows up in how something is filmed too, separate from what it says. Content that looks like it was actually shot on your phone in the moment tends to outperform content that looks imported or overproduced, because people can tell the difference between something real and something polished for them.
Leave it a little rough around the edges. That matters far more than any camera or lighting setup you could buy.
Know where the line is
I'll be honest, I don't know how many client relationships either of those viral moments turned into. What I do know is that both of those agents are impossible to forget, and in a market where most content blends together, that's worth something on its own.
There's still a line. An honest opinion and a hot take that punches down are different things, and I've seen agents cross it, usually with humor that starts to feel like it's roasting the very clients they're trying to attract.
That kind of content can go viral with other agents while doing nothing for the homebuyers and sellers you actually want. I've seen it throw people off completely, right when they're making one of the biggest financial decisions of their life.
Publish the one that scares you a little
The next time you're sitting on something because it feels a little too personal, or a little too much like actually you, that's usually the signal to publish it.
And if it lands, don't let it be a one-off. Name it, number it, and do it again next week.
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