How to Create Content that Starts Conversations
Recently I told my followers I was struggling with how I was showing up on social media.
Not struggling to post (well, maybe a little bit). Struggling to feel like me when I did.
So when I noticed something had shifted in the way my friend Kristen Cantrell (she runs the largest community of female Realtors in the industry) was showing up online, I paid attention. Something was different. More human. More her.
I texted her, told her honestly that I was struggling, and asked what shifted. She shared some things she's been learning so I invited her to unpack it live with our community. And honestly? I said before the session that even if nobody else showed up, I needed this one for myself.
Here's what stuck with me:
People don't take action because they have more information.
This was the line I made Kristen repeat. Twice.
We've all been taught to teach. Five tips for first-time buyers. Three things to do before you list. How to build community. How to grow your team. And the tips aren't wrong. They're just not what moves people.
People take action when they believe something is possible for them.
So before you create anything, Kristen asks a different question: what belief does my ideal person need to shift? Not what do I want to teach. What do they need to believe.
That reframe alone is worth sitting with.
Stop talking about what you do. Start talking about what they want.
Kristen used to describe her community by what it does. Now she describes who her people become: the most connected, visible, referred-to women in their city.
Same offer. Completely different conversation. One is about her. The other is about them.
For agents, that's the difference between "I help people sell homes" and "I help families make their next move without feeling overwhelmed." For team leaders doing agent attraction, it's the difference between feature-dumping your value proposition and speaking to why agents actually move: they've hit a ceiling, they're producing but exhausted, they feel alone.
Use their language, not yours.
Nobody outside our industry talks about inventory and market reports. Kristen pays attention to the actual conversations happening in her DMs, at events, in her podcast interviews, and she creates from that.
Her practice is simple. She picks her kids up twenty minutes early, sits in the car, and asks herself one question: what happened in the last few hours that I can share?
Then she turns the camera on and tells the story. No script. No caption run through AI for polish. Just the story.
I told her on the call that she's essentially time blocking her off-the-cuff. And I think that's the unlock most of us are missing. We keep waiting for the perfect framework, the perfect cover, the perfect caption. Meanwhile the best content is sitting inside the conversations we had this morning.
The goal isn't viral. The goal is conversations.
Kristen doesn't measure her content by reach. She measures it by messages in her inbox. You don't need a huge following. You need a deep one.
And when a post flops? Her kids have the answer: it's not that deep, bro. People are paying far less attention to us than we think. That should free you, not discourage you.
I left this session with one assignment, and I'll give you the same one.
Sometime today, ask yourself: what happened in the last few hours that I could share?
Then share it. Before you overthink it.