Jimmy Conover‘s video about moving his family to Idaho picked up 6 million views. The whole video is built from a personal story about his own life. And it’s connecting with his audience in a way home tours and market updates haven’t.
Conover recently joined The Broke Agent this week to break down exactly why: Instagram isn’t where people go looking for either of those other two.
Conover built his Instagram content around three pillars:
- Hyperlocal
- Home tours
- Connection
Connection is the one driving the most engagement by far. And it’s the one most agents skip.
So, did he scrap the other two pillars? Nope. Here’s what he did instead.
Why Home Tours and Market Data Alone Don’t Work
People scroll Instagram to pass time. They’re not there to search for anything. The IG scroller whose sole purpose is to find listing videos and housing market updates is more fantasy than a legit audience you should build your content around.
Conover explains it this way:
“Instagram’s all about connection and relatability, right? People aren’t on social media…most people aren’t searching for much, right? It’s not really a search platform. They’re using it to pass the time. They’re using it because they’re bored with whatever they’re doing and they don’t like sitting in silence and so they start scrolling.”
A home tour or a market update can earn a place in the feed. It won’t be the post that makes someone stop scrolling.
Conover built his answer around three types of content instead.
The Three Pillars: Hyperlocal, Home Tours, and Connection
Conover started building this before he had a single listing or client to point to. He studied a local Instagram influencer in his area who built a huge following through brand deals and realized the same attention could work for real estate.
The study turned into three types of posts he commits to:
- Hyperlocal: content that builds the sense of being part of the area
- Home tours: what most viewers already expect from a real estate account
- Connection: personal story content, the piece Conover says builds an actual relationship with viewers
As he puts it:
“That’s what created the three-pillar approach to what I talk about, which is I got to talk about local, I gotta obviously show homes, and then I tell my story, which I call connection content, because I do it to create a connection.”
Hyperlocal content builds trust in Conover’s knowledge of the area, and home tours show what an agent does day to day. Connection content does the real work of making a viewer feel like they know the person behind the account.
What Connection Content Actually Looks Like
Connection content works when it gets specific. Conover’s best-performing posts pull from one exact detail in his own life.
A few examples show what that looks like in practice:
- A multi-clip reel about his wife and kids moving from Arizona to Idaho
- Another mulit-clip reel saying, “Idaho single-handedly restored my faith in a 90s Sandlot-style summer, racking up 60.9K likes and over 970 comments.
- A post titled “5 things my wife and I stopped worrying about since moving to Boise from Phoenix” named a specific fear, his wife nearly stepping on scorpions in their old home, instead of a vague complaint about heat.
Conover explains why the specific detail works better than a general one:
“Here’s something I want your audience to take away…too many people are using AI. Too many people are staying so vague in what they are saying that nobody actually relates to. People relate to specific, and so you want to be able to get specific with what it is that you talk about as often as possible.”
AI makes generic captions easy to spot now. A detail no one else could have written is what makes a post feel real.
Why Connection Content Builds Trust Before a Lead Reaches Out
Conover points to his DMs as the real payoff for this kind of content. People respond because the post signals that Conover understands their situation. This understanding has to exist before anyone will trust him enough to reach out.
Conover ties this to messages he gets from followers:
“This is how you end up getting DMs like I’ve received where it’s like, ‘Your posts speak to my soul.’ In order to speak to their soul, you have to understand where they’re coming from.”
You don’t need a new content calendar to try this. One real detail from this week is enough to start.
Pick one specific moment from your own week and turn it into a single post. Could be a specific thing you noticed about where you live that you deeply appreciate. Could be something that happened in your neighborhood that makes you extra proud of it.
Or something you participated in recently to show your support as a member of your community.
Look through your photo gallery, your journal, your personal social media, wherever you’ve created a library of moments, surprises and lessons that matter to you.
Chances are they’d resonate with someone else.
