Whenever I’m scrolling Instagram, and I come across a post that stops my scroll, I always pause and ask myself why. And that’s exactly what today’s episode is all about!

It’s just me, Kayla, today, and I’m taking you inside our May Club meeting, where I walked members through some of the most scroll-stopping content I’ve been finding in the wild and how to make it work for their own marketing.

I like to call this skill “marketing girl eyes,” that instinct for spotting a good idea and asking yourself how you can put your own twist on it.

Why We Don’t Look to Other Agents for Inspiration

Looking to other agents for content ideas keeps you stuck in the same loop because everyone’s posting the same things, often in the same formats.

The agents who stand out are the ones who look outside their industry entirely. They’re pulling inspiration from lifestyle bloggers, rom-com authors, running accounts, cooking creators, people who have nothing to do with real estate but everything to do with building an audience that’s genuinely hooked.

That’s what we do inside Modern Agent Social Club. We’re constantly scanning the internet, not for what other agents are doing, but for what’s actually working, and then asking ourselves how we can make it work for a modern real estate agent.

When you start doing this, your content stops looking like everyone else’s in your market, and that’s exactly the point!

Developing Your Marketing Girl Eyes

Marketing girl eyes is the ability to look at any piece of content and immediately ask yourself: how can I make this work for me?

It sounds simple, but it’s actually a skill, and like any skill, it gets sharper the more you practice it.

During the club meeting, I walked through a post from @elasmarketingservices, a creative graphic where a girl is standing with her phone and her drink, and there are little zoom-in video boxes showing the details of her outfit and accessories. Super eye-catching and super scroll-stopping.

And the first thing I said to members was: don’t worry about whether you’re an outfit-of-the-day girl. Just recreate the bones of it.

Because that’s all you’re doing. You’re taking the structure of something that works and making it yours. Instead of zooming in on shoes, zoom in on your lockbox. Instead of showing your bag, show your buyer folder or your sign in the trunk. The concept is the same, but the result is completely different.

I also pulled a clip from @susividal and pointed out something most people scroll right past: her camera angle. She starts the video with her tripod positioned up high and angled down, giving more white space around her. It’s a little unexpected, and that tiny detail is exactly why it catches your eye.

That’s what I mean by marketing girl eyes. You’re not just mindlessly consuming content anymore. You’re watching it the way a strategist would, asking why you stopped, why you watched the whole thing, or why you scrolled back to watch it again. Those tiny details make all the difference.

Then, there’s the reel from @the.daily.balance — that “only 30 minutes” format where you see two very different ways someone could spend a small window of time. The concept is simple: show the contrast. For a real estate agent, that could be 30 minutes scrolling Zillow versus 30 minutes sitting across from a potential client.

See how easy it is to take a format like that and make it yours?

Once you start seeing content this way, the ideas feel limitless.

What Your Camera Roll Is Already Telling You

During the meeting, I pulled up a reel from @dr.rileycluck set to the Hannah Montana “Best of Both Worlds” song — work life on one side, personal life on the other. And I asked members: if you had to make this reel today, what personal things could you pull from your camera roll right now?

The answers came flying in. Working out. Walking the dog. Kids at the park. Espresso martinis. Target runs. Hockey games. Gardening. Disney trips. Mom moments.

Every single one of those things is a personal brand.

It might feel basic. It might feel like, who cares if someone sees me walk my dog? But, believe it or not, people care about these things. The moment I post anything about what I’m making my kids for dinner, my DMs fill up. What’s the recipe? Where’d you get that pan? It has nothing to do with marketing and everything to do with trust.

You could have ten agents in the same city all make that same “best of both worlds” reel, and not one of them would look alike. That’s the magic of personal branding. And that’s why we spend so much time on it inside Camp Modern Agent because when you know your brand, making content like this takes five minutes instead of five hours.

Accounts Worth Studying

One of my favorite parts of our club meetings is pulling up accounts outside of real estate and breaking down what makes them work. Here are a few we looked at during this one.

@noavko is a lifestyle blogger with a very colorful, high-energy feed — bold fonts, lots of her face, and personality in every frame. When I pulled up her account and asked members what they noticed, the answers were immediate: consistent color, expressive photos, she looks like someone you’d want to be friends with.

If someone pulled up your Instagram right now, what would they say? And is that what you want them to say?

@lisahoogendoorn is almost the opposite in aesthetic — warm neutrals, calm energy, very candid. And yet it pulls you in just as hard. She documents what she’s reading, what she’s listening to, what she’s wearing, little details of her week, all layered together. The lesson here is that your aesthetic doesn’t have to be bright and loud to be magnetic. It just has to be consistent and intentional.

@cariwilliamson is the account I always pull up when someone tells me they feel overwhelmed. Her content is real life, not perfectly curated or aesthetically uniform. She holds the same planner in almost every video. She wears the same cardigan. She films the same weekly planning format over and over again, sometimes with the exact same clips. And she has tens of thousands of followers because of it.

You don’t need new content every single time. You need content people can count on.

@authorsarahadams is a rom-com author with a springy, colorful feed who shows behind-the-scenes of writing from home, shares her mugs and her shopping finds, and makes her audience feel like they’re hanging out with a fun friend. She’s not explaining her craft. She’s just living it out loud. One of her reels is literally her screaming into a pillow as a punchline to writing advice.

Think about how you could take that same energy and apply it to something like your best advice for buying in a spring market.

@miasrunningagain is a running journey account, and I love it for one reason: it opens a loop. You feel like you’re watching a beginning, middle, and eventually an end. She’s not giving a training tutorial but just taking you along.

For a real estate agent who works with first-time buyers, this kind of content is gold. Show the journey. Let people feel what it’s like to go from “I think I want to buy a house” to keys in hand. That’s the content that makes someone think, I want her in my corner.

The “Hold Something Up” Strategy That Stops the Scroll

This one came from a post by @amyporterfield where she shared that she held up a notebook to the camera during a Meta ad, and her conversion spiked.

There’s actually a book called Draw to Win by Dan Roam that gets into the science behind this — our brains are always processing visually first. If people can’t picture what you’re saying, it’s not persuasive.

So what does this look like for a real estate agent?

Pick up a notecard, write something on it, and hold it up to the camera while you talk.

It could be your unpopular opinion as an agent in your city — something like “buying a home is not always the right answer” — written out on a piece of paper while you explain it to the camera.

It could be a screenshot of a text from a client, printed out or held up on your phone, while you talk about why you show up every day.

It could be a simple sketch (stick figures, a window, a light bulb) while you paint a picture of what life could look like for someone who decides to buy a home this year.

I actually did this live during the meeting. I grabbed a poster board and drew out what a first-time buyer’s life could look like one year from now — barefoot in the kitchen, windows open, garden in the backyard, walking the dog before bed. It was not Picasso. It was barely second-grade art. But the point landed, because people could see it.

No other agent in your market is doing this. Which means if you start, you’ll stand out immediately.

Journey-Style Content and Why It Builds the Deepest Trust

The accounts that build the most loyal followings aren’t the ones with the most polished content. They’re the ones that make you feel like you’re watching something unfold in real time.

That’s what journey-style content does. It opens a loop. It gives people a reason to keep coming back — not just because they like you, but because they’re invested, so they want to see what happens next.

@miasrunningagain does this with running. You’re not there for the training tips. You’re there for the story. And as a real estate agent, you have stories worth telling.

The first-time buyer who almost gave up.

The listing that finally sold after two price reductions.

The client who texted you six months after closing to say they planted a garden.

You don’t need to have it all figured out before you start sharing. The journey is the content!

And if you want more of this — more inspiration, more content strategy, more of exactly what we covered in this club meeting — that’s what Modern Agent Social Club is all about. We’d love to have you!