OPINION: What viral content costs your brand

The views expressed in this column are solely those of the author.

There was a time when a real estate agent’s reputation travelled through kitchens. Neighbours recommended neighbours. Past clients became future referrals. Trust accumulated slowly, built through transactions that rarely made headlines but mattered enormously to the people involved.

Today, reputation increasingly begins somewhere else: the For You Page.

Scroll through real estate content on social media long enough, and a pattern starts to emerge. An agent lip-syncs through a listing walkthrough. Another stages a comedic bit about a difficult client. A third leans into a dramatic reveal, timed perfectly to a trending sound. The views roll in, sometimes hundreds of thousands, and occasionally in the millions. The content is seen as an example of marketing success, both by algorithms and by peers.

But a closer look at what that success actually produces tells a different story. In real estate, virality is often mistaken for marketing effectiveness. The content that generates the most views is rarely the content that generates the most clients.

Reach is not the same as the right audience

The core issue with viral real estate content is a mismatch between what it optimizes for and what agents actually need. Platforms reward watch time, shares and engagement. These metrics tend to lean on drama, conflict and gossip as much as pure entertainment value above all else. A video succeeds by this measure when it keeps a broad, general audience watching, regardless of whether that audience has any intention of buying or selling property.

That’s a fundamentally different goal from lead generation. Someone actively searching for a home in a specific price range and neighbourhood is not the same person scrolling for a laugh between meetings. An agent can rack up half a million views and generate close to zero qualified leads, because the video was not built to reach buyers, it was built to reach anyone willing to watch.

This distinction matters more than it might seem. Marketing budgets, time and creative energy are finite. Every hour spent chasing a viral format is an hour not spent on content built to reach and resonate with an actual buyer niche.

Virality doesn’t build memory, consistency does

Even when viral content succeeds by its own metrics, it tends not to leave much behind. Comedic skits and stylized stunts are consumed quickly, enjoyed in the moment, and forgotten almost as fast. There’s rarely a reason for a viewer to remember which specific agent made the video, what company they work for, and they likely won’t connect the agent with a particular market, property type or area of expertise.

Compare that to content built around consistent expertise. This includes market analysis, neighbourhood-specific insight, negotiation strategy and financing breakdowns — or, for agents with a defined niche, a consistent focus on heritage homes, mid-century design, or another area of specialty. This kind of content doesn’t need to go viral to work. It needs to be seen repeatedly by the right, smaller audience, reinforcing the same message each time: this agent understands this market better than anyone else.

Many are already doing this well.  What I’ve seen work is when advisors build their reputations around specific lifestyle niches — ski properties, equestrian estates, golf communities — rather than broad market coverage, letting their content speak directly to a self-selecting, high-intent audience.

That repetition is what builds the mental association a serious buyer relies on when they’re finally ready to act. It’s rarely the first video someone sees that convinces them to call an agent, it’s the fifth or sixth, each one adding to a growing sense that this person knows what they’re talking about.

A flattened feed is a flattened position

There’s a second cost to chasing virality that’s less discussed: what it does to a real estate professional’s positioning. A feed that is inconsistent in its content mix and alternates between comedic bits, listing walkthroughs and the occasional viral experiment sends a mixed signal to anyone evaluating whether this agent is the right fit for them.

Positioning is built on content clarity. A buyer or seller, especially in the higher end of the market, wants to quickly understand what an agent specializes in and why that specialty matters to their specific situation. Viral content, by design, optimizes for broad appeal. It rarely says anything specific about who the agent serves best. And in trying to appeal to everyone, it often ends up communicating very little about a lot.

What a smarter strategy looks like

This isn’t an argument for dull content. It’s an argument for content built around a defined point of view and a specific audience in mind, rather than the broadest possible audience. In practice, that tends to take a few recognizable forms:

• Submarket deep dives. Content that speaks directly to a specific type of buyer signals expertise far more effectively than a general listing tour. These include the mechanics of buying a heritage property, what to expect in a competitive new-build presale, or the realities of financing a waterfront purchase.
• Transaction education. Buyers and sellers are often navigating a process they don’t fully understand. Content that demystifies financing quirks, inspection red flags or negotiation leverage builds trust by being useful rather than entertaining.
• A consistent, visible point of view. The agents who succeed with niche content tend to say the same kinds of things, in the same voice, and they build trust over time. That repetition is what makes them memorable, not any single piece of content, but the pattern across many.

This kind of strategy will rarely produce the overnight spike a viral video can. But it produces something more durable: a reputation that precedes the agent, one that a serious buyer has often already absorbed before they ever pick up the phone.

Reframing the metric that matters

The real question real estate professionals should be asking isn’t how to get more eyes on their content, it’s how to get the right eyes. A million views from an audience with no buying intent will always convert at a lower rate than a few thousand views from people actively searching for exactly what that agent offers.

Virality will likely remain a tempting shortcut, in real estate as in every other industry with a social media presence. But shortcuts, by nature, rarely lead anywhere durable. Building a real estate business through content, the kind that actually finds and converts the right buyers, still comes down to the fundamentals: know your niche, speak to it consistently, and let credibility accumulate the slow way. It’s a less flashy strategy. It’s also the one that works.

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