When I moved from Alaska to Los Angeles in 2018, I did what a lot of agents are told to do without a local sphere: I started dialing. Four hours a day. Five days a week. I made thousands of cold calls. I learned how to handle rejection, not take a hang-up personally and keep going when almost nobody wanted to talk to me. What I did not generate was much business.
Mostly, I interrupted strangers who had no interest in hearing from a real estate agent.
The experience gave me thick skin, but it also forced me to confront something: I could not build a sustainable business if my only strategy was convincing people who did not want to talk to me to stay on the phone.
At the same time, I was trying to learn Los Angeles.
I had real estate experience, but almost no local sphere, and I was living in a city where neighborhoods just a few miles apart could feel completely different. I needed to understand not just what homes cost, but why someone might love Santa Monica and feel wrong in Mar Vista, Brentwood or Venice.
Eventually, I started creating local content. At first, I thought of it as marketing. Post consistently. Stay visible.
But something unexpected happened. The more local content I created, the more I realized the work behind it was teaching me as much as promoting me.
To make something useful, I had to explore neighborhoods more intentionally, pay attention to what buyers were asking and explain what I was seeing clearly.
I thought creating content was supposed to prove I knew Los Angeles. Instead, creating it helped me learn LA.
Here are 5 lessons I learned:
1. Start before you feel like the definitive expert
If you wait until you know everything, you give yourself a perfect excuse to never start.
Accuracy and honesty matter, but you do not need to be the final authority on every street and coffee shop. Real curiosity is often more helpful than forced certainty.
Content gave me a reason to keep digging. What makes this pocket different from the next one over? What trade-offs are buyers making around walkability, privacy, outdoor space and commute time?
2. Create from real conversations
A lot of my strongest ideas have come from questions I was already hearing from clients, friends and other agents.
- What does this neighborhood feel like?
- Why is one property moving while another is sitting?
- What can someone afford in different parts of Los Angeles?
Those questions led to better content because they reflected what people were actually trying to figure out. They also pushed me to explain the market in normal language instead of industry shorthand.
A content calendar can tell you when to post. Conversations tell you what is worth posting about.
3. Learn the neighborhoods through the way people actually live
Making local content trained me to notice details that rarely show up in a listing description.
I began thinking less about how a neighborhood looks on paper and more about daily life. Can someone walk to grab coffee? Where do they walk their dog? Is it social and active or quiet and tucked away?
In Los Angeles, those details matter because nearby neighborhoods can offer completely different lifestyles.
The more I created, the more I explored streets and pockets I might have missed. That made my client conversations better because I was not only comparing houses. I was helping people think through how they wanted to live.
4. Share what you are actually noticing
Real estate information is everywhere. People can find listings, recent sales and market statistics without us. What is harder to find is context.
Why did one home get multiple offers while a similar one nearby is still sitting? Why are buyers reacting differently to properties that look nearly identical on paper?
Some of my most useful posts come from sharing what I am seeing and hearing: showing feedback, touring patterns or conversations with other agents. Not every post needs to read like a formal market report. I would rather explain what is happening in a way that feels honest, approachable and useful. Creating that kind of content has improved how I advise clients, not just how I show up online.
5. Consistency creates opportunities you cannot always predict
When you evaluate content post by post, it is easy to wonder if it is doing anything. The value often accumulates quietly.
Someone in my sphere who lives out of state had been following my account even though we had not talked in years. Because they kept seeing me, I stayed top of mind when they decided to buy in Los Angeles. I ultimately helped them purchase a $4.5 million home.
In another situation, someone I had never met commented on a Reel. I replied, and that exchange turned into a conversation. I am now helping them prepare for a future move to Los Angeles.
One relationship was built through years of familiarity; the other began with a single comment. Both happened because consistent content created an opening for a conversation.
Not every post leads directly to a transaction, and I do not think that should be the goal. The goal is to remain present, useful and easy to talk to. The business often comes later.
Creating content is often discussed as another marketing obligation, one more task agents need to squeeze into an already crowded week. I now see it differently. Done thoughtfully, content can help you learn your market, understand what people care about, create relationships and become a better resource.
Do not wait until you feel like the local expert to start creating. Creating with genuine curiosity may be one of the ways you become one. Cold calling was something I initially did to find people. Content creation became something that helped the right people find me.
Jesse Scott is an agent with Compass Santa Monica. Get connected on Instagram and LinkedIn.
