Week 1 · Tuesday
Open the month by establishing Cara's credibility through a lived moment, launch The Block Walk Files series, and earn comments from relocating buyers who recognize themselves in the setup.
Posting window: Tuesday 7:30 PM PT
Posting times shown in Pacific Time (PT) — adjust to your audience's timezone in your scheduler.
Hook options
Pick the one you’ll use — the script opener updates to match
It's 11 on a Friday, first weekend in my new house, and the street is not quiet.
My own agent sold me a street he'd only seen at 2 in the afternoon.
A 2 PM showing tells you almost nothing about the block you're actually buying.
You've already decided the block feels right. You saw it on a Saturday morning.
What does the street you're about to buy on actually sound like at 11 on a Friday?
Script
Opener (0:00 – 0:10)
It's 11 on a Friday, first weekend in my new house in Bloomfield, and the street is not quiet. I'm sitting up in bed trying to figure out what my agent actually meant when he said this block was calm.
Body
He'd shown me the house at 2 in the afternoon. It was quiet at 2. I asked him what it was like at night and he said, calm. That was the whole answer. I didn't regret the house. I regretted not knowing. A ten-minute walk after dinner on a Friday would have told me everything, and nobody did it. A few years later I got my license and I made one rule. I only represent buyers. I don't list. And I walk every block at night before I show a house on it. On a weeknight. On a Friday. I want to know what the foot traffic is, where the lighting drops off, how far the bar noise carries. Because a listing photo won't tell you, and a 2 PM showing won't either.
Close / CTA
This is episode one of a series I'm calling The Block Walk Files. There are East End blocks I'll be walking in the next two episodes — Lawrenceville is up next, and I take requests.
≈ 208 words · about 84 s at single-take pace
On-screen graphics
Planned from the script at your reading pace. Times are approximate: drop each graphic over the line it belongs to.
| About | They say | Graphic | On screen |
|---|---|---|---|
| About0:00–0:03 | They sayYour hook, as you open | GraphicTitle | On screenIt's 11 on a Friday, first weekend in my new house, and the street is not quiet.Picture: a dark bedroom window, streetlight glow spilling in, a phone face-down on the nightstand |
| About0:16–0:20 | They say“shown me the house at 2” | GraphicLabel | On screen2 PM showingPicture: a sun-high clock face over a quiet row of houses |
| About0:32–0:33 | They say“regretted not knowing” | GraphicUnderline | On screenregretted not knowing |
| About0:45–0:48 | They say“I only represent buyers” | GraphicHeadline | On screenONE RULE / BUYERS ONLY |
| About0:48–0:53 | They say“walk every block at night” | GraphicKeyword | On screenevery block / at nightPicture: a simple figure walking under a streetlight |
| About0:58–1:04 | They say“foot traffic is, where the lighting” | GraphicList | On screenfoot traffic / lighting drops / bar noise |
Paste it into Claude, ChatGPT or another AI tool to build these graphics as clips.
Production paths
- 1.Set your phone vertical on a tripod or lean it against a stack of books at eye level. Natural window light to one side, no overhead ceiling light.
- 2.Frame yourself from mid-chest up, with headroom. Soft background — a wall, a bookshelf, a kitchen corner. Nothing that pulls focus.
- 3.Record audio with your phone mic. Keep the room quiet, no music playing, door closed.
- 4.Read the full script in one take, looking into the lens. If you flub, restart from the top of the sentence rather than resetting the whole take — easier to patch later.
- 5.Deliver the opener leaning slightly in, lower volume, like you're telling someone the story at a kitchen table. Lift energy at 'A few years later I got my license.' Pull back again at the close so the sign-off feels like you're letting the audience in on what's coming, not pitching them.
- 6.Shoot one B-roll clip: 10 seconds of you actually walking a Bloomfield or East End block at dusk, phone handheld at hip level, no narration. You'll cut this under the 'walk every block at night' line.
- 7.Import to CapCut. Trim the dead air at the head and tail. Keep cuts to a minimum — this is a single-take piece, so only cut to patch flubs or lay the B-roll over the walking line.
- 8.Export the clip and run it through Submagic for captions. Pick a clean sans-serif, white with a thin black outline, positioned in the lower third but above the TikTok UI safe zone.
- 9.Back in CapCut (or inside Submagic if you prefer), add the on-screen graphics from the cue sheet, one per cue, over the line it belongs to. Keep them in your brand style — no stock motion graphics.
- 10.Final pass: check that captions don't collide with the cue sheet graphics, check audio levels are consistent, export at 1080x1920.
Platform captions
The agent who sold me my first Pittsburgh house showed it at 2 PM and told me the street was quiet. It was. At 2. Starting a series this week — Lawrenceville is episode 2.
Hashtags
Episode 1 of The Block Walk Files. My own agent showed me a house in Bloomfield at 2 in the afternoon and called the street quiet. It wasn't, at 11 on a Friday. I didn't regret the house — I regretted not knowing. When I got my license I made one rule: buyers only, and I walk every block at night before I show it. Weeknight. Friday. Phone in my pocket. Lawrenceville after dark is up next.
Hashtags
Thumbnail brief
Build this in Canva — it's a design brief, not a prompt to paste.
Save a still of your face from the recording (Record → Save a frame) and open it in Canva — the brief builds everything around the face. Which frame: Pull the frame from the opener on 'the street is not quiet' — slightly leaned toward the lens, eyes on camera, mouth closed between words. Not mid-word.
- Crop
- 9:16 vertical. Crop tight on your face from the shoulders up, head positioned in the upper third so there's room for text below. Use the still described in the still note.
- Words
- MY AGENT SHOWED IT / AT 2 PM
- Placement
- Overlay text sits in the lower third, left-aligned, two stacked lines. A small 'EP. 1 — THE BLOCK WALK FILES' tag in the upper right corner.
- Colors
- Keep it in your Linktree and Reels grid palette — the muted ones you've been using. Overlay text in off-white with a thin dark drop shadow so it reads over any background.
- Element
- A single small streetlight icon or a thin horizontal line separating the two text lines — one element only, nothing else.
Scheduling
Tool: Later
- 1.Open Later and go to the Calendar view.
- 2.Upload the exported 1080x1920 video file.
- 3.Create two scheduled posts from the same video — one for the TikTok account, one for the Instagram Reels account.
- 4.Paste the TikTok caption into the TikTok post. Paste the Instagram Reels caption into the Reels post. Each platform's hashtags go at the end of its own caption.
- 5.Set both posts to Tuesday at 7:30 PM PT (10:30 PM ET — this is your actual Pittsburgh audience's prime scrolling window).
- 6.On the Instagram Reels post, set the cover image to the thumbnail you built in Canva from the still described above.
- 7.Confirm both posts are set to auto-publish, not notification-only, so you don't have to be at your phone at 7:30.
Lead capture
Where this should drive
This piece is a soft-engage opener for the series — no capture page, no link, no DM keyword. The ask is implicit: naming Lawrenceville as episode 2 and saying you take requests invites block names in the comments without demanding them. That comment thread is the asset. Every street someone drops is a future episode of The Block Walk Files AND a warm signal of a buyer actively researching that neighborhood. Reply to every comment within 24 hours with a short, specific observation about that block — that's where the real conversation starts, and the viewers who go deeper in replies become the warm DM conversations later in the month when the pieces with direct CTAs run.