Your September 2023 Burning Real Estate Marketing Questions, Answered

Where Do I Find Trending Sounds and Memes to Use in My Social Content?

You’d think there was a committee that decides what memes, songs and audio tracks are the best for Instagram and TikTok content each week. 

One day, it’s a clip of actor Bill Hader dancing that seems to be in every post. The next, it’s an audio track of dialogue from an old episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. 

You don’t have to use trending sounds and memes in order for your content to be effective, but joining in is a great way to:

• Get inspired — trends can help you come up with fresh ideas for a Reel or TikTok
• Show your audience that you are “in the know”
• Increase your odds of impressing the algorithm and getting your content served to users who don’t yet follow you 

The easiest way to identify what’s trending is simply to spend some time each day scrolling through your Instagram Explore page (tap the magnifying glass icon at the bottom of the app) or the TikTok Explore page. Scroll long enough and you’ll start to notice the same sounds and meme styles.

Want to skip the scroll? Search “TikTok trending songs” or “TikTok trending audio” on Spotify or YouTube and you’ll find playlists and videos that have curated popular songs and sounds of the moment. (Psst: if it’s trending on TikTok, it’s trending on Instagram.)

Memes — whether it’s a celebrity photo that people are adding their own text to or funny questions they’e asking their friends on camera — are a little trickier. Again, the Explore pages are a great place to do research. Otherwise, Later.com helpfully rounds up trending memes each month.

I Need to Reduce My Expenses Right Now. Where Can I Trim My Marketing Budget?

It’s tough out there right now. Most people are reducing their spending, in business and at home.

If you have to trim your real estate marketing budget, it’s important to do it strategically. You want to avoid cutting marketing tactics that have proven return on investment for your particular business goals.

For some agents, that might mean keeping up with Instagram ad spending if those ads consistently result in website sign-ups. For other agents, maybe it’s pay-per-click ads or printed postcards that are worth sticking with. 

Where should you consider trimming, at least temporarily? Whatever isn’t generating leads at the time. That might mean…

• Turning down requests for local event or team sponsorship
• Bringing outsourced work back in-house (e.g., hitting pause on working with a social media manager or a virtual assistant)
• Switching to free versions of paid tools, apps and software
• Cutting back on the frequency of ads or other paid promotions

The one expense you should never trim: money spent on your real estate website. 

Even if you cease all other online marketing activities, your website should be active and up-to-date so that anyone looking for you (or for local agents in general) can find it and get in touch. 

In Light of Its Bad Press, Should I Stop Using X (Formerly Known As Twitter) to Market My Real Estate Business?

The social media platform formerly known as Twitter has been at the centre of a firestorm for the past year, mainly since its acquisition by Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.

From mass layoffs to sudden changes in the functionality to its renaming, there’s been a lot of drama at X. And it’s looking like it has affected the platform’s user base, with traffic notably declining since the start of the year. 

What does that mean for real estate agents and other people using X to market their businesses?

It depends.

If you have an established social media strategy for X and are continuing to see results from that strategy, then keep it up. 

If you don’t already use the platform to market your real estate business or if you do use it but aren’t seeing meaningful engagement or traffic to your website, it’s best to hit “x” on X. You’re better off focusing your energies on the social media platforms that are a better fit for your real estate business.

Have more burning questions? Check out our answers to August’s real estate marketing questions here.