Problem statement

“Which strategies should agents in the real estate market apply to optimize their market competi-tiveness?”

Based on the Heuristic-Systematic model of persuasion, real estate agents in Los Angeles should choose to engage with their clients or potential clients in a friendly manner that will engage with the consumer's cognitive processes. This accounts for both personal and online presence. The cognitive processes need to be reached in order for the real estate agent to be able to connect prop-erly with the client and in order to persuade the client into buying a home. The agent should use both the heuristic and the systematic processes when trying to sell a home, as the buyer will either have decided they want to buy the home prior to purchase or need persuasion. The results from the survey indicated that the users of the given social media platforms had no gap between their suffi-ciency threshold and their confidence level. The results showed that most of the respondents be-lieved that social media was of some importance to their life. According to the theory, if the social

media users believed that social media was actually crucial to their life, the content posted would have been dismissed by the users as the sufficiency threshold would have been unmet. The dis-missal has base in the framework that states that the systematic processing capabilities would not allow them to proceed. The results indicated that most of the post engagements were created based on heuristic processing, as the results of the survey showed that the respondents slightly disagreed when asked if they were interested in real estate posts. By showing a lack of motivation, it can be concluded that there was no concurrent processing being used by the respondents. A lack of en-gagement can be explained by the homeowners not being interested in looking or buying a new home as they are already homeowners. The respondents were not averse when it came to engaging with a business page on Facebook. This indicates that there was a persuasion happening prior to the engagement. With real estate, typically being a recommendation and word of mouth based industry, bringing in social media gives the industry a whole new market that is led by persuasion and tech-nology.

Based on statistics, the real estate agents should choose to have their own website instead of sharing a website with their company. In case the agent splits from their team, the agent would lose online presence, and currently, online presence seems like the new way of real estate. With 66% of new home, buyer's being millennials, having an online presence is crucial since 80% look online before buying a home. Not only does the millennials look for homes online, but they also look for real estate agents online, and without a website or a Facebook page with high SEO, the agent will be invisible to the clients.

Regarding the content posted by the agents, the content analysis shows that they should stick to pictures as they have both higher reach and engagement than links, videos, and carousels. The content orientation should be interactive, and the communication cues should be mixed as both of these had higher reach and engagement than the others. These numbers are likely skewed as most posts were mixed and interactive. When looking at individual posts, it was noticeable that personal content, such as live Facebook and Instagram videos, received a higher engagement and higher reach than any other content. The real estate agent should, therefore, create videos that showcase themselves. Both task-oriented content and self-oriented content was assumed to reach much higher

and gain more engagement as both of these communication cues requires the follower to consider the brand or product in one way or another. The interaction-oriented content should receive much lower as it requires cognitive processing from the consumer. Interestingly enough, it gained a much higher reach and engagement, which is why the agents should utilize this type of orientation.

When analyzing the different times in figure 6, it shows that most of the followers are online around 3 pm. The increase in followers starts around 8 am and ends around 12:00 am. This means that the agent should start posting between 8 am, and 9 am as they will reach more followers than if posting around 3 pm. If they post around the time when most of their followers are logging on, they will have missed all the followers who have already been on. Looking at figure 6 it shows that the most effective date to post on Facebook is Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday, whereas, for Insta-gram, it is only Thursday. The agents should post on these given days to higher their reach and en-gagement. Looking at the posts posted on Facebook and Instagram, it can be seen that photo posts receive more average reach and engagement than any of the other forms of posts, with links per-forming poorest. The content that receives the most engagement is personal posts that request a form of reply. When looking critically at the results, had the content posted on the specific days been different, the outcome might have come out differently, too. It could be the specific content that created greater reach and engagement or if the day and time did matter.

Based on the survey, it can be argued that real estate agents do not create valuable content for the consumer as most of the respondents were not interested in following or engaging with a post created by a real estate agent. The scope of this study does not answer to the lack of engage-ment beyond this degree. It can be argued that; the consumer does not cognitively process the mate-rial shared by a real estate agent, as they do not have motivation for it. There can be several reasons for this, one being the content seeming irrelevant, the information given by the agent does not seem trustworthy, the cognitive structure already possessed by the consumer is sufficient or simply lack of interest.

The neo-tribe described by Maffesoli in Dahl (2015) that follows Terra Firma Group could be fol-lowing the brand for several reasons; searching for an agent, having them as an agent, searching for

a house, an interest in real estate or personally knowing the agents. If Terra Firma Group chose to re-brand themselves, it could result in a loss of followers as the individuals in the specific neo-tribe could follow them for reasons such as location or price. The more heterogeneous of the content feed could be a part of Terra Firma Group gaining followers (Moran & Gossieux, 2010). By being an active brand community, meaning that Terra Firma Group lets its followers be prosumers, the reach and engagement are greater. The subcultures are believed to be drawn to personal connection and following a leader, which the framework on primal branding by Hanlon (2006) supports. Following a leader will increase their trust and keep them interested.

As stated by Boyd & Nowell (2014), when consumers want to be part of a brand, it creates prosumers. By continually asking what the consumer thinks, Terra Firma Group gives the followers the feeling of influence. Tom Struckhoff from Terra Firma Group stated in his interview (Appendix 1) that they strived to become anthropomorphic (Dahl, 2015) so they would stand-out from other agencies and be their go-to agency for anything real estate related. By having several 5-star reviews (Appendix 5), Terra Firma Group can capitalize on this and create a network effect through adver-tising themselves as trusted and reliable (Leo et al., 2018). It would, therefore, be ideal for Terra Firma Group to utilize buzz marketing by having their clients and followers create a buzz about their service (Dahl, 2015). Terra Firma Group used buzz marketing on some of their posts by writ-ing a mysterious caption such as "somethwrit-ing new is comwrit-ing very soon, stay tuned". The followers would be interested in the happening, hopefully creating a ripple effect that would lead to more in-terested followers, making people believe the brand is worth following and by that gaining more followers (Surowiecki, 2004).

Research done by Dholakia and Durham (2010) showed that by joining a brand community, the followers become emotionally attached, and generate a higher rate of positive word of mouth.

Phycological factors behind the consumer's preferences and awareness have been proven to exist when seeing online ratings. The ratings affect the consumer's attitude towards a brand and create a product preference (Adomavicius et al., 2018).

The thesis indicates what type of content that the real estate agents should post on each giv-en platform. It gives the real estate indications on what and how to post on social media to gain the highest forms of engagements. The more time the agent puts into their social media platform, the higher engagement they receive. Even with consumers responding and showing engagement to posts both on Instagram and Facebook, the cognitive processes are not being used by the followers, resulting in the low scores on the survey and the low average likes and comments on the posts. On both platforms, it is photos that have a personal connection and requires engagement that is the con-tent with the most engagement.