Eng103 Midterm: REAL ESTATE ON FACEBOOK - rhetorical situation of real estate posts

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to examine the rhetorical situation of real estate posts on the social media Website, Facebook, and its context as writing genre. To do this effectively, a secondary research has been conducted to identify the audience of this genre, its purpose, and context within the medium it is written. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to focus on a content-based analysis that portrays the rhetorical situation of this genre of writing. Facebook has revolutionized how real estate writers communicate their products to potential customers. Through the social media genre of writing, Facebook offers real estate businesses the opportunity to refresh how they present themselves to consumers. Marketing strategies can be transformed easily because Facebook contains a huge amount of data posted by users. Using this information, real estate marketers and writers can draw patterns of consumer online activity and adjust their strategies in order to increase sales. Introduction In the last few years, information and communication technologies have evolved rapidly and have created new forms of literacies. As a result, new online genres have emerged (Perez-Sabater, 2). In so doing, social media has almost surpassed mainstream media as the communication medium of choice for many people. This has led to a lot of companies, advertising agencies and marketers taking up this new medium as their preferred platform for communication. Accordingly, many consumers today choose social media as their primary source of information, news, commodity news, and entertainment. Aside from offering such crucial information to its users, social media also plays a huge role in forming opinions and attitudes as well as evaluating consumer post-purchase experiences (Linchi Kwok & Bei Yu, 2). Facebook Posts as a Genre of Writing The most popular among these platforms is Facebook. It includes a variety of features among them, public and private messages, photos, videos, links, and a personal wall on which users can post status updates, i.e. personal information, links, photos, and videos. While people post personal information that they wish to share with friends and other people they have connected with on the website, corporate agencies use the platform to communicate with consumers. This has given rise to Facebook posts as a genre of writing and as a medium of communication between sellers and buyers. One of the most effective users of Facebook posts for business communication is real estate sellers/agents. By posting advertisements, points of information, and other marketing materials on Facebook posts, real estate writers have taken complete advantage of this new genre of writing. By putting to use the tools of Web 2.0 principles, Facebook has created a participatory platform where target audiences can be narrowed to the most necessary audience that a post seeks to engage. For instance, a real estate writer can create a group where only their interested target audience can join and engage in real estate centered communication. This reduces the amount of information lost in the previously used model of broadcasting information to a large audience with the hopes of reaching a small target audience. Facebook vs Other Genres in Business Communication As we have seen above, one of the biggest advantages that Facebook has over other genres, especially when it comes to writing for business purposes, is its ease of use and mass usage across the globe. The are other genres which are as popular and familiar as Facebook is to its users, e.g. bogging. However, none of these genres comes close to Facebook in terms of convenience in the exchange of information as well as writer-audience engagement. For instance, in order to establish the opinions of people on a blog through the comments, one has to scroll down to the end of the post and click on the comments button. On Facebook, this is different because the comments appear right under the post. It is also important to note that in many other online writing platforms, which are not in the social media category, one needs to have accounts with each specific writers section/platform, e.g. in blogs, in order to leave their opinion on a particular post. On Facebook, this is not necessary because once someone is a user, they can comment on each page they come across. This way, a real estate post on Facebook is bound to get more feedback and opinions than a post on any other platform. Because of its ease of use and easily accessible comments section, the target audience of real estate posts is more likely to congregate on Facebook. As the Facebook post-genre becomes more popular, the more the Facebook continues to make it easier to use and exchange information for both business and individual owners. This has seen the continued slow death of mainstream media platforms like newspapers and magazines. This in effect, makes Facebook even more popular and the best place for business to focus a good amount of advertising resources on. The reason for this Facebook post victory over other genres is perhaps the attractiveness of the Platform, its ease of use as well the variety of information that can be accessed at one go. While other genres can also be made interesting to readers and target audiences, none of them can contain the multiple forms of communication at the same place and time like Facebook does (Lomborg, 2014). There is also the formal yet informal style of writing in Facebook posts which gives real estate and other advertisers the freedom to write formal informative or marketing posts in a sort of informal way. The flexibility of style of Facebook posts and the acceptance of this by users has given this genre an edge over the others in the last few years. Real Estate Posts on Facebook As we have established above, Facebook is no doubt the largest social media platform on the internet today. Seeing that the internet is taking over as the preferred medium of communication and information access, it goes without saying that it is in the interest of every advertiser to get their product on the most popular and attractive platform on the internet. Real estate marketers and advertising agencies have not been left behind. Ever since Facebook went mainstream millions of real estate posts have been posted on it. Agents and marketers post both on their personal profiles as well as business pages. It is preferable that business pages are used instead of personal profiles. This gives the post a professional touch in an ocean of unprofessional and informal posts. It also allows them to utilize business related features available on business pages only. These include pricing features, being viewed by people who have selected real estate as one area of interest in their personal profiles and most importantly receiving feedback that is specifically centered on the product. The Rhetorical Situation The ultimate goal of real estate posts on Facebook is to persuade their target audience to choose one real estate unit over another or simply just deciding to own or invest in one. Information that might be included in a real estate post on the platform ranges from general information about the market to advertisement of specific housing units. Although it has been argued before that Facebook posts lack the rhetorical quality of other mainstream writing genres, most elements on real estate posts negate this opinion (Carl & Traughber, 2011). Attractive verbal garb, persuasive language, and focused messaging are vital parts of the real estate marketing writing on Facebook. Context Every communication situation happens in a certain context. It is this context that provides the interlocutors with cues to frame and guides the interaction between the communicator and their target audience (Lomborg, 117). Facebook posts are updated in near-synchronous exchanges which make it more attractive to both the audience and writers. Consequently, the proximity, albeit temporary, creates a context in which conversational practices are easily understood on Facebook posts. Because Facebook posts are short (and somewhat informal) in style and content, a writer might post many post many posts within a short period of time. This is important to this kind of genre because the writer must keep the audience engaged at all times (Digital Writing, 2014). It is also important to do so because the people reading one's posts keep changing due to a large number of users on the platform. This means that by the time a user comments on a post