Posted: January 16, 2013
Facebook has been collecting information about its users, their businesses, their likes, and their social connections for years and the mounds of data they have accumulated are about to be put to use with Graph Search.
The current search function simply allows you to search for other people’s names, business pages, or groups on the social network. Graph Search makes the search functionality much more advanced, allowing you to search for things like:
What makes Graph Search interesting is that Facebook has an enormously large and active user-base, with years of data. In creating a new search, it’s as if there will become a competing pool of search data against Google’s search results. While businesses are investing and focussed on search engine optimization (SEO), those not actively pushing resources to their Facebook Pages may start to find themselves missing an entire audience of potential customers. This means that investing time into your Facebook Page is going to be very important.
As of January 2013, the Facebook Graph Search is still in beta and being rolled out slowly to people who have signed up to be on the waiting list.
If you don’t have a Facebook Page or you’ve been neglecting it for years, you’re way behind. Get one and starting building the number of Likes for your page because this number is going to really matter when it comes to Graph Search Results. If you’ve been building the number of Likes on your Page, keep going.
Make sure you are engaging with your Fans by posting on your page, responding to fan comments, and adding additional, relevant content that your fan base will find useful enough to share. If your business has a physical location, then Checkins will become important in Graph Search Results when users search for “Pubs My Friends Have Been To”.
Go through your page and make sure it’s optimized and includes keywords in the About Us text, has an address if applicable, and links to your website. Add photos that show the various aspects of your business, what it does, the inside, the outside, etc. etc.
As Facebook rolls out its Graph Search, try it and learn from it. Use this learning as an opportunity to get a jump on your competitors.
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