As of March 2013, Facebook have begun to implement a new search tool into their interface and in July of the same year, they opened it up to the whole Facebook community. This new, embedded search engine is known as the Facebook graph search.
But what exactly is the Facebook Graph search?
To put it simply, the graph search allows you to search for friends or other groups of people based on interests, education, location, relationship status and other types of criteria.
So what does this mean for your Facebook page? A whole lot.
With regards to searching on Facebook, it changes the whole dynamic of how people are going to find your page when entering in search criteria. So you have to be prepared.
The first step is to get your page SEO in order. If the content of your page is not optimised with the relevant keywords that you have set out with, the chance that you are going to be discovered is minimal. Therefore, those keywords that you pride your efforts on when setting up your page, need to be there when people search particular interests or hobbies. Additionally, your SEO efforts wont just benefit Graph Search, Facebook will also outsource your page to Google search and most recently Microsoft Bing.
One of the main things that your page needs to make use of is the great search functionality that it provides. For the first time on Facebook, you can now combine search functions that include location and hobbies thus making it easier to target your market. For example, if you are a Musical instrument store located in Leeds you can now input into the search engine something along the lines of “People who like Music and live in Leeds” . This will produce a list of potential new customers in that area without need for extensive market research.
The last real tip to get your page really making use of this new search engine is to use it in order to conduct research on existing fans of your page. If we stick with the example used earlier (The Musical Instrument store in Leeds) you could research those fans that have joined and find out their lifestyle and preferences. For instance if a large number of your following like playing guitar, you could tailor your Facebook posts and offers towards that instrument.
Facebook Graph Search should be embraced by Facebook pages and if you use it wisely,you could see a huge improvement in your SEO and brand awareness.
