Facebook Marketing: What You Need to Know About Graph Search

Facebook marketing took a major leap forward with the introduction of Graph Search. So how does this impact your Facebook marketing strategies?

Facebook marketing has become relatively standardized in the past few years with the exception of a few minor changes. Apart from the introduction of Timeline and the subsequent modifications to the EdgeRank algorithm, businesses have not had to make many major changes to their Facebook marketing strategies. Well, it looks like that might be changing. A couple of days ago, Facebook publicly introduced their newest feature: Graph Search.

Facebook’s Graph Search does quite a bit in terms of pushing forward the Facebook marketing platform – both internally and externally. To date, Facebook’s search components have been uninspired at best. The limits of Facebook search reached no further than looking up friends and businesses. What Graph Search does is it gives new life to the dying search features Facebook has been struggling to keep up with. Essentially, this seems to be a first step in Facebook’s quest to catch up to Google in the world of online domination, and it means a lot of change to strategy for Facebook marketing professionals.

Some months ago, Google+ introduced Communities. We posted an article about Google+ Communities and noted how they were far superior to anything Facebook was doing in terms of promoting business on a social level. Graph Search appears to be a pseudo response to Communities (and Google in general), and below are a few key points marketers should take away when it comes to Facebook marketing with Graph Search.

1. Facebook Marketing Becomes More Local

The ‘Like’ count on Facebook has always been a focal point for businesses. After all, the higher your ‘Like’ count, the more perceived credibility your business has to the Facebook audience. Well, what Graph Search does is it makes your ‘Like’ count much more important, and introduces an entirely new element to it.

One criticism local businesses often have when it comes to social media marketing is that, because they are local, they do not stand to benefit from a social media program. While there is plenty of evidence to the contrary, Graph Search adds another argument that even the most skeptical of local businesses cannot ignore. Using Graph Search, Facebook users can now search for specific businesses that friends like in a given area. For example, someone can search for “Restaurants my friends like in Los Angeles” and see results of restaurants that their friends have liked in that particular area. So the quality of your ‘Likes’ now matters far more than it did before. While there is no shortage of services that businesses can use to buy additional ‘Likes’, they will have little to no impact on results generated through Graph Search. The screenshot below is an example of this.

Promoting your business to a local audience becomes all the more important with the Graph Search capabilities. This is an element that should be taken heavily into account when Graph Search goes live and marketers are putting together Facebook marketing strategies.

2. Engage with Your Audience

We stress engagement so often, that it almost sounds like a broken record. But in the end, engagement is what will drive a successful social media marketing campaign. In addition to boosting your EdgeRank score, engaging with your audience will also improve your Graph Search results. By maintaining an active Facebook page and engaging with your fans, you stand to reap a whole set of new benefits from EdgeRank. Recommendations and conversations are the cornerstones of Facebook success, and your ability to get found using Graph Search will only increase when you are engaging with your audience – local or otherwise.

3. Prepare to Invest More in Your Facebook Marketing

Like Google AdWords or other paid search campaigns, Facebook’s Graph Search will require somewhat more of a commitment to your social media marketing budget. Garnering local ‘Likes’ will cost a bit more than conventional Facebook marketing, but the benefits will be much greater. It is no secret that Facebook has been looking for a means to increase their revenues from businesses, and this new tool seems to be one of the ways they intend to do it.

Simply building a page and hoping for the best will generate few quality results. As we have noted in the past, an effective social media marketing campaign requires commitments of both time and resources. Graph Search will mean both of these. Building and executing campaigns to effectively drive local traffic to your page will not happen overnight, but if it is done properly, it can certainly mean added benefits from Graph Search.

Visit the Graph Search page and find out more about what this tool has to offer. Let us know what you think by telling us in the comments below or on Twitter!