Facebook recently rolled out graph search for everybody. Added features make the tool especially helpful for marketers. So what can you do to take advantage of this tool? Here are a few ideas.
1. Find Out What Your Fans Care About
This Facebook search query is pure gold:
“Favorite interests of people who like [page name]”
Facebook will return a list of interests that your fans seem to have in common. This is an amazing source of inspiration for content ideas, and it gives you something to connect with your fan base on other than your core subject matter. This is important, because people rarely stay subscribed to extremely niche pages if they keep bombarding their feed with information.
2. Find Groups and Pages Your Fans Like
In a similar vein, you can use graph search to find places that you fans are frequenting:
“Groups joined by people who like [page name]”
“Pages liked by people who like [page name]”
It stands to reason that if you visit groups like these, it can be a good way to increase your exposure. You can also get location-specific and topic-specific like this:
“Groups joined by people who are interested in [topic] and live in Austin, Texas”
As always, it’s important to understand how to use groups like these. Groups are a place to interact, not to promote. When you link back to your page or your website, it absolutely must be relevant to the conversation, and it’s usually best if it’s in response to a question.
Pages, meanwhile can tell you something about the kind of content your potential customers are interested in.
3. Identify Competitors
Use this query to find out where your customers are shopping when they aren’t doing business with you:
“[Type of business] in [location] visited by people who like [page name]”
This can help inform decisions about who your strongest competitors are, and what you can do to differentiate yourself from them.
4. Decide on a Type of Promotion to Run
If you want to run a contest or a promotion, but you aren’t sure what kind of prize or freebee to put up for grabs, this query will help you figure that out:
“Moves liked by people who like [page name]”
“Sports teams liked by people who like [page name]”
5. Identify Demographic-Specific Interests
Want to target your customers more usefully by seeing what they like along gender lines? This query will do that for you:
“Pages liked by [gender] who like [page name]”
Or you could see what they like by age group:
“Pages liked by people over the age of [number] who like [page name]”
You have a ton of other options with how you want to capitalize on this, but these ideas should help put you in the right mindset.
Do you already have Facebook Graph Search? If so, tell us how you like it so far?