How will Facebook’s Graph Search affect businesses and Marketers?

At a special press conference earlier this week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg unveiled the company’s newest feature – the Graph Search. The feature will utilize the social media giant’s massive database of information (called the Graph) which contains details of connections, check-ins, likes, etc., all of which have been shared by Facebook users over the course of the company’s history.



For instance, one could use the Graph Search function to look for ‘restaurants that my friends like’ or ‘retailers that my friends have been to’. These searches will rely on that person’s friends’ habituation of liking pages and using the check in function when they arrive at a destination. While Zuckerburg specifically noted that Graph Search “is not a search engine”, its relationship with Bing seems to hint at it growing into a more definitive search tool in the future, which will allow Facebook to keep users on their site for longer periods of time and to eventually break what they call the ‘Google habit’.



While social media marketers and SEO’s might not want users turned away from Google, the increase in activity sharing between connections of Facebook may be beneficial if used in the right way. Companies will undoubtedly benefit from the graph Search if they are able to do at least two things correctly: getting the right users to ‘like’ their pages or share and interact with their content, and by offering some sort of incentives or unique opportunities that will encourage Facebook users to check in with them upon arrival at their stores/premises, etc. By doing this they not only ensure that they keep their brand appearing in their fans timeline feeds, but also effectively turn their fans into word-of-mouth promoters of their brand. After all, people are more willing to trust a friend’s recommendation or taste than a random Internet algorithm.

What is Social Media Marketing?

 

Social Media, as it has exists currently has been around for just over ten years, with pioneers such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube being the most notable since the early part of the 21st century. However, as with all other forms of media, especially those utilizing the Internet, various ways of capitalizing on their existence have come up over the years. Marketing, an aspect of business, has traditionally been centered on the physical aspect, such as print, and as they grew in popularity, the broadcast mediums of radio and television.

 

However, the idea of social media has provided the marketing world with a unique opportunity that has allowed them to successfully capture not only the core of what they could potentially offer, but to expand in unique ways in order to beat out competition, reach new client bases and provide more brand exposure.

 

The term ‘social media marketing’ is an interesting phenomena that has only existed for probably less than a decade. Social media, in and of itself describes a type of network that allows individuals and groups to instantly connect to each other and not only choose exactly what they would like to be broadcast, but also who they would want to receive their message. By using this aspect of it, marketers and companies all over the world are now able to break the traditional seller/buyer paradigm, and form a personal relationship with their customers and potential users (something that before social media was not thought to be possible on such a large scale). It also removes the traditional hierarchy of the marketing process and allows users to affect the decisions made by the business/group being marketed to varying degrees.

 

It provides marketing strategists with an infinitely large number of potential customers, while at the same time giving the end-user the ultimate choice in their ability to choose which campaigns to be subjected to.