DM Confidential | What Facebook Graph Search Means for Marketers, Local Business, Users and Brands

DM Confidential | Jason Hahn | January 17, 2013 - At its anticipated event Tuesday, Facebook showed the world what it was building: Graph Search, a search tool that leverages users’ connections to deliver relevant results based on “recommendations” from their friends.  Though Facebook Graph Search will be in beta for the foreseeable future, it hasn’t stopped marketing professionals from thinking about the big implications and possibilities. We spoke with some experts to get their thoughts on what Graph Search means for marketers, local businesses, users, brands and other entities.  Let’s dive right in: Branislav Peric, senior strategy director, Blast Radius Paris:  “The recent Facebook announcement about their new search functionality brings up three things: 1) A tech fact: This is the most significant announcement in digital in the past two years. It’s a game changer. Search is the most popular and universal need of people. You might use social search without being an active Facebook user. ‘Grandma could use it.’ 2) A sociological question: Is social search actually good for us? Is it good to filter the world through the lens of our Facebook friends? Isn’t it leading us to some new sort of ostracism, social rejection? Is it good that we will become less curious about anything that is not connected to the semantic Web that our friends are weaving with us? It is too early to formulate an answer. 3) Implications for brands: It will generate additional reach for anything that is in the social graph, including all of the interactions that Facebook members have with brands on Facebook. It will increase the overall raw power of the Facebook whale in the digital ocean. It will put even more impetus on growing the interaction rate with brands and will move the media dollars even more from display ads to Facebook-related media investments.” Jason Dong, analytics specialist, Blast Radius Vancouver:  “I could see this being a complementary search function to Google Web search. While there is some overlap, the two still play in distinct spaces. What is most interesting about this announcement is this is a clearer indication of Facebook’s continued push in the semantic Web space. Google has been playing in this space for a little while now — it will be interesting to see what their response to this will be. Overall, I think the user wins at the end of the day, since it’s likely that phrases and questions are preferred search terms than keywords anyway.” Chris Penn, vice president of marketing technologies, SHIFT Communications:  “Search will change the game entirely — you can’t just replicate your Google SEO tactics. The immediate impact of Graph Search can be boiled down to two buckets: the importance of your fans and the elements you still control. 1) Your fans matter more than ever: - People who like your Facebook page and share your stuff will automatically be referral marketing on your behalf: Now your fans are your marketing force, whether they want to be or not. - The value of someone hitting the ‘Share’ button is now significantly higher: Your friends, customers, prospects and evangelists need to share your stuff as often as possible. - Engagement matters (more) because the algorithm will list higher engagement options first: Get people talking with your Facebook page by any legitimate means. 2) You still have some control: - Graph Search has geo-targeting built in, which means you need to add location data to your Facebook page, or else: Ensure your Facebook page is as complete as you can make it for your business.“ Andreas Scherer, managing partner, Salto Partners:  “In short, Graph Search allows users to search for people, pages, businesses and other services based on the information shared by other Facebook users. There are a few immediate consequences of such a capability.  Brands are able to identify users with certain interests in a given location. For example, a search for snowboarders in the D.C. metro area would be very simple to construct. It would allow better-targeted ads or direct-outreach campaigns. It remains to be seen if Facebook is providing an e-marketer platform that embeds these search capabilities. It will be interesting to see if the data on a given user is sufficient going forward. Users concerned about their privacy could pull back on likes or any other personal information about themselves. On the flip side it could make sense for Facebook and brands to provide incentives to keep information on real interests as well as personal data up to date.  The success of Graph Search’s functionality will depend heavily on Facebook’s ability to introduce the new search capability without compromising the user experience. Spam, unsolicited friend requests and too much advertising can cause unintended negative consequences. At the same time, it has the potential to enhance the user experience by helping people to find like-minded friends.” Marc Purtell, director of SEO, MediaWhiz:  “Facebook’s Graph Search is just the latest milestone in an ongoing trend of the Web becoming more social. For digital marketers, it means that a strong focus must continue to be placed on building and maintaining a sustained and proactive social presence, both for brands and individuals associated with those brands. This is especially true because Graph Search does not return results external to Facebook. Graph Search allows users to find people, photos, places and interests. The most immediate and impactful opportunity is marketing for local businesses so that consumers using Graph Search can easily find a business when looking for places relevant to its products or services.  Some tips for leveraging Graph Search for local business include optimizing the name, category, vanity URL and ‘About’ section of a Facebook business page much like a Web page would be optimized for traditional organic search. This will help consumers find the business through Graph Search.” Jared Roy, senior director of performance marketing, Webtrends:  “Graph Search makes it easier to discover a business based on friends’ recommendations or likes. It’s similar to Google ‘Search, Plus your World’ because it relies on the idea that I trust what my friends and connections are sharing and liking.  For marketers, this emphasizes the need to increase fans and engagement through shares and likes. The shares and likes connected to a brand’s page or content will show up within Facebook Graph Search. Those actions are going to become the new SEO that ensures a brand will appear when someone searches on Facebook as they would search on Google. The difference is that Facebook offers more personal information in the search, as well as when friends are endorsing a specific brand. Now more than ever it’s important for social marketers to focus on creating engaging content that will drive shares and likes and increase their fan base. This should be a mixture of organic content designed to drive engagement and paid campaigns designed to increase a brand’s fan base.  In the press conference, Mark Zuckerberg’s demo was centered around likes, so from what we can tell, likes will be a key form of engagement for brands looking to leverage Graph Search.” Matthew Standish, CEO and chief architect, IDInteract:  “Mostly, Facebook is introducing Graph Search to better monetize B2B click-throughs, which I estimate would provide them with another $500 million-1 billion in commensurate revenues yearly. This is a departure from their laser focus on simply the consumer and it is not to simply charge a dollar to prevent ‘social spam.’ This is Facebook’s first feature focused on B2B connections to monetize Facebook’s consumer data. This is uncharted territory for Facebook, yet, it’s interesting that dating was provided as a use case, and one can see the huge value for eHarmony or Match.com. However, simply searching graph check-ins, shares, Instagram pics, etc., lacks context. Without mobility and fine-grain GPS capabilities to provide context and locality, this one-dimensional single-social-channel feature has minimal impact. Watch for content partners in Facebook’s future.” Link to Article: http://www.dmconfidential.com/what-facebook-graph-search-means-for-marketers-local-businesses-users-brands-and-others/