Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, educators, journalists, general public.

One of the most critical components of an effective content strategy is to understand your audience. When you understand your audience – really get them – your content strategy becomes crystal clear!

In the video above, I lay out 10 ways to use Graph Search to understand your organization’s Facebook community.

1. My friends who like [your organization]
2. Favorite interests of people who like [your organization]
3. Favorite interests of people who like [your organization] and Susan G. Komen
4. Groups of people who like [your organization]
5. Pages liked by people who like [your page]
6. Pages liked by women who like [your page]
7. Pages liked by men who like [your page]
8. Fans of [your page] and [another page]
9. Restaurants in [your city] visited by people who like [your page]
10. Pages like by people who live in [your city] and like [your page]

The post 10 ways to learn about your fans by using Facebook Graph Search appeared first on Socialbrite.

5 ways to improve your organization’s visibility through Graph Search

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, marketers, Facebook users.

Facebook Graph Search is very different from Google search. With Graph Search — which is still in the process of being rolled out to Facebook’s 1 billion members — you combine a keyword search with friends who’ve shared content on Facebook related to that search.

For example, you can search for friends in Boston who like volunteering for animal shelters. What this means is that there are now many more ways for people to discover your organization on Facebook!

Note that Graph Search doesn’t search your Facebook updates but rather is limited to the public, searchable information on people’s and organizations’ profile pages and the pages they’ve liked.

Here are just five ways graph search will impact your nonprofit’s presence on Facebook:

Your page is key

1Graph Search indexes the keywords in your page’s About section, the category and sub-categories you’ve selected for your page, your page user name and more. Inbound links to your page will also help influence how your page shows up in searches. Here are eight ways to optimize your page.

Nodes will be key

2Graph search will show people the prevalence of friend connections with your organization. Deepening engagement with your top fans will help expand existing friend networks (nodes) as more and more of their friends are sucked into your vortex of awesome!

Events will be key

3Facebook events will be a primary result that appears in Graph searches. It’s important to pay attention to how you describe and title your event, and how well you promote that event to your fans.

Photos will matter more

4Graph search will boost the value (engagement) of photos posted to your page, simply because they will be a primary content type displayed in Graph Search results.

Likes will matter (again)

5Over the past few months there have been many discussions about whether page Likes are more important than reach and engagement. Now, with Graph Search, Liking a page does matter – even if most of your fans don’t see your content.

That said, the affinity between a fan and a Page (Edgerank) is most likely factored into the Graph Search algorithm.

These are just a few things to consider with Graph Search. 

What do you think about Graph Search?

Related

• 8 steps to prepare your Facebook page for Graph Search (Socialbrite)

• Boost engagement and likes on Facebook (Socialbrite)

• 19 ways to engage your nonprofit’s Facebook fans (Socialbrite)

The post Understanding how Facebook Graph Search works appeared first on Socialbrite.

Connect your organization through Facebook Graph Search

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, businesses, Web publishers, bloggers, social media managers, anyone with a Facebook Page.

Facebook’s new Graph Search is very different from Google search. With Graph Search, you combine keyword searches with friends who’ve shared content on Facebook related to that search.

For example, here’s a search of friends who like The Ellie Fund and live in Boston:

Graph Search also allows people to discover your organization through different keyword / network search combinations:

Facebook Page SEO isn’t new

Google has been indexing Facebook Pages for quite some time now, so Facebook Page SEO (search engine optimization) isn’t anything new.

Both Google’s and Facebook’s search algorithms consider your page name, category, vanity URL and keywords within your About tab.

What is new is the combination of keyword, category and connection (as shown in the examples above) – and the way Graph Search suggestions influence how searches are conducted.

Here are eight steps to optimizing your Facebook Page for both Google and Facebook’s Graph search:

Tweak your page category

1Make sure you’ve selected the best possible category for your page. You can edit your category by going into your Basic Information admin panel, as shown above.

Tweak your page sub-categories

2If you have a Facebook Place (local Place or Business), you can add up to three sub-categories. These can be added / updated within your Basic Information admin panel (as shown above).

Complete your address

3Graph search will allow users to search for local nonprofits their friends like, so make sure your address is complete and current.

Complete your About section

4The information you share in your About section will help people find your page in search. Particularly if you put keywords at the beginning of specific fields.

Do not start off with, “We are a 501(c)3 organization…” People don’t search for 501(c)3 when they’re looking for services and resources for breast cancer patients.

Tag your photos

5Photos are a primary content type displayed in Graph Search results. Make sure you tag each photo with your page name and any location associated with the photo.

Pay attention to photo descriptions

6Devote a few seconds to filling in photo descriptions. For instance, guess which keywords are in the description of each photo this search result?

Create a username

7If you haven’t done so already, create a custom URL (username) for your page that includes the name of your organization. For example, http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ashoka/66279444793 should be shortened to http://www.facebook.com/Ashoka. This will improve your SEO on both Facebook and Google.

Continue creating killer content

8Remember, like Google, Facebook wants to display the best results at the top of a search. And parsing out great content on Facebook has always been done by looking at how much people have talked about that specific photo, video or text update.

Questions? Tips? Share them in the comments section below!

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