Facebook’s new applications and innovations can be hard to keep up with. But these same innovations can be used to help increase marketing for your small business. For example, the Graph Search, one of the applications recently pioneered, can help increase traffic to your Facebook page if handled correctly. Here are three simple steps to maximizing the Graph Search’s potential.
Keep your Facebook page active
First of all, if you want your Facebook page to be taken seriously, spend time on it. Make it attractive to customers and get them involved. When users are searching for businesses to try, the businesses that will show up in the search (and even more importantly, those that will have highest place) will be those with pages that are continually kept up-to-date and have plenty of reviews and user action. Keep your social media presence strong and vibrant. Write posts that intrigue customers and draw them in, and put promotions up online to encourage more customer action on your page. Try coupons and special online deals or even competitions to draw more traffic to your Facebook page.
Encourage recommendations and reviews
The more popular your page gets in the social media world, the more likely you will be to get more recommendations by users. This is important because for Facebook Graph Search, your popularity on Facebook itself is what counts to get you into the search results. Regularly encourage users and customers to share your page, invite their friends, and promote your services. Communicate to your customers how important their reviews are to you. Ask for their likes and comments often. Recommendations are especially important because they get you into the “friend recommendations” search results when potential customers are searching for a small business like yours.
Get your page on Facebook Places
A future expected development in Facebook search is a “Local” feature that will allow potential customers to search only those businesses in the immediate area. Because of this, make sure that your small business is listed on Facebook Places so that you can have a presence in the area and appear in the “Local” search results. Even now, there is a ‘Nearby’ option, so try to get a presence in the area by gaining as many recommendations as possible so you’ll be featured in a higher spot in the search results.
Using these three simple tips, you can ensure that you get into the Facebook Graph Search results for potential customers of your business. This is a great- and free!- way to promote your small business online.
