Facebook Graph Search and Social Media in the Here & Now

take take take take enjoyment Welcome to Social Business unplugged, helping you understand in plain English how to best leverage social media for your business. And now, here's the founder of windmill networking. Neal Schaffer Green's everybody, wherever you may be. This is Neal Schaffer from windmill networking and welcome to this second edition of social business unplugged today I want to talk about social media in the here and now and it's a very good time to bring up this topic as just this past week, Facebook announced their new Facebook Graph Search and and suddenly, the world of social media is ablaze with talk about Facebook and this new graph search and what should we do about it? What can we do about it? What's it gonna be like? It's very similar to questions that I often get asked when I speak on social media, wherever it may be in the world. Recently, I was asked, Do you think Twitter will still be around in a year, I often get asked, what's the next social networking site that's going to replace Facebook? What about MySpace? And my answer to most of these questions is I don't look into the future. I'm more concentrated on the here. And now. You know, the businesses that I speak with and work with are trying to figure out how to leverage social media today to best optimize the presence or achieve whatever marketing or other corporate objectives that they may have for implementing social media for the business. So the Facebook Graph Search is just a great example of something where most people, I certainly do not have access to it yet. And I'm assuming that most people do not have access to it. And even if we did have access to it, how would it change how we use Facebook? From an inbound perspective, there is the potential that the more likes we have on our business page, from relevance consumers or potential clients, and the more engagement that we have from them, the higher that's our company, or more prominent that our company will appear and more search results. And therefore, ideally, we're going to get more exposure within Facebook for our business. The other hand, from an outbound perspective, we can now use the search engine potentially, if it is implemented the way they say it will be to find out more information, more data about our competitors, about our fans, about potential fans about fans who like a also like B or C or D and what have you, but it hinges on two things. Number one, obviously hinges on Facebook being able to implement a non trivial technology. You know, LinkedIn was built upon a search engine from day one of being able to search profiles, and they've been able to leverage that Twitter had to go out and buy a Twitter search platform, which ended up becoming this Twitter Advanced Search that's on a completely different user interface. If you've ever used it with Facebook, I mean, who knows what will happen? Obviously, they have a tremendous amount of resources. The other thing is this is also dependent on people that have liked your page and that have liked other pages. Do most consumers like every brand that they do business with on Facebook? Probably not. So there's the question about of data. But the most important question that all of this brings up is, and this conversation is now focused on the future of what could be. The funny thing is, if you want to show up in more search results, you need to have more fans, you need to be more engaging, and therefore you need to be doing what you should be doing on Facebook from day one. In other words, if you want to leverage the future of Facebook, you need to be leveraging the here and now. And instead of trying to predict the future, is there more that you could be maximizing about your social media presence in the here and now and this is always my advice is that people are always asking about the future. And ignoring that, have you really leveraged all the functionality and everything else that all these platforms have for the benefit of your company? And most companies clearly have not, I talked to some companies that have yet to even for instance, launch a Facebook page, or a Twitter profile. And for them talk of this new Facebook search is lightyears away from reality. So my advice is, and I was at a client yesterday. And you know, while everyone's talking about Facebook groups, it's what should we do? You stay the course until this new functionality comes out until you start to use it and really understand it, you see how others use it. And slowly, you will get a much better intuitive feel as to how you should be using it for your organization. You know, when Instagram came out when Pinterest came out, nobody was sure. Number one, were they going to be major platforms or not? And number two, could companies leverage them for marketing purposes or for other purposes and slowly with data that suggests how many people are using these sites and case studies that have been published on various blogs and what have you, and brands that are using them for campaigns, what have you, we now have a much better idea. So all of this is a combination of doing implementing your social media in the here and now but also an understanding that there is a need for historical perspective to understand And what all these changes might mean when they get rolled out how they get rolled out, and how people end up using them. So my advice for you this week, stay in the here and now avoid a lot of people if you read social media blogs, and I hope windmill networking is not one of the blogs that this is representative of. But there are many blogs out there who will just report on these announcements that these companies make. And therefore when Facebook makes an announcement, it's on a few 100 blogs, but a lot of the blogs are saying the same thing. Because nobody has may not have access to the technology and or there are many people who just haven't had the chance to experience at a no historical perspective. So instead of being confused by everything that's out there, really try to avoid the noise and get back to the basics and stick to your social media strategy, which hopefully you have a written document if you read my top 10 tips to optimize your social media audit your social media strategy for 2013 blog post on women on networking. And that really is the best advice that I can give you especially with the advent of this new Facebook functionality. You know, Instagram revises their terms of service. Everybody is talking about it in social media, you have people sending out nasty tweets and of the nearly 2000 followers I have on Instagram, maybe 10 or 20 people quit Instagram, but that meant that there were 1980 Other Instagram users that stuck the course and so should you it takes time for things to change. I will admit that new platforms like Google Plus and Instagram and Pinterest have grown very rapidly, but they don't grow in the days it still takes weeks. It still takes a few months. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Social Business unplug. Please subscribe on iTunes. Feel free to follow me on social media and I do hope that you are keeping up to date on the windmill networking blog for social media strategy. Thank you very much and make it a great day wherever you are in the world. Bye bye. You've been listening to social business unplugged with Neal Schaffer, social media author, consultant, speaker and university professor. If you'd like any specific topics covered on future episodes, or if you'd like to be interviewed for this podcast, please connect with me by email. Neal at windmill networking.com on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/neal Schaffer and on Twitter at Neal Schaffer. Please also visit windmill networking.com Ford daily Social Media for Business updates. Thanks for listening and make it a great day.