profile building with facebook graph search

How to: Build the perfect customer profile for your business model

For the modern business, tapping in to Facebook’s 1 billion users is an essential part of their marketing strategy. The accuracy of profiles and user activity enables marketers to target specific and useful demographics. The current Facebook model relies on upon user intuition; businesses are expected to rely solely on the inbound strength of their page.

Facebook’s new update is an evolution into ‘social searching’. Using the huge catalogue of data that has been gathering since its introduction in 2000, Facebook has opened a new dimension for marketers to understand and extend their contacts.

G vs F

The SEO dilemma between Google and Facebook is caused by the inconsistency of indexed material. Google has full authority to catalogue the content, links and comments of fan and business pages; however, it is unable to crawl other metrics such as shares and likes on social sites. Most users have privacy settings on their pages meaning Google is unable to index personal wall data and groups. Filling this void is graph search which lets you into the gritty social activity that only Facebook has access to. It is a social history directory of 1 billion Facebook users turning the personal interaction between friends, groups and pages into functional data.

Graph Search will develop into a tool for market research gaining you access into the social history of users connected with your business. Using this data, you can’t start to develop a profile of your ideal consumer built from their personal activity. Similarly, drafting a profile built from the users outside of your network who wish to interact with your product can help you identify how to increase your brand awareness.

Another use for the Facebook Graph Search is the slightly sneaky competitive research.

"Holiday agencies delivering ski packages for ages 21-30”

Accessing companies similar to your own will enable you to analyse key marketing strategies deployed on a social level; measure the variation, demographic and location for potential customers; determine where your competitors locate their socially active customer. 

Social Responsibility 

However, as with all innovative rollouts in their beta stages, (as Graph Search is) an utmost degree of responsibility needs to be upheld. Mass spamming, targeting outside your demographic and robotic content will all work against you. There is no use in graph search for targeting customers who like a vaguely similar product to your own, or operate outside your brand access. Graph search is a tool you can use to identify improvements that can be made to your own strategy based on qualitative data. Facebook is primarily a personal network and marketers need to navigate the Graph Search engine in respect of the user.

It should be noted that the accuracy of the data collated by Facebook can’t be conveniently sorted between genuine and misleading. Pages are liked, shared and linked ironically, personal settings are invaded by friends, and users don’t consistently update their pages. Plenty of the data the graph search engine will categorise won’t be an accurate reflection of a user; this will make building an accurate customer profile that little bit more difficult. However, the advantages of being able to place your consumers and understand their characters inside the largest social network will generate huge opportunities for your business.

so meta - blogs for blogs

blogging and content marketing

Blogging is the best way to deliver healthy content to your target audience. They can be used to write great content and entertain your audience around your product genre. Don't use blog content as a sales pitch, a list of your products or even necessarily a profile about your company, let your customer find that for themselves.

it's about awareness.

What they can be used for is detailing interesting problems or gaps that later on, can be linked back to your service. The more subtle the better, creating blog content that mixes hints of your service with current affairs, sports, culture, media and lifestyle can make for incredibly engaging reading. The speciality of blogging is that it can bring attention to your product to customers who didn’t even think they needed it. 

blogging gems

Blogging is a must have tool when used in conjunction with the other platforms. Use Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin to hook with interesting taglines and visuals, then link back to your blog to follow it up. Additionally use customers to contribute posts to your blog, not only will they enjoy the publication, you can learn what they think of you and get great feedback. 

Referrals are one of the best ways to gain new business and there is no better way to get referrals than posting a ‘great’ referral.  As a bonus, maintaining a regularly tended blog can have a dramatic impact on the quality of your SEO ranking.

youtube marketing - the final frontier

the more you show, the less you need to say

Video media is one of the most successful applications for engaging your audience. The visual interactive element of the strategy instigates trust from consumer to supplier and adds another stimulus for the audience to engage with you.

analyse and improve

Youtube operates under Google’s Display Network and therefore, allows you to create campaigns and analyse marketing metrics through the Adwords programme. This allows you to study who is doing what with your video, the impressions and conversions produced from it, and the demographic and location of your viewers. Utilising the Google Adwords programme with Youtube, you can analyse and improve the ROI from your channels.

2nd the best

Youtube is actually the second most used search engine after Google; to not enter this market is to cut a huge percentage of product visibility. You can create channels forming a body that your audience can interact with, just like a Facebook or Twitter page.

top tips

• video testimonials are a great way to increase your brand credibility


• drive traffic to your site using snappy call to action overlays


• supplement your video with text and image based ads through Google adwords

twitter marketing, an introduction

tweet it!

Immediately post updates to reach your audience and experience a vast network increase with “retweets”.  Just like blogging, tweeting interesting, unusual and even controversial topics can have the ability to go viral. Your current customers can pay you back by spreading the word to contacts outside of your network.

give a little, get a lot

Twitter doesn’t just add fluency to delivering customer service but enables you to amplify the word of attractive promotions and news outside your direct following. In its most simple form a company can offer the incentive: “If this post is retweeted twenty times, everyone receives 5% off their online spend” – It shows you care about the value of your product and helps spread the word.  Offering promotions and incentives like this through twitter will also keep followers attuned to your page. By replying to your followers with a personal response, you are showing you care about what they have to say.

linkedin marketing, an introduction

building networking groups to drive traffic

Linkedin is the biggest online network of professionals with over 200 million members in over 200 countries. Groups and pages work differently on this platform but can easily be as powerful a tool in business. Linkedin allows you to link to like-minded professionals and groups to seek unique perspectives on approaching projects similar to your own.

the 5 step process

Due to the vast number of professionals held and the detail of profiles, Linkedin is great for recruitment and recommendations. The glory of Linkedin in competition with almost all other platforms is that it gives you great B2B publicity. However, using Linkedin to improve your business strategy can be very similar to Facebook and Twitter techniques.

google+, an introduction

google google+

One of the developing social media platforms expected to hit great heights in 2013, Google+ is the search engine giant’s addition to social networking. Naturally many similarities are drawn with Facebook, +1 and likes, updates, comments, tags and photos, the main difference that sets it apart is the hangout facility.

hanging out

Specifically for businesses,google+ offers the opportunity for video chat with customers. Having the ability to engage with your audience in real time is probably the greatest form of intimacy available between company and consumer.

SEO

Social networks have been one of the areas the Google search engine has been unable to crack, until now. Google will now include data from Google+ social circles into its search engine results meaning, the value of your Google+ page will enhance your pages

analytics

Updates to the Google+ system in 2013 will make businesses able to reach all users of the network; being able to find and access users who haven’t already connected with your business can greatly improve your market reach. With the up and coming Google+ analytics tool you can analyse market data such as information on demographics, user interactions and social activity.

facebook marketing, an introduction

the facebook

Facebook allows you to informally connect with your target audience. It acts as an avatar, giving your business or product a profile. A page or group is an intermediary between yourself and your customers, your company won’t be seen as a transient being inaccessible by the audience but an organism willing to engage, understand and grow with its customers.

friend, employee and consumer - all in 1

The personal nature of Facebook means you have to be willing to break down the walls of your business and allow your consumers to be part of your development. Facebook friends are called friends for a reason, they want to be treated as such. Facebook allows your business to create a unity between the two where utilising likes, comments, polls and competitions can be mutually beneficial.

With over 1 billion users, Facebook easily has the largest audience of all the social media platforms. This means you have to be extra areful about content; you don’t want to alienate any consumers. Keep posts short, visual and try to always interact with responses.

calculated success

Facebook Insights is a similar advertising system as Google Analytics, allowing you to target campaigns to specific demographics, this means you procure only the most valuable customers for great ROI. Facebook, when used correctly, will allow you access to a huge amount of potential consumers, filtered to perfection and all eager for your product. Tend to them and you will reap great rewards, ignore them and they will ignore you.

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ijaolais

Modern and digital marketing trends, tips and techniques by Olukayode Ijaola. I hope you find it useful.