More than one billion people like and comment on Facebook posts and pages an average of 3.2 billion times every day. Are they liking and commenting on your brand’s posts and pages – and is your brand responding? Because engagement just got a lot more important.
This month, Facebook announced its new Graph Search. Graph Search is to your network on Facebook what Google is to the web. When released, it will appear at the top of every Facebook user’s page to provide the ability to search for businesses, organizations and more based on location and/or the recommendations and activity of friends, family and connections – and that information is extremely powerful. Consider these statistics:
- In a worldwide Nielsen survey, 92% of online consumers said they completely trust or somewhat trust recommendations from people they know. 70% said the same of any consumer opinions posted online.
- 61% consider purchasing or using the product or service that has been recommended by a brand advocate.
Whether brands like it or not, each one of its fans and followers now has even more power when it comes to the brand’s success on Facebook. Those brands that purchased or collected thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers who either have no real interest in the brand or never interact with the brand’s content will be harder-pressed to gain the positive engagement metrics that signal page relevancy to Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm.
High numbers of followers do signal interest; but it’s the engagement of followers with brand content, and then the brand’s engagement with follower posts, questions and comments that will signal relevancy. That means brands will have to step up by creating more content that gives fans reason to interact, and then respond to fan, follower and customer interactions on their page.
Facebook Marketing recommends these best practices for brands:
- Continue to engage: To encourage people to develop a relationship with your Page and continue to engage them, make sure you respond to comments and private messages.
- Address specific people: If a lot of people have commented on a post, to address a specific person, you can tag them in your response by typing @ before their name.
- Keep track of messages: When people send you a private message, you’ll see a notification about it in your admin panel. Keep track of new messages and respond to them to let customers know that you’re listening.
Google’s algorithm rewards consistent, quality content. Now Facebook’s new Graph Search will reward consistent and quality fan, follower and customer engagement. Time to get started on creating more conversations with followers and customers. To learn more about Facebook’s new Graph Search, click here.
