Since it’s universal roll-out yesterday, Facebook’s new Graph Search has been all the talk of marketers and techies in the healthcare marketing industry. Of course, as early adopters of Facebook’s Graph Search, I’ve been playing with it’s capabilities for almost a month now, gaining a pretty good grasp of how instrumental this new feature can be for healthcare social media marketers. What is Facebook Graph Search? How can you use it for healthcare marketing? Let the experts at Quaintise walk you through what we’ve already learned with our already extended use of this awesome new Facebook feature.
What is Facebook Graph Search?
According to Facebook, Graph Search helps people explore Facebook in a whole new way. According to Wikipedia, it is designed to give answers to user natural language queries rather than a list of links, providing the big data acquired from its over one billion users and external data into a search engine providing user-specific search results.
Great! But what does that all mean?
Go to your Facebook Page. In the new search bar type in “People who like cycling and are from my hometown.” You will be provided with a list of Facebook users/profiles who have stated they are from your hometown on their profile and who have also shown interest in cycling either through pages they’ve liked or content they’ve shared.
You can type nearly anything into the new Facebook Graph Search box and Facebook will try to determine exactly what you’re looking for, showing you actual Facebook users who fit that search. Try “Fans of Quaintise who live in California,” or “People over the age of 65 who like American Heart Association.” Can you guess where I’m going with this?
Using Facebook Graph Search for Healthcare Marketing
At Quaintise, we’ve already utilized Facebook Graph Search for many of our clients, researching their target demographic and Fans, discovering their Interests, their Likes, where they reside, what Activities they participate in, and so much more. We know what TV shows our client’s Fan like, what movies they’ve watched, what books they’ve read, what colleges they went to.
We’ve also done a great deal of research into our competition’s Fans. For example, by discerning the demographics of our client’s competition we can ascertain just where we’re going wrong, if we’re going wrong in any Facebook healthcare marketing campaigns, and how to capitalize on any demographic areas that we might be missing out on.
The possibilities of Facebook Graph Search for healthcare marketing on social media, and beyond, is staggering. Imagine, knowing exactly who your target demographic is? What can you do with that information? Develop more effective ad campaigns? Acquire a more segmented, targeted patient base? The possibilities are endless.
And, since the social media team at Quaintise has already had over a month of trial and error with Facebook Graph Search, I can honestly say that we are a hundreds steps ahead of anyone else in the healthcare marketing industry on this topic. Stop using Facebook in broad, unfocused and unrealized terms and start utilizing this amazing social media platform in a more concentrated manner.