Facebook Graph Search has made a significant impact in the field of social media marketing. Social media is very important today, so keeping yourself informed and updated on new trends and best practices should be a top priority. Using the latest platforms and following best practices will only take you so far, as success in social media relies heavily on creating great content. The quality and value of your content are becoming more crucial for SEO. To attract a lot of visitors to your site and drive new business, you must produce content that is useful, engaging, impactful, and highly shareable. To improve SEO and increase website traffic, your content must achieve high levels of social sharing. Creating highly shareable content is the real challenge.

Once you become an effective producer of this type of content, others will help promote it for you, boosting your online influence. In the meantime, share your content on major social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+, as well as syndication sites like Social Media Today and Business 2 Community. Successful social media marketing requires consistency, organization, and strategy. You need to commit to maintaining an excellent social media

Nolan Feeney of Time Magazine called Graph Search “the Google of Facebook profiles,” which is quite fitting.  Facebook is home to an enormous amount of social data.  Graph Search leverages this digital warehouse of big data to allow for searches more specific than you may have ever thought possible.  When you search phrases and keyword combinations of your choosing, Graph Search aggregates the results from all the social data people share on Facebook, such as where they live and work and what they like, including interests, activities, movies, literature, products and brands.  Facebook provided the following searches as examples: “people who like tennis and live nearby,” “tourist attractions in Italy visited by my friends” and “movies liked by people who are film directors.”

Such amplified and specific search capability has important implications for marketers.  For example, imagine searching for friends of friends who work in B2B sales in the Boston area or business publication in New York City.  Graph Search will allow marketers to leverage their shared connections to make new contacts and find new business opportunities—much like on LinkedIn.  Graph Search results are prioritized by your connections—meaning things that your friends or friends of friends have said, done or publicly recommended on Facebook.  Therefore, the results for the same search criteria will vary from one user to another.  Graph Search should make it possible to locate your business niche via your connections—no matter how specified.  Although Graph Search is still in beta, you can join the waiting list and try a search here.

You should always remain flexible and willing to revamp your marketing strategies.  Keep an eye on Facebook Graph Search, and you may be surprised by its vast data mining and search capabilities.  Figuring out how to use the data to advance your business is up to you.  Although social media marketing is important and potentially very powerful, it really is only one facet of a complete inbound marketing strategy.  To reach all your marketing goals, it is vital to use a proven marketing platform, such as HubSpot, and work with a successful marketing agency.