In one of the biggest announcements made by Facebook thus far in 2013, earlier this month Mark Zuckerburg introduced Graph Search to a room full of eager reporters in Menlo Park, CA. Although Graph Search is slowly being rolled out to the Facebook faithful, we were fortunate to gain early access to the feature and want to give you a sneak peak from an advancement perspective (you can also request it here!).
Instead of searching for a static keyword, as you might on Google Search, Graph Search allows you to search for “people, places and things.” Search results are based on how people have interacted with content related to that search.
With Graph Search’s emphasis on photos as primary content, it is important for institutions to keep producing and crowdsourcing content for their albums. To make sure alumni pages and events make the top of search results institutions need to remember to include keywords that they would want to be found for, whether it is in a page’s “about section” and “username” or an event’s “title” and “description.” Inbound links to your page, as well as page likes, will also be factored into what appears for search results.
If you’re looking to increase your Facebook Likes, check out our free webinar recording “Facebook Ads for Advancement.”
Since profiles are not always updated and not always all-telling there are definitely limitations to what a social search can provide, but there are still many interesting ways an institution could use Facebook’s Graph Search for prospect research.
Below are a few search scenarios we can imagine using as fundraising volunteers.
How can you foresee your team using Graph Search?
1. Alumni who live in a particular region
2. Fans of an alumni page who like a particular team, or organization:
3. Restaurants that alumni like in a particular city: