Remarkablogger Podcast ep. 2: Why Facebook Graph Search Matters to Business Bloggers

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Episode 2 of the Remarkablogger Podcast is all about Facebook Graph Search, which has made a big splash and yes, its status as “a big deal” is deserved.

What’s important to you, though, is how Facebook Graph Search will matter to you as a business blogger and online business owner.

Does it, in fact, matter, and if so… how?

That’s what I’m going to answer for you in this podcast.

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Now that this is the second episode, you can start to get a good feel for what this podcast is about. If you could take a couple minutes while you’re listening to this to rate and review it on iTunes I would be ever so grateful to you.

Show Notes

You should watch the original presentation (embedded below) given by Mark Zuckerberg and a couple of the head nerds behind the development of Graph Search. You’ll want to know how Graph Search works if you want to understand how it might benefit you in your online marketing.

Let me be clear about something: Graph Search is not available yet to the public and the capabilities I talk about in my podcast are speculation.

I think it happens to be on-target speculation, but it’s speculation nonetheless.

And it’s stuff I haven’t heard anyone else say.

Can you envision scenarios for using Graph Search in your marketing? Is it really going to be a big deal? I’d love to hear your thoughts, just leave a comment below telling me what you think.

Transcript

Note: Transcripts are provided by Terese of ScriptLand. If you want transcription and beta reader services, I can easily recommend her. I haven’t noticed a single error in the transcripts she’s created for me.

Hey, this is Michael Martine, from Remarkablogger.com.  Welcome to the Remarkablogger Podcast, Episode 2.

[Music]

With the fancy-schmancy intro music now and everything.  And, we’re on iTunes and you can subscribe and review it on iTunes and fun stuff like that, which is cool.

What are we going to talk about this week?  We’re going to talk about Facebook Graph Search.  It’s the big thing.  Everybody’s talking about it, right?  Yes, indeed they are.

Why am I talking about it?  Well, a couple of reasons, I’ve certainly got my own take on it, but also a lot of people are essentially parroting information about Graph Search, without really understanding it. Like, if you didn’t watch the demonstration, you really don’t know anything about Graph Search at all.  And, I hate to say it, but reading about it, and listening about it, even this podcast, is not good enough.  You have to see it work.

I’m going to embed the presentation video for it in the blog post, along with this podcast, so that you can watch it.  You should watch it.  You have to see this thing in action.

So, in fact my headline for this is basically Why the New Facebook Graph Search Changes Everything for Business Bloggers.  And, that may be a little over the top.  It might be a little grandiose, but it’s also pretty true.

Now, I’ve seen other people try to make this claim in what they’re writing about Graph Search, and then they just talk about how Graph Search works, and they don’t talk about how it changes anything.  Or, they say something like, “Well you should have been on Facebook all along chump.”  And, that really isn’t talking at all about how Graph Search is new, or different, or changes anything.

So, I am actually going to talk about how Graph Search will change things.  Now, of course, I’m only speculating, we really don’t know how it’s going to change things.  But, you know what, if I were me, and I am, I’d bet money on me being right about this.

So, without further ado, let’s talk about this.

Graph Search, what is it?  Why does it matter?  This is something that Facebook’s been working on for a little while, big ol’ secret project.  And, it sort of all started with one guy at Facebook being, like, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we could just edit the title bar at the top of the page and have that be a search that just started filtering everything based on the words that you typed?”

And, it was just one of those moments, you know, I guess where everybody just kind of stops what they’re doing and starts nodding and is like, “Damn, that’s really cool.”

And, Zuckerberg, was like, “Yeah, go for it.”

So, now we’re approaching the end result of that, that’s Graph Search.  What is Graph Search?  Why is it called Graph Search?  What is Graph?  What the hell are they talking about?

Well, it’s based on this notion called the social graph, which is a nice way of saying everything ever.  All the data that Facebook has about everybody who uses Facebook and how the data between individual Facebook users overlaps and intersects and relates and is either viewable or not viewable based on privacy settings.  So, if you were take all those data and those kinds of relationships, that’s the social graph.  And, so Graph Search, searches that information.

Get it?  All right.

Now, having said that, it’s a really dumb name, because it sounds like you should be looking at a piece of graph paper.  This is what happens when engineers come up with names for things and they completely have no basis in, you know, like branding a reality.  So, it’s a really stupid name, but it’s an amazing thing.  Like, I said you have to see it.  You have to see it in action to really see what I’m talking about.

And, just exactly like that little dream scenario, that I described a minute ago that was the seed for Graph Search, that is actually how it works.  So, like you click up in the bar and you start banging away on the keyboards, and results appear.  And, the more you type and the more you filter and narrow things down, then the more the results change dynamically.

One of the examples that they gave, and it’s a good one, so I’ll just steal it completely and mention it to you, is let’s say that you wanted to go dine out at an Indian restaurant, but you didn’t want to just go to any stupid ol’ Indian restaurant, you wanted to go to an Indian restaurant that all of your Indian friends actually liked and went to.  So, you could, if you had enough Indian friends to do that, which is kind of an easy thing to happen out in Silicon Valley.

So, you go on there and just start typing, “Indian restaurants nearby that all my friends, who are from India like,” or “liked by all my friends who are India,” or something similar along those lines.  And, it would do it.  It would give you a list of restaurants.  It would give you a list of Indian restaurants that your Indian friends said that they liked.  That they actually clicked the Like button on and that they had visited.  And, it would even order them according to how close your friends are to you.  Right?  Because, you would trust their opinions over other people that maybe you didn’t know so well.

That’s really damn cool.  That’s amazing.

Or, let’s say that you really loved the TV show Hoarders, and you could go into Facebook and you could just do a search, “All my friends who like the TV show Hoarders.”  But, more than that, you know, interests on Facebook are not necessarily private.  A lot of people make their interests public, because they want to find other people who like the same things that they do.

So, you could go into Facebook Graph Search and you could start typing, “People who like the TV show Hoarders.”  Not necessarily friends of yours, but just anybody.  Or, better yet, you could narrow down the geographic region, “People in New York City who like the TV show Hoarders.”  “People in Idaho who like the TV show Hoarders.”

Or, other things too, like you could say, “People who like the TV show Hoarders and Most Dangerous Jobs, or something like that.”  And lo and behold it would actually filter that out and show you the results.  It’s a really amazing thing.

Graph Search is basically going to search according to four different categories:  people; photos; places; and interests.  And, right there, in just a couple of examples that I gave you, it really did a lot with people, places and interests.

Now, if you’re into visual marketing or you need visual information for your marketing, then the photos is going to be really interesting too.  Like, let’s say for example that you’re a cool hunter, and you want to see really recent Facebook photos that people have made public about stuff that they just bought. Like, say thrift shop buys, or something like that.  You could probably accomplish that with Graph Search to a lesser or greater amount of success.

And, as they improve it, probably a greater amount of success is what I’m going to be betting on.  That would be pretty invaluable to a marketer, don’t you think?  That would be pretty damn cool.

Now, one of the other things that you can do with this is essentially perform digital word- of-mouth with Graph Search.

One of the things that we use social media for is to find things that word of mouth.  I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve seen people do this, where they come onto Facebook, or they come onto Twitter and they say, “Hey, does anybody know a good plumber?”  “Does anybody know a good plug-in developer?”  “Does anybody know a good iPhone developer?”  Does anybody know a good anything, anything, web designer, copywriter, et cetera, et cetera.

And, you know, people try to fill in that knowledge and help the person, if they know them, but it’s really slapdash.  It’s really hit-or-miss.  And Graph Search is sort of like your own little virtual assistant, when it comes to that, because you can see if any of your friends, or anybody that you know, liked somebody who has a particular job description set for their page, or their profile.

So, when it comes to actually like getting work, getting gigs, or finding people to work for you, I think Graph Search is going to be huge.  It’s going to be tremendous.  Everybody’s talking about how Graph Search is going to have an impact on Google and one of the first things that I thought, when I was watching this presentation, is like, “Forget Google, I mean yeah, Google, but LinkedIn too,”  because, LinkedIn is supposedly all about finding people in a work related, professional way.  And, Facebook is like, “Oh, yeah, look at this.” Ha, ha, ha.

So, there’s that.

What’s really interesting about this is that in view of competition between Facebook and Google, and particularly Google+, is that so far Google has seemed to have an advantage, because they could integrate Google+ and your Google account information across all Google products that you use, they could integrate all that stuff into your search experience.  Right?

And now, we see an amazing search product from Facebook that works with Facebook data that Google has little to no access to.  And, on top of that, Facebook Graph Search, if it comes up empty, you know what it’s going to show you search results from?  Bing, as in definitely not ever Google.  How’s that for competition, huh?  Right?

So, that’s kind of interesting.

If your mind is not already kind of reeling and spinning from all of this, let me get to the main point behind why I’m titling this podcast “The New Facebook Graph Search What it Means for Business Bloggers: How it’s Going to Change Everything.”

Some other people have tried to approach this topic, and I don’t think that they’ve done a very good job with it, sorry to say.  I saw one blog post that was like, here’s why Facebook Graph changes everything.  And, you know that they said?  They said you should have been on Facebook all along, buddy.

Well, that’s not really the answer to that, is it?  It doesn’t tell you how or why Facebook Graph Search is changing anything.  It just says, “Stupid you.  You should have been on Facebook.”  That’s not very helpful.

And, I’ve seen other posts that pretend like they’re going to answer that question, and then they just talk about how Graph Search works.  And, that’s not really the right answer either.  Now, that’s all I’ve done so far.  But, I’m actually going to take that final step.  And, I’m going to tell you exactly why I think Facebook Graph Search just might change everything for business bloggers and why it might be extremely meaningful and beneficial to business bloggers to be paying attention to it and using it.

Let’s go back to that example that I gave earlier, about people who like the TV show Hoarders.  I can do a search on Graph Search that is essentially something like, “All my friends who like the TV show Hoarders,” and then I’ll see all those people.  I could also do, “People who like the TV show Hoarders,” and these are people who are not my friends.  Now, that’s interesting.

If your mind isn’t starting to think about marketing possibilities for that, should be.

Now, they didn’t show this as an example, but what if you could do, “Friends of friends who like the TV show Hoarders”?

What if you could do, “Employees of people who like the TV show Hoarders”?

What if you could do, “People who also like this page, like the TV show Hoarders”?

Then it starts to get a little more interesting in terms of narrowing down an audience.  But, more importantly though, or just as importantly, is that this can give you ideas for content to post.  Because, let’s say that I do that exact search and I see, oh, my goodness, look at all these people who love the TV show Hoarders. Well, now I’ve got an idea for a blog post, right?  “What To Do When Your WordPress Draft Folder Looks Like a Bad Episode of Hoarders”.

Or, if I was more technically inclined and aiming at the developer crowd: “What to do When Your WordPress Database Looks like a Bad Episode of Hoarders”.

So, based on a little bit of research and seeing all these people who like the TV show Hoarders, well I just realized that I might have a pretty good audience for this sort of thing.

And, here’s where it might really get interesting, now this is pure speculation. Nobody said that this is ever going to happen, but I think it is going to happen, because it makes so much sense, and would make so money for Facebook, that if they don’t do it they would be stupid.  And, if they do, do it and they weren’t going to do it, and they do it because somebody listens to this podcast, I want a cut.  But, the same exact way in which I can use Graph Search in order to find anything, should also be a way in which I can promote my posts and a way that I can then select a target audience for advertising on Facebook.

There’s no reason why I should use the clunky, ridiculous tools in Facebook’s advertising, when I could use Graph Search, in order to accomplish finding people to target my advertising to.

You know, you do something on Facebook and it says, “Promote this post.”  Right?  Well, what if I can promote it exactly to people that I can narrow down using Graph Search.  So, I do a Graph Search about people who like Hoarders.  I create content and then I go back to Facebook and say, “Okay, promote this post to these people.”  I mean, Jesus, talk about targeted.

So, yeah, I think Graph Search really is going to change things in a big way for marketers and for business bloggers on Facebook.  It’s going to give you post ideas.  It’s going to give you audience targeting ideas.  It’s going to be amazing.  It’s going to be awesome. It’s going to be a big deal, a big freaking deal.

So, that is how I think that Facebook Graph Search really is going to matter.  It’s going to change things for people who are marketing online, running an online business, content marketing, all that good stuff.

Agree?  Disagree?  Have you own ideas and thoughts about this?  I would love to hear them.

Leave a comment on the blog post, where this podcast with be embedded at Remarkablogger.com.  Share it with your friends.  Hit those social media buttons.  Give them some work.  Make them earn their pay.

And, if you like the podcast, then leave a review on iTunes.  I would really appreciate it, if you could do that.

I realize this is only Episode 2, but I’m going to remind you about this every time I come out with a new episode, so please do.  It’s going to help me out a lot.  Rate it and review it on iTunes.

Thanks so much for listening.  This has been Michael Martine, from Remarkablogger at Remarkablogger.com.  And, we’ll see you next time.