Search gets social: From Facebook to Twitter, search is trending

This week it seems social is all about search. Led of course by Facebook’s news that it is rolling out its graph search on iOS as a keyword search. Well it is launching in America for now, but coming soon to other countries both on mobile and desktop (and android a little while later)

The new service allows users to search friends’ posts (social graph) for any keywords. So now Facebookers have instant access to personalised reviews and recommendation on anything their friends discuss.

Without a doubt this is a powerful tool for consumers. Next time you want a restaurant review, to find recommendations for car insurance, or gather reviews on films; you might just find yourself turning to your social network for answers. After all, your friends might just help you filter your returns and give you personalised answers.

Right now, Google receives over 4 million search queries per minute, but the social networks are catching up. Facebook isn’t alone as a valuable search tool. A recent infographic from Whoishostingthis suggest that there are 1.4m searches on Twitter in a minute. Not bad when you consider the comparison with Google.

What Happens in a Twitter Minute? - Via Who Is Hosting This: The Blog

Source: WhoIsHostingThis.com

As marketers this presents an opportunity and a risk. As searching networks for recommendations becomes more mainstream (and more mobile), what people say on their networks will be as important as a brand’s SEO. Great news if customers love your brand!

But not it’s good if you are tackling negative sentiment. Reputation on social will need to be managed in the minutiae. On Twitter, that means paying attention to conversations using good quality monitoring tools. It means responding promptly, in the way some hoteliers are doing so these days on Trip Advisor.

When it comes to Facebook, it might not be so straightforward though. The difficulty is that with so many Facebook profiles set to private, many posts are not visible outside of a personal social graph.  Companies won’t be able to see how they’re being discussed.

Brands will need to be clever. They need to think about how they might solicit positive reviews that will appear on timelines. Wider open web monitoring will offer clues as to sentiment. Smart companies will develop strategies to change the wider perception and increase positivity and referral.

And of course, we are sure that Facebook will be considering their new search tool as a revenue stream in the future: Expect to see ad inventory on offer once the roll out is established!

Latest Posts

Your visual identity is the key to telling your brand’s story on social media. As you already know, on social, you might only have a second or two to make an impression, and that impression often isn’t based on what you say; it’s based on what you look like. That’s…
Read More
Everyone said Threads was just another desperate attempt by Meta to copy Twitter – and, well – they were right. But two years down the line and Threads is slowly building its own case…for itself, and against its rivals X and Bluesky. In July 2023, Threads emerged gaining 2 million…
Read More
AI is accelerating. Reels are rising. And your content plan deserves better than guesswork. I know you’re busy. You’re juggling campaign deadlines before summer, trying to keep pace with platform changes, and just when you thought you had the hang of it – eek! Social moves…
Read More