It’s no secret my favorite blog recently is Social@Ogilvy. In the latest post on graph search, they explain the key to winning in this new functionality:

“Brands will need to establish relationships with their fans, and cultivate those relationships through two-way dialogue, in order to give the fans the opportunity to become ambassadors – and give the brands the chance to appear high in Graph Search results.”

Important for all brands, this is highly important for higher ed. How will and should this change the way you currently post content on your brand page? Consider the following:

How will your content be found? Who will be searching for it? What will they be searching for? How is it relevant? Considering the screenshots we’ve been shown, places, interests, and other specifics will be searchable. How are you adding content to these main ‘buckets’ in what you post? What text should accompany links and images?

How can your brand advocates share it? How will they do this and why will they want to? Are you creating campaigns around creating viral content or just plopping in content to fill up your page? Are Facebook ‘check-ins’ a factor? Every event is an opportunity for content creation and sharing and we all know we have plenty of them.

How can you involve your closest audience members? It’s no surprise that user-generated content does well, but how are you fostering and showcasing it in your main brand channels? What benefit do they have to sharing and creating content? How are they involved in the creative process and how can they be more so?

We can begin answering these questions now, as best practice. The real kicker is who will strategize all of this, and how will we measure its effectiveness?