It’s no real secret that Facebook’s own internal platform search function is pretty lousy. In fact, if you’ve ever tried to find out how to do something on Facebook by searching that topic using the Facebook search box, you’ve likely ended up just Googling it…and immediately found the answer you were looking for.

The one unique upside to Facebook’s search has been the introduction of Graph Search.

What does Graph Search do for you?

Well, it’s a super handy tool for any fan page admin to keep in their back pockets. Here’s why:

Facebook’s Graph Search can help business owners improve their…

1. Facebook ad targeting
2. Facebook content strategy
   1. What to post about
   2. What other pages to “like” and interact with

Here’s how:

By entering a few specific phrases into Facebook’s search bar, you’ll uncover valuable information about the interests of your current fans.

If you want to know what other fan pages that your fans like, follow this search:

And if you want to know what interests your fans have, follow this search inquiry:

(I’m based in Memphis, TN, so the NBC News-Memphis affiliate fan page makes sense.)

When you are targeting other Facebook users for an ad on behalf of your business, it can be helpful to know who your competition is…and then to target those fans.

An easy example of this…if Costco is going to run an ad, it might want to target people who “like” Sam’s Club or BJ’s Wholesale (depending on geography).

When it comes to content strategy for your fan page, you already know that promotional updates should only be *part* of your content mix. So using the “interest” search can help uncover what other topics to post about. After these top 3 interests shown in the image above, fans of Eli | Rose Social Media are also interested in photography, writing, coffee, travel, 80’s music, and philosophy.

If you are fully utilizing all the features of Facebook in order to maximize your fan page’s presence, you are likely using Facebook as your Fan Page and interacting with other fan pages as your brand. This interest search can also help you to uncover what types of fan pages to “like” and interact with, in hopes of growing your fan base even more.

If either of these 2 initial searches didn’t uncover the type of info you were hoping for, try utilizing the search tool presented on the right sidebar to conduct other searches.

This lesser-known Facebook feature may be more valuable than the standard set of Insights provided by Facebook depending on what kind of information and strategic guidance you are looking for.