With as many benefits as Facebook offers for an individual, Facebook is also tremendously important to businesses with social media marketing. There are many aspects of marketing that small, medium or large businesses and corporations can take advantage of. One particular method that businesses have recently been able to use is people posting comments to Facebook with locations. This is known as Facebook Nearby and it has been a way for people to communicate with each other sharing their locations. However, it’s far more than simply informing others of where you are or where you have been.
What is Facebook Nearby?
You may be wondering what Facebook Nearby really is. It’s a local online search where businesses can reach a very rich potential client pool. As Facebook has an estimated 600 million active users, conservatively speaking, using Facebook Nearby is an excellent way for these businesses to reach a size audience that standard local marketing would never be able to match.
One of the most exciting aspects of Facebook Nearby is its recent update to help mobile users using Android applications as well as iOS systems to use Nearby as a way to effortlessly post locations with Facebook comments. In the past, this was more for the benefit of the user, but thanks to recent updates as well as improved algorithms used by Facebook, businesses can now have the data posted by Facebook users with locations in their comments to be an effective marketing tool.
This data, which is inputted when an Android or iPhone user uses Facebook Nearby, is ranked by a Facebook algorithm. Not only can you find out where a friend or an acquaintance may be at when making a post to their Facebook profile, but these posts are ranked by Facebook and this provides a ranking system that allows Facebook users to browse highly recommended points of interest.
Perhaps someone is looking for a nightclub or a restaurant and they’re looking for personal recommendations. With Facebook using the data from Nearby, recommendations for local restaurants, nightclubs, shopping centers and other points of interest will be provided on a split screen. The relevancy algorithm that is used by Facebook has received a great deal of complementary reviews when it comes to helping a person to find a particular point of interest that best suits their needs and preferences.
Not only is this beneficial for the user, Facebook Nearby extremely beneficial to a business of any kind. This is an opportunity for local businesses to get the marketing and advertising attention that they may have been unable to afford through standard marketing campaigns or even affordable SEO campaigns.
As this is a fairly recent addition to Facebook, Facebook Nearby is still in its infancy stages. There are many improvements that have been recommended and that will more than likely show up in future updates such as advertisements and real-time information on places that friends are at currently. However, in its current static form, Facebook Nearby has tremendous potential for users as well as businesses to reap the many benefits that this mobile application has to offer.