SLI Systems: Search of Facebook Content Creeps Forward
February 19, 2012
Facebook information is a gold mine for retailers, and now retailers are honing in on the content produced by consumers on the social networking site.
SLI Systems is now providing a way for allowing Facebook and other social media content to be discovered in a site’s search results. The idea is to let content shared by consumers to reach a larger audience than just those in their network that are reading in real-time. By “pausing” the flow of content and allowing it to be used later, the value of this content is supposedly increased. SLI Blog’s article, “Get More Mileage from your Facebook Content with Site Search,” elaborates on the idea with some case examples. The article asserts:
With the ability to include content from your Facebook wall and other social media sites in site search results, retailers can get much more mileage from their social media content. And, more importantly, they will be better able to harness the power of their customers for creating content. One way to do this is to look through your sites search phrases for questions customers are asking. Then, turn these questions into Facebook posts and let your community provide the answers.
This is quite an interesting twist. With Facebook users creating content, I’m not sure what sort of “content” retailers are banking on. This concept might just allow for negative or uninformed publicity, (see the #McDStories and #McFail hashtags that swarmed Twitter recently.) We will see.
Andrea Hayden, February 19, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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One Response to “SLI Systems: Search of Facebook Content Creeps Forward”
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Hi Andrea, thanks for your comments about our blog. Encouraging customers to comment in a public forum certainly has risks as you point out with the McDonald’s Twitter hashtag that backfired.
What we are seeing work for retailers is when they ask specific questions on their Facebook wall that are generally things their potential customers want to know. The retailer’s fans are responding with great information and feedback that is often much more powerful than any response the retailer could provide.
And, since the conversation is happening on the retailers Facebook page, they are in a much better position to monitor and guide the conversation. Overly negative or inappropriate comments can be removed and will therefore never become part of the retailer’s site search results.