HOW FACEBOOK'S NEW GRAPH SEARCH WILL CHANGE THE WAY RESIDENTS FIND APARTMENTS

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This past Tuesday, Facebook announced Graph Search, its attempt at creating a more robust, natural language social search engine to help all of us "find people, places, and things and explore Facebook in a whole new way."

What does Facebook Graph Search mean for property management companies and all those Facebook pages you've set up for apartment communities? What exactly can people search for?

I, for one, believe Facebook just created a new way future residents will search for apartments.

Here's an example: Let's say that I'm thinking of moving to Boston and I happen to have many Facebook friends who are from there or live there. Rather than start my apartment search on Google or an ILS, I use the Facebook Graph Search, which allows me to use natural language search terminology like the following:

"Apartments in Boston that my friends have liked" or "Apartments in Boston near my friends."

You can't type that in Google and expect good results. Only in Facebook can you do this. So if your Boston-based apartment communities do not have their Facebook pages optimized for the new Graph Search, they may not be included in the search results.

Welcome to the Facebook way of searching for apartments.

To help you make sure that you don't miss out on this wave of social searching, here are five steps you can take today to optimize your apartment community Facebook pages for the new Graph Search. 

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