This is a tip for all the bloggers out there. I’ve finally found a quick way to check if someone is following your Facebook page.
This is a pretty common scenario: You’re hosting a giveaway, it ends, you pull a winner and then you go and verify their entries. Are they really following you on Twitter? Did they actually comment on that post? If you’re anything like me when it comes to verifying if someone is actually following you on Facebook, you skip right over that one and just verify the rest of their entries. Once you have may than a couple hundred followers it’s a bit unwieldy to page through looking for that one name to see if they really are following, right?
However, today I happened upon a brilliant application of the Facebook open graph, a.k.a. the quickest, easiest way to check if someone “likes” your Facebook fan page.
Go to the search bar at the top left hand corner of any Facebook page (where the arrow is pointing to in the screen cap above). Type in: Likers of (your page name) who are named “Winner’s Name”
So for example, if I type in :
Likers of Maple Leaf Mommy who are named “Sue Smith”
Facebook would pull up a list of anyone following my page named Sue Smith. If you’re unsure of short forms, or possible alternate spellings keep in mind that you could just search for just a first name or just a last name and it would display a list.
There are some other really nifty applications, for example if you’re curious about follower demographics you can get an insight into your readership by typing things like:
Likers of Page Name who are 38
Likers of Page Name who are older than 50
Likers of Page Name who are younger than 25
Likers of Page Name who are older than me
Likers of Page Name who live nearby
Likers of Page Name who live in Australia
Likers of Page Name who live in Toronto, ON
Likers of Page Name who like A Different Page Name
Likers of Page Name who are Men
Likers of Page Name who are sociologists
Likers of Page Name who are teachers
Likers of Page Name who attended School Name
Likers of Page Name who work at Company Name
The Page Name doesn’t have to be a page your control, for example this is a legit search:
Likers of Candy Crush Saga who attend University of Windsor
You can also pile multiple search terms into one query, for example:
Likers of Maple Leaf Mommy who are teachers and live in Windsor, ON
It’s interesting and can be a bit of a time suck if you start poking around. It also makes you very aware of just how much information Facebook is harvesting and collating. However the only truly practical use I’ve come up with so far is verifying giveaway entries for those who say they follow you on Facebook. Anyone have any other solid ideas on how to put this to use?
Leave a Reply