Facebook for Journalists Part II – Targeting Specific News Source Facebook Pages

The Goal: Uncovering Source Facebook Pages That Keep You Current For Your News Beat

The Solution: Use PageData and Facebook’s Open Graph search to zero in and like pages that can help you with your reporting goals

The Steps:

Every month, more than a million Facebook business pages are created.  But the sheer quantity of pages isn’t useful; you want to zero in Facebook pages that will help you stay abreast of newsworthy updates within your beat.

How To Use This Facebook For Journalists Resource:

So glad you asked!  Do right now:

Step 1.)  Visit:

• www.pagedatapro.com

This is a site that shows you some of the most popular Facebook pages online.

Let’s say that your beat is Fashion news.  Search for

• fashion news

You’ll see something like:

The pages returned show you not only popular pages regarding your beat, but also the number of “talking abouts” – ie, the level of ‘engagement’ a Facebook page might have.

The more engagement, the more community interactions, the more insight you might gain.

You can also use this kind of search for local news as well:

This example, however, brings up a troubling issue.  There are a large number of NJ news outlets, surely more than 6!  The reason why you’re only seeing 6 is that pages must be submitted to the site to be eligible.

So!  It’s time to turn to Facebook’s Open Graph search instead.

Next:

Step 2.)   At the top of your Facebook page, you’ll see this search option:

Here’s how to find news about your local beat:  Type in your local area and click at the bottom:

• See more results for “XYZ” (in this case, Asbury Park):

Then select “Pages”.

Here’s what it will look like:

You can ‘like’ and monitor the pages for current news as it happens.

And finally:

Step 3.)  Search for surrounding towns to track those pages as well.

There are plenty of ways you can use Facebook’s Open Graph to track down influencers as well, but that will be the topic for a future Facebook for Journalists post.

Neat, aye?

You have just learned how to find popular beat-related pages on Facebook.  Tracking them will give you a steady stream of updated news and commentary about your particular interest.

Enjoy!

Grow strong,

Barbara Ling