How to Utilize the Facebook Questions Best?

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Do you remember the theme that Facebook had on its home page for the first few years of its launch? It said that Facebook is all about connecting and sharing with the people in your life. And that was the line which brought many of the online shore-less surfers of 2004-05 to Facebook. Eventually a larger part from across the globe found that line suitable and accurate to their needs of being online and connected socially. 

Adding a special privilege to its continuous thrust upon improvement, Facebook always has introduced changes and new trends to suit the ever changing social connectivity needs. ‘Facebook questions’ is one of such improvements or changes added in March, 2011. But yet, some people believe that it is being introduced as a direct competitor of LinkedIn Q&A, Quora and few other Q&A based/containing platforms. 


The theme: The theme of the Facebook questions is “Get Answers from the People You Trust” which clearly states the intentions of involving your network on FB. And yes that is the real way of being social; it always needs that engagement part at its possible most. 


How does ‘Facebook questions’ work? FB questions work for individual profiles, groups and pages. So almost anyone, with almost any motive and with anyone of these 3 platforms can get a FB question to ask to his network. If we consider Facebook questions vs. polls, ‘FB questions’ is the easiest and the most convenient one. Facebook questions are always present on the share bar atop your profile or a group or a page and you can always start from there. And in order to check all the questions either you have answered or asked you may simply click on the tab Questions present to the left of your personal profile. To check the questions socially connected to you (which you might not have participated) you may hit the link http://www.facebook.com/questions .

Pic: Questions in a FB profile

Pic: Questions in a Group

Pic: Questions in a Page

The anatomy of Facebook questions: Facebook questions have a simple anatomy of the best format of questioning available i.e. the use of optional answers. Facebook questions work on the rules of Facebook Edgerank and affinity scores as like as in case of news feeds. That’s why you don’t see almost every question from your network every time. 

And FYI Facebook edgerank is nothing but the algorithm used in Facebook engineering to filter the relevant news feeds to show up, whereas affinity score represents/works on the frequency of interaction between two particular users. 

The level of use: From the first day of its inception i.e. 28^th March, 2011 people all over the world are using this latest Facebook product at different levels. While some youngsters are using it as a playground to kill more time, professionals and brands are using Facebook questions in an altitude of market research and feedback collection. Few media companies and small scale organizations are also using this product. Even in India, companies are not far behind of their foreign counterparts in using FB questions as an effective tool to engage people. Service based companies like Wellsport, VizzMedia, Cactus etc. are using this tool in a two edged way – one, to engage more people and second, to generate more ideas that can really help them growing. 

How big brands can benefit from Facebook questions? Though FB question is a very useful, clear and crisp form of tool to collect feedback, most of the big brands and CMM level 5 organizations are yet to consider it on their fan-pages. In comparison to polls, installed with a heavy cost and time, question is a much easier way to collect fan (client/customer) feedback on various topics and also at a very fast pace. FB questions should be set to indulge the people engagement at its highest level and should be based on the two basics as follows: 

1. The foundation: FB questions must be based on the theme/s capable of connecting your fans (clients/customers/prospects) with your brand or product or the services. 

2. The level of interaction: The questions should be in a style that doesn't offend anyone and at the same time ignites a thrust among the people to answer, to engage. 

Selective tips for best utilization of Facebook questions:

A. You can use Facebook ad platform to get its questions spread and answered. 

B.  Questions can be set to suite specific requirements as mentioned above.  

C. Since they contain the follow and share option, you can and should utilize them to reach a bigger audience.

D. You can select either a selective set of options to get the answers on or keep it open for the network to add more answering options depending upon your requirement.

E. Don’t forget that Facebook questions come with a word limit of 170 words. So maximum possible utilization of these 170 characters should be done. 

Hope this article has delivered its best to educate you about Facebook questions. Wish we could have a bigger space and more number of allowed characters to ask longer questions with proper justifications. But unfortunately this is not available in FB questions and is the only drawback it has.

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