Facebook questions are now live for all Facebook users as well as brand pages. For those brands without access to robust publishing tool platforms, this is a great quick and easy way to learn more and engage more with fan bases.
Are you planning to use Facebook questions for your brands or clients?
I’m definitely excited about this for an opportunity for increasing engagement. I have played with it, but I don’t expect the “Allow anyone to add options” will be widely used on high activity brand pages knowing distracting or irrelevant answers may be posted. But glad to hear that Facebook is integrating the most engaging types of post to be easier to use.
I was definitely excited about Facebook Questions when I saw that they had launched last week. I have long been awaited a native polling app that allowed fans to answer a question without first having to allow an app.nnUnfortunately, I was left disappointed. nnCompared to how most posts on a Facebook page look, Questions is disappointing. Only about 40 characters of the question (you’re allow around 200) and 3 of the responses are displayed on the fan page. A bit more is displayed in the news feed, but not much. The full text opens in a lightbox, which is much more attactive, however, the post itself isn’t very compelling for a user to click on. nnIn my opinion, Facebook Questions are optimized for personal use, not for brand use. nnI say this because:nn – Brands can post questions, but cannot respond in the comments as the brand, only via the user’s personal account.n – Comments are contained within the Question lightbox, and not on the post on the brand’s wall. n – The social sharing is a pro/con. Pro: When you vote, a story is published to your news feed and friends can vote via the lightbox without ever leaving the news feed. Con: That’s great for personal questions, but not so much for brands. It allows non-fans to vote, but they aren’t presented with the opportunity to like your page. n – When looking at a Question display how many of your friends have responded, not how many total friends have responded. This is not helpful for admins.nn/end rant.nnn
Thanks for the thoughts Lauren, it sounds like you have really gotten a chance to dig into the tool! nnWhile we typically present polls through a Facebook publisher, its requirements are largely the same in character counts and limits on responses to fans. I do like that the poll can be presented to an audience larger than your fans through the newsfeed, however you are correct in it being a loss that a user could respond and then have no additional interaction with the brand page. nnAs tools like this continue to pop up on Facebook, it’s interesting how again they have proven just how dedicated the platform is to the user vs. the brand. As brands explore this space it will be important to identify unique ways to present information as to elicit user response and interactions.