Questions that encourage discussion on Facebook (or anywhere)
3 Comments
We hear a lot about social media as a two-way conversation, but how do you encourage these conversations? What type of questions get people talking?
Let’s look at some popular brands on Facebook to see how they generated conversation:
Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf used a fun contest to encourage discussion and engage their fans.
Zipcar asks a question that’s very relevant to their target audience: people who need a car for day trips. A variation of this would be perfect market research material.
Virgin America does this subtle research even better – they’re gathering lots of information around a contest with an attractive prize.
Hard Rock Hotel asks a question that fits their customer culture. Every once and a while, you just need something fun.
Hilton does an announcement in a way that draws in baseball and entertainment sub-communities: broadening its appeal beyond a press release.
Ritz-Carlton does something I want more of on Facebook: Sharing a story around something truly different.
What do these updates have in common?
What are the common themes running through each of these questions?
Not many, but you can see each was designed to get people talking. The author needs input – they want to get a discussion going.
Contrast that with all the pages you see that only include the company talking about itself. Simply pushing out information without caring if anyone responds.
Intentionally write your updates to include your fans, and see what happens!
Let me ask you this: What questions do you notice generate the most discussion?
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What do these updates have in common?
All these questions are connected directly to the business the brands are in.
From all your examples above, I really love the Hard Rock Hotel. Asking fans of the hotel which drink they prefer makes great sense, but only if they actually use this research to either promote a popular favourite or encourage more people to try out a drink that is not so popular.
Personally, I think that multiple choice questions score the best since they are much easier to answer.
If every brand can distill their marketing research into a multiple choice question, they have a great chance of getting many responses.
Cheers
Mihir
I don’t know sir. It’s not fair to us little guys to suggest some of the hotel examples are any form of impressive interaction. If you are talking replies to single posts, it’s nice to see some conversation. But the population of a page has to be considered…. Look at the volume of people not interacting in the slightest.
Using your examples:
Virgin has 62,476 fans.
.0416 % responded, and .0688 % clicked “like”
Hilton Hotels has 45,037 fans.
That means .0822 % commented, and .1867 % to press “like”
Ritz Calrton has 18,563 fans.
.0593 % responded, .1131 % clicked “like”
That is *INSANELY* discouraging. Insane. I am really thinking Facebook is broken, and everyone has hidden the streams of these things they have “liked”. It’s disingenuous and problematic. Especially when frivolous conversation that doesn’t generate any real interaction could be what is being hidden… and shutting you off from your consumers.
This is a problem. But I am all panicky and stuff today. =)
http://www.hrabaconsulting.com/blog/2010/06/21/hidden-streams-on-facebook-pages-profiles-over-sharing-and-attention-curation-as-equity/
I talk about it in there, to some extent – how hiding streams delegitimizes a network. It beaks the network completely! Plenty of rambling there. I think you commented on it, Josiah. =)
It worries me a lot about the time I invest on that site. Pardon the late night missives.