Facebook recently passed 500 million users and now is adding an important new feature to its platform. Today, the social networking platform released Facebook Questions. This new feature allows users to ask questions to the “entire” Facebook community. As companies like Yahoo and LinkedIn have used a Questions feature for years, this is not an unprecedented addition, but it highlights the possibility for individuals to communicate in a new way with people outside of their direct Facebook network.
According to Mashable, Facebook Questions will allow users to do a few things:
- Photo questions: Users can post pictures of objects that they have questions about or have problems identifying and then can receive answers from other users.
- Simple Polling: This is a big one for marketers. Now that a Facebook user can quickly create a poll to answer a question, the amount of available data to mine for industry and business insight will increase.
- Tagging: Tagging is the method Facebook uses for organizing questions. The point of tagging is to allow users to easily discover new questions and answer the ones relevant to them.
- Following: Users who want to keep track of certain answers can “follow” a question to see responses as they get added.
Facebook Questions is public and will be open to everyone. The feature is currently in beta and only available to a portion of Facebook users prior to its release to all users. Brands that have Facebook pages will be allowed to answer questions.
Marketing Takeaway
Today, Facebook made its platform more valuable to marketers. Marketing on Facebook has been challenging because of privacy and a clear separation of profile and business pages. Facebook Questions provides a new way for businesses and prospects to communicate and discover one another in a relevant way. LinkedIn Questions has long been a valuable tool for B2B marketers and it is likely that Facebook will be used in similar ways but on a larger scale.
As a marketer, it is critical you understand that Facebook Questions or any other questions platform is not a place for advertisement. Instead, this new feature provides an environment for contributing value and relevance to potential customers and establishing trust between them and your business. As people start using this feature, look for questions and tags relevant to your business and provide answers to questions that you have the experience and expertise to answer.
Do you plan on adding Facebook Questions into you social media marketing plan?
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