By Justin Delos Reyes, Web Success Team

Facebook launched its revamped Questions tool last week. Unlike Quora and Yahoo! Answers (which focus on “expert” advice), Questions serves as a recommendation engine between friends. Word-of-Mouth marketing is a powerful tool and brands have a great opportunity to work their way into personal conversations. Questions also gives brands another tool to understand their customers better.

Survey Your Customers – Get Valuable Marketing Feedback
Questions gives brands instant feedback from their followers. Page admins can give a list of multiple choice answers for users to select from and / or they can let users add their own. For example, restaurants can ask their followers about what the “Soup of the Day” should be. Clam Chowder, Tomato Bisque, and Chicken Noodle, can each be an option. If the restaurant is open to more suggestions, the “Allow anyone to add options” feature is turned on by default.

If your brand or organization is thinking about moving in a new direction, ask your followers to help you. Facebook Questions isn’t the place to poll your customers about decisions that can make or break your company. But polling them about smaller things can help your brand grow and increase customer satisfaction. When you ask such questions, following through with their answers is very important. Show them their opinion counts by implementing their answers into your product or service.

Easily Reach Your Followers’ Friends
When your followers answer the questions you ask, it shows up as an activity in their friends’ news feed. Their friends are more likely to answer your questions because they don’t have to jump over a hurdle to do so. If you implemented a third-party application to poll your followers in the past, they needed to grant access to the application before they could proceed.

This “Approve or Deny” option is a barrier that turns people off. Many users don’t click “Allow” because they are worried about potential viruses inside the application. That is not the case with Questions. It is a trusted feature and is easily accessible. Trust and easy access will lead to more sharing – meaning your Questions strategy should consider not just your followers, but their 1st degree friends as well.

Think Before You Ask
As I said before, questions that can potentially make or break your company are not meant to be asked on Questions. This feature gives you the opportunity to show your brand’s personality and can give your followers a sense of ownership. Asking and answering questions should be a fun, casual experience for them.

With that being said, you really need to think about the questions you ask before you post them. Again, Questions is a recommendation engine between friends. Users will ask each other about the best places to eat and where to shop. You need to think of ways to weave your brand into those personal conversations. There must be a purpose behind every question you ask. Each question must have a goal that, when met, will move your business forward.

Quick Question
How do you plan to use Facebook Questions?

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