What Facebook Questions Means for Social Media Marketers

Just when you thought they couldn’t cram any more tiny icons onto your Facebook home page, it now has one more bar. That is, if you were one of the lucky 3 to 5 million Facebook users chosen earlier this week to test Facebook’s newest service, Facebook Questions.

On Wednesday, Facebook introduced its latest feature, which allows users to ask questions and poll all 500 million members of the site’s audience. If you’re wondering why  there’s been so much buzz about it (Mashable thinks it will be a useful platform and others are saying it could lead to world peace), let’s just say that having this particular bar on your Facebook page will probably be worth it.

What it is: Facebook Questions is similar to Yahoo! Answers, which is currently the most popular question/answer service, in that users ask questions and hope to receive somewhat useful answers. With Questions, however, an algorithm analyzes Facebook’s user profiles and matches questions with individuals who are knowledgeable on the subjects being asked about. It also allows for responses from Facebook friends. Finally, by clicking the button that looks like a check box above and x (seriously), users can indicate whether or not they’ve found the answer useful, which means good answers will rise to the top of the list, and answers more akin to illiterate, drunken Yahoo! Answers rants will be forced to the bottom.

Some of the key features of the service are:

• All questions are made public to anyone, not just your friends
• Questions can be tagged with keywords to connect them to topics.
• Facebook automatically chooses which keywords in your question will become tags, but if the tags don’t focus on the right words, you can set your own tags by clicking on the “Related Topics” tab on the far right of the questions page
• You can browse questions asked by topic
• You have the option to include photos in your questions
• You can follow specific questions for updates and new answers
• Questions can be either open-ended or formatted as polls with up to five options
• You can direct your questions to specific friends by clicking the “Ask a Friend” link on the Question page
• Once you pose a question, your Questions activity will appear on your wall as “Recent Activity”

The Questions page looks like this:

Knowing all of this, how do you actually ask a Facebook Question? You can ask a Facebook Question using one of three methods: either by using the Questions tab that appears in the left navigation area on your page, using the search box, or using the publisher that appears at the top of your page (pictured below).

Once you enter a question, you’ll see a box that looks like the one below, which reminds you that your question will be public and allows you to view some recently asked questions.

What it means for Facebook: As if it weren’t already clear that Facebook is taking over the world, Facebook Questions will allow the site to build up a large amount of data, however reliable it may be. This data will give Facebook the potential to rival Google as an alternative for queries, in addition to creating SEO opportunities (although Facebook has not yet opened the product up to search engine indexing).

What it means for marketers: While the people at Facebook have made it clear that Questions is not meant to be an advertising product, marketers have a huge social media marketing opportunity with this tool. Facebook marketing has always been a little tricky because of privacy settings and the separation between personal and business profile pages, but with Facebook Questions, businesses will be able to communicate with their customers in an effective way. And when the questions are syndicated to search engines, it will be a good source for gaining page views.

What it means for your social media marketing strategy: It is crucial that businesses hoping to harness the potential of Facebook Questions use the service to have meaningful discourse with prospective or current clients and customers, rather than to push advertisements. If used correctly, Facebook Questions will provide marketers with the chance to prove their value and usefulness to Facebook users, and eventually gain their trust. If your product or business can help answer someone’s question, you have an unparalleled opportunity to generate leads. Companies that merely use the feature to place advertisements, on the other hand, will not only be seen as more annoying than those idiotic Yahoo! Answers, but their advertisements will also go to the bottom of the pack, thanks to the handy button I referenced above.

For now, it is also a good idea to read blog posts like the one you’re currently reading, or others that walk you through the specific steps of asking and answering Facebook Questions. That way, you’ll be a pro by the time the feature becomes widely available.