ByWould you like to get more comment on your Facebook page updates?
When people leave comments on your Facebook page updates, it shows that they are highly enthusiastic in engaging back with your page as leaving comments takes more time than just ‘liking’ or ‘sharing’ something. A study by Edgerank Checker also found that comments result in 4 times more clicks than likes. Therefore it is essential for you to look for ways to get more Facebook page comments.
According to this study by Dan Zarrella asking questions is the best way to get people to comment on your Facebook page updates. The study shows that a question is the call to action that sparks more comments. But not all questions will have the same effect. Different types of questions will give you varying number of comments and responses. So I have written a post on the different types of questions you can ask to get more Facebook page comments. Check it out below…
1. Closed Questions:
Closed questions or close-ended questions are questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no. An e.g. is a question like ‘Will you be celebrating Christmas this year?’
This question can be answered with a yes or no. The reader doesn’t need to spend a lot time thinking about the question in order to provide an answer. It’s highly likely that they already know the answer to this. Hence, this type of question will result in more comments as thinking and writing it won’t take up much time. They can just write yes or no. If you are posting questions for the first time and would like to test how well people respond. This is the type of question you can begin with.
An example is this post by Prevention Magazine, where they ask two closed questions, ‘Do you eat any of these foods?’ and ‘Will you stop?’ Both these questions can be answered with a simple yes or no. This encourages people to leave more comments as it won’t take up much of their time.
2. Open Questions:
Open questions or open-ended questions are questions that cannot be answered with a yes or no. An e.g. of an open question is ‘What do you plan to cook for your Christmas meal?’
This question cannot be answered with a simple yes or no. The fan will need to have a think and provide a more detailed answer. As this type of question requires your fans to invest more time, it will help you see if they are ready to make a bigger effort to communicate with you.
Here’s a great example of an open ended question posted on the Manchester United Facebook page. In this question they ask their fans where they are going to be watching the game. People cannot answer this question with a yes or a no. They need to write a more detailed comment.
You don’t have to just write open questions or closed questions, you can combine the two if you would like to. You could post a question like ‘Will you be celebrating Christmas this year? If yes, what do you plan to cook for your Christmas meal?’
3. General questions:
Many people like to just stick to posting brand related questions on their pages, but I have found that posting general questions along with brand related questions has a better effect, as the general question can reach a larger audience as more people can associate with it.
An example of a general question would be ‘How has your day been so far?’
This type of question can be more engaging as you will not only reach a larger audience, but you also show that you are interested in knowing more about the everyday life of your fans and people like being asked questions like this. Getting more answers might come in handy as it can play a key role in increasing your edge rank with will get future posts to perform better. So don’t just post brand related questions, but combine them with general questions too, which look directly into the life of your fans. And when they respond, make sure you get back them.
Deborah Ng does a brilliant job in asking the occasional general question on the Social Media Examiner Facebook page. In this post Deborah asks the question ‘How many hours do you work on a typical day?’ As it is a question many people can relate to and is something people like to talk about (especially if they work several more hours than the usual) it has helped the post receive many comments. So look deep into your readers and ask questions that will interest them.
4. Brand related questions:
As I mentioned in the previous point, brand related questions should be included in your regular updates. By brand related questions, I mean questions that help promote or reflect the page’s or business’s brand. For e.g. a company that sells health food could post a question like ‘How many servings of fruit and vegetable do you have in a day? Which ones are your favourite?’
This type of question will definitely reflect the brand of health foods and will help the page attract the right audience. So post a lot of brand related questions, but ensure that you inter-space them with general questions to make it more interesting and engaging.
The above question posted by Content Marketing Institute, is the perfect example of a brand related question as it is about content marketing which is the topic Content Marketing Institute, write about in detail on their blog.
5. Questions with images:
A study by Hubspot found that Facebook posts with images receive 104% more comments than the average post. You can take advantage of this and post a relevant image along with your question.
For example the question ‘How many servings of fruit and vegetable do you have in a day? Which ones are your favourite?’ can be accompanied with a picture of a few fruits and/or vegetables.
Dove regularly posts images to accompany their questions in order to drive maximum engagement. In this post, Dove asked its fans if they prefer the foil on or off when they open their products and attached an image relevant to the question in the post.
6. Questions asking opinion on articles:
When you share links to blog posts or articles try and include a question too. In the question ask people about their opinion to the article or something relevant to the article. If people are responding to your posts with detailed comments and providing their opinions, it shows that they are reading them. It also shows that you’re truly engaging your fans as they made the effort to visit the page, read the article and then get back to your post to leave a good answer. It displays that they are making a strong effort to get back to your questions.
So the next time you post a link to the article, try and ask questions that will encourage others to leave detailed answers.
BBC News regularly asks questions along with the articles they publish on their Facebook page and this helps their posts generate a lot of comments.
Take a look at the above post. In the update, along with the link to the article, BBC mentions how a supermarket chain in the UK had thrown away a lot of food and was taking steps to reduce this wastage. They also included a question which asked their fans what can be done to reduce wastage, which as expected encouraged people to leave answers.
Regularly post all the types of questions mentioned above. After you have tried them out for a few weeks, you can then analyse and decide which ones work best for you and use them more often.
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What types of questions do you ask to get more Facebook page comments? How do you ensure that more people leave comments on your page? Please leave your comments below.
