Are Facebook Questions any good?

If you spend lots of time on Facebook you may have noticed a few questions popping up in your personal newsfeed, rather like this one:

This is a new feature from Facebook, which got rolled out last week. What is interesting is how you add the question feature to your personal profile and page… You answer a question, and if you answer one then it will automatically appear on your personal profile and the pages that you admin. There is another less interesting way, go to www.facebook.com/questions and add it. Below is what your page and profile will look like with the QUESTION option between STATUS and PHOTO.

You can use the Question option to ask a question that either has open ended responses, has options for people to choose from or both.

I think this new Question feature is great. It gets rid of the need to add polls to your page, if you have used any Polls app’s you would know that to answer them it takes you away from the Facebook page to a crazy polls page (with annoying ads). Whereas, this Questions feature is a pop up window on the Facebook page (if that is where you are answering on it), and therefore you don’t lose people from your page.

When you ask a question on your Facebook page it can be shared with friends, people can comment on the question and most importantly it is a great way to engage your audience. Your page likers can also vote or give an opinion on a question in their personal newsfeed without leaving the newsfeed, as they do when writing a comment.

This question feature could be used to:

• Find out what your audience like or dislike about your product/service.
• Get an opinion on a new idea or name.
• Find out what they want on your page.
• Ask what they would like to see on sale.
• Get ideas for a blog post.
• Find out what your audience are into.
• See what they are up to this weekend.
• Find out who their favourite celeb is.
• Just have some fun – if people have fun with your page they remember you!

So, go get started. If you have used Questions already I’d love to know your thoughts in the comments.

Lara Solomon is the founder of Mocks, mobile phone socks www.MyMocks.com, founder of Social Rabbit – your guide in the world of social media www.Facebook.com/SocialRabbit and author of ‘Brand New Day – the Highs & Lows of Starting a Small Business’. Lara’s business LaRoo was the winner of the NSW Telstra Micro-Business Award in 2008.