Social Media

How To Use Facebook Questions To Increase Fan Engagement

image from www.google.com Facebook recently released Facebook Questions, a new feature which allows users to harness the power of the crowd – the crowd of course, being their social network. Using Facebook Questions, users can poll their friends on everything from the best Mexican restaurant in their neighborhood to their favorite American Idol contestant. But how can an artist effectively use Facebook Questions?

The feature was designed to create a more personalized recommendation system than perhaps, Yelp, Yahoo! Answers, or Quora, because the opinions are coming from people who already know you – but there’s a great potential here in how artists can use Facebook Questions to engage fans and gain valuable feedback. It’s also another tool for promotion – every time a fan answers a question, their activity, as well as a link to your Facebook page, is displayed on their wall, spreading the word to their friends.

How Artists Can Use Facebook Questions:

  • Let fans contribute to the creative process: Artists can poll fans on potential album titles, song titles, tracklistings, album artwork, songs to play live, or songs to cover. Allowing fans to have a say in the production process or live show not only retains fan attention, but also shows fans that you respect their input.
  • Use Facebook Questions as a research tool: What do your fans want from you? Find out by polling them on their favorite songs or albums. Plan your next tour by asking your fans what cities they’re located in. Find out what other artists they like. Discover who your fans really are, and what they’re looking for.
  • Receive personalized recommendations from your fans: Artists are people too. We all want to know where we can get an amazing slice of pizza, who makes the best cocktails, or which music venues are the best – this can be especially helpful when touring in a new city, and can show how much you value your fans opinions. 
  • Using Facebook Questions to give fans stake in the creative process of their favorite artists increases loyalty and engagement. The feature can also give artists insight to what their audiences actually want, allowing them to get to know their fans better and improve the artist-to-fan relationship. And by harnessing the power of your fans, you’re not only promoting yourself, but your promoting your fans as well.

Alison McCarthy is a Brooklyn-based writer who focuses on the intersection of music, technology, and community. She’s a second-year graduate student of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. You can follow @aliiimac on Twitter.

Bruce Houghton on 04/15/2011 in Social Media | Permalink | Comments (4)
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4 Comments

  1. I agree that FB questions are potentially valuable when it comes to giving fans input on low level decisions about output (“Which Song Should We Cover Next?,” e.g.), but I think that giving fans a “stake” in the creative process is riskier than you’re making it out to be.

  3. I hope that last person was being sarcastic. The artists aren’t writing the music, but just getting the offer to be a part of the band’s life. It gives the artist better insight when you’re making decisions like where and what to play, and a conversation on Facebook with a random person may make the difference between them forgetting they stumbled upon you or becoming a huge fan and promoting you for free/attending shows/buying your sh*t.
    The only problem is that this is yet another way to reward the super fan, but the people who like the music but aren’t “super fans” are being totally neglected. Artists used to get revenue from people who might buy 1 album or see them once, but the connection to those people has been lost, and additional revenue and engagement from the crazy super fans isn’t going to make up for it. Or will it?

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