Want to have thousands of new users visiting your blog? Want to have more comments and likes on your article? There’s a quick and easy way to make your site more popular and all it takes is 5 seconds, every time you write a post. Want to know the secret?
Ask A Question With Every Post
The secret is to simply ask a question each time you share your article via your Facebook Page. If you don’t have a Facebook Page for your site, you can set one up in a few minutes by going here. Every time you write a post on your blog you should share it on your Facebook Page, however rather than just sharing the article, try asking a question. The question doesn’t always have to be related to the article itself. There are a number of benefits from asking a question, however here are 3 primary benefits:
Greater Engagement Leads To More Exposure
One of the most important benefits from simply asking a question is that it increases engagement and it provides you with a higher “post quality” rating. According to Facebook, “The Post Quality score measures how engaging your Posts have been to Facebook users over a rolling seven-day window.” What most people don’t realize is that this post quality impacts the visibility of your feed stories. If a post has a large volume of replies and likes, it tends to get better placement in your fans’ news feeds.
Increasing this score should increase the likelihood that your future posts will end up with better placement in each user’s news feed.
More Clicks On Your Articles
Better placement in the news feed means that you’ll also get more clicks on your feed stories. In other words, there’s no reason that you shouldn’t be asking at least one question with your posts. Also, keep in mind that some of the best questions are those that require a simple “Yes” or “No” from your fans. People don’t have a ton of free time (even though they’re spending much of it on Facebook), so make it easy for them to respond with a short response.
A Greater “Share Count” On Your Articles
Want to have a post that goes viral? The first step to accomplishing that is making the blog post appear viral to begin with. Did you know that the “share count” which appears next to likes and share buttons is not actually the number of times that article was shared? It’s actually the sum total of the following: the number of comments on the story + the number of likes + the number of shares. Yes, you read that right. The number of comments and the number of likes impacts your overall share count.
The more popular your blog posts appear, the more likely that they will be shared by others. A quick way to instantly inflate the number of shares or likes on a post is to ask a question and get people to respond to that question. That comment count will then be included in your share count. I see too many professional blogs that aren’t taking advantage of this feature, and to be honest, it’s simply being lazy.
Conclusion
It only takes 5 seconds to ask your fans a question and to get them engaged. If you think you don’t have time to ask a question, then think again. Increasing engagement can also increase the rate of growth of your Facebook Page. It will also help you end up in the feeds of more of your fans. While you can let your Facebook Page stagnate like the majority of Facebook Pages, why not take an extra 5 seconds to share that article you spent 30 minutes (or more) on? It will provide lasting value.
How about using 2 (or more) like buttons as voting buttons? You could ask a question and have readers vote on it. Each answer would have it’s own like button. This way whether or not they agreed with the post, it is still a like.
Eg:
Do you believe in UFOs?
Yes [Like]
No [Like]
or
Which colour do you like the most?
Red [Like]
Blue[Like]
Yellow [Like]
I can’t say that it works on my blog about Share Count aggregator. The Likes of the stories are not added to the overall share count for example.
Nick
I like you tips and ready to go in my personal blog and others blog that I have.
b/rgs
Frank
Thanks Nick - that makes so much sense for the little extra time. What’s the best to way to elicit a response - using the like button as in Sean’s comment.
Thanks, Jenny.
I guess you should solicit a comment with the vote as well “Which is your favourite colour? What shade?”.
great tip. I noticed a few years back that instead of “Leave a comment” on the Lockergnome sites it said “What Do You Think?” - and people often answer the question too. Never thought about whether they meant to or not.
I’m going to be trying this and I’ll let u know how it goes.
So I guess I shouldn’t be using RSS Graffiti to update my page automatically via RSS?
Well great tips ever seen and i will definitely implement it on my fan page and lets see how it will impact. Also I believe that this is fantastic technique to attract the attention of visitors rather then just posting links.
ok..i’ll try this..let’s see what comes up
The problem is not to ask questions, or not just to create a post is to know how to do it to engage your audience.
Clients, fans, and the audience in general reply to the simple questions and in some cases they are unexpected. It´s important to ask questions but it´s more interesting to listen to the answers.
Awesome post.
It just couldn’t be more simple.
Unless of course you have another 5 second idea.
Would you like to share it?
The Franchise King®
Most of my blog posts have a question and as yet my audience is uncomfortable leaving a comment. But they are more open to the idea of answer a question on the Facebook Fan Page.
I personally find it annoying to see the top feeds as a wall post with a big list of yeps and I agree. I don’t treat that is engagement but noise.
Thanks for the great advice. I’ll definitely be using these tips for my Facebook page.
It’s clear Dave has a very dismissive attitude towards my blog - especially when I criticise his claims. But why? Seems that my readership plays a big part.
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http://jirisram.blogspot.com
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enjoyed the facebook article. Thanks
My only question is, what if no one responds to your question? To me, it makes your site look unintersting and boring. Would you suggest I just keep asking questions until somebody finally answers?
Doesn’t this assume that your Facebook settings are set for maximum exposure to the world? If you merely use Facebook for friends, family and reconnecting with high-school chums, sending your blog posts to FB is not exactly going to blow your popularity through the roof, and may actually have the effect (depending on the frequency of your posts) of annoying those friends who logically conclude that you are spamming them for marketing purposes. While I’ve shared a few of my blog entries on Facebook, I usually only post the ones I think are at least marginally funny.
Do you have to use Facebook comments to get this bigger share count total?
Great info thanks.
It is a Good article before reading that i had no idea that if you put a Question when you share make your blog rating good will try that