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15 Types of Engaging Social Media Questions to Ask Your Audience

ByLindsey Miller

Engagement is a significant driver of success on any social media platform because it helps tell the algorithm that your content matters. It also signals to other users that your business is worth talking about. Finally, and maybe most importantly, it allows you to enter into dialogue with your customers. 

But what are the best ways to encourage engagement? Questions are a great place to start because they foster conversation and, if used effectively, can generate excitement about your brand. If you want to get started today, this post explains 15 types of engaging social media questions to help get the wheels turning. 

Reasons to Ask Questions on Social Media

Users are much more likely to engage with your content if you ask them questions. Doing so also helps foster community around your business and makes users feel involved.

Asking Questions: 

  • Increases Engagement. Asking users to vote, fill in the blank, give suggestions, or respond with their experience can help drive engagement across all platforms. You also can adjust the questions and their formatting to work for any social media post — from tweets to reels to stories.
  • Expands Your Audience. When engagement with your content reaches a significant level, the different social media algorithms start to notice, and your content gets promoted more. This promotion results in more people seeing your content and an expanded audience. Another way to expand your audience is by asking users to tag a friend in their response to your question or share the post with their friends to see what they think.
  • Compiles Customer Data. Asking questions about product features, brand impressions, and customer frustrations can help you get powerful, meaningful insight into your audience. You can also gain insight into their location, preferences for shopping, and influences.
  • Improves Awareness of Customer Satisfaction. Incorporating questions into your social media strategy can also give you valuable insight into customer satisfaction. These can be closed or open-ended questions, a rating scale, or something simple like whether they’d repurchase the product. 

Types of Questions to Ask

When formulating your questions for social media, remember the type of data you want. Different types of questions foster different responses. Here are some examples:

  • Closed-Ended Questions. These questions have only two possible answers – either “yes” or “no” or “true” or “false.” The data from these questions is easy to read and analyze, but it isn’t hearty.
  • Open-Ended Questions. These questions are the opposite of closed questions and invite users to respond in detail. These questions are where real conversations start to develop, and you can really have a back-and-forth with users. 
  • Funnel Questions. These are a series of questions that can either start broad and then become more narrow or vice versa. Either way, they get your customer to express their thoughts more openly. 
  • Opinion Questions. These questions invite users to share their opinions, usually about future possibilities. They can look like, “What features would you like to see added?”, “How can we improve our customer service?”, or “What brand partnerships would you like to see?”.
  • Rhetorical Questions. You can use these questions to highlight a particular idea or principle. They don’t typically require a response. You can use them to illustrate certain features of your product or service. Some examples would include, “Don’t you wish you had a marketing assistant that could take just one task off your plate a day?” or “Don’t you wish it were easier to offer feedback on your favorite products?”. 

15 Specific Types of Engaging Social Media Questions to Ask

Utilizing social media questions in your marketing mix can help drive engagement and expand your audience. But what type of questions should you use? Here are some ideas.

  1. Quizzes. Quizzes are an entertaining and effective format if your product is highly customizable. It can help users figure out which product is best for them. You can also format it as a giveaway to see who knows your business or product best. 
  2. Polls. Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook all offer the poll option, which lets you select answers for users to choose from. These can be fun and lighthearted, or ask for feedback about your product.
  3. Share Your Story. This open-ended type of question asks users to share their experiences. It doesn’t only have to be about your product. Some examples include their experiences navigating the healthcare industry, trying solo camping for the first time, or buying their first home.
  4. This or That Questions. These are closed questions that give users only two options to choose from. It could be two of your products, two organizational styles, something fun like a day at the beach or in the mountains, and more. 
  5. Visual Preferences. These questions utilize high-quality visuals and ask users to share their preferences. These types of questions are great if your product is visually appealing. 
  6. Contests. Contests are fun because users feel they’re getting something in return. Users often enter to win a prize in exchange for sharing or commenting on your content. 
  7. Trivia. This approach helps you gauge the user’s knowledge of your product and business. You can incorporate pieces about your business’s history, unique features of your product, or even just interesting trivia relevant to your industry.
  8. Ask Followers to Tag. Asking followers to tag their friends in the comment section or replies is a great way to grow your audience and start conversations. 
  9. Business Development Questions. These are typically open-ended questions that ask users to voice their opinions on your business development. It can include things like what section of the market they think you should pursue, whether you should focus more on in-person or remote events, and what type of products they’d like to see you produce. 
  10. Let Customers Ask the Questions. This tactic can be insightful because it lets users ask you anything. It helps illustrate their concerns or doubts about your business and shines a light on ideas for content you can release in the future.
  11. Fill-in-the-Blank. These questions are straightforward but can give you a lot of insight into customer satisfaction if used properly. 
  12. Multiple Choice. Multiple-choice questions allow you to select the answers that users will choose from. Use these to ask users about which product features are most important to them or what their impressions of your brand are. 
  13. Get to Know You. These questions can be incredibly useful because they allow you to get to know your audience. Including questions like where they’re from, their age range, and their experience with your product can give you valuable insight into your audience. 
  14. Holiday Questions. Asking questions about favorite holiday traditions, who on their list is hardest to shop for, and what gifts users are most hoping to receive is a great way to engage your audience around holidays. These types of questions help build a community around your brand or product as well. 
  15. Product-Related Questions. These questions give you detailed feedback about your product. It can ask users about their first impressions, what they did and didn’t like, what they’d improve, whether they’d buy it again, and more. 

Tips for Asking Social Media Questions

There are lots of options when it comes to asking questions on social media. You can take varied approaches. What’s most important is to try new things, analyze results, and make adjustments as necessary. 

When asking questions on social media, consider: 

  • Make Answering Easy. Leaving a comment, responding to a story, and answering a poll are easy ways for users to interact with your content. As much as possible, try to keep users on the app when they respond to your questions. Otherwise, they’ll likely get distracted or forget to respond.
  • Host a Live Q&A. These are great to do once you develop a small following and can advertise it beforehand. You can use these to talk about the features of a new product, give a behind-the-scenes look at life at headquarters, or talk about the latest industry news. When deciding what time to do your Live Q&A, it’s important to consider where most of your audience is from and when they would be most interested in tuning in. 
  • Select Relevant Topics and Trends. Stay current on your industry’s latest news and trends by following influencers, your competitors, and other relevant businesses. See what they’re talking about, join the conversation, or consider what’s being left out and start there. 
  • Use Photos and Graphics. Regardless of the platform, users tend to engage more with high-quality visuals and graphic content. These visuals can include fun submission pictures from followers using your product, graphics about how your product performs compared to competitors, or even a day in the life working at your business. Just make sure to have fun with it and be unique. 
  • Share Audience Answers. Sharing audience answers is a great way to make users feel involved in your process and grow a community around your business. You can ask followers to respond to your stories or share pictures or videos of themselves using your product. 

Let MYMA Ask the Questions

Using engaging social media questions in your social media strategy is a great way to grow your audience and build a community around your business. If you want to try this method but aren’t sure you have the time or resources to make it work, My Marketing Assistant is here to help. We take one marketing task off your plate a day and get it back to you in 24-48 hours. Contact us today to get started!