Tod Maffin shows how to use Facebook Questions, a poll feature for brand pages, to drive viral reach. Keep polls to 2-3 answers, link to known Facebook entities to make options clickable, and avoid adding more than four choices since extras hide behind a "See More" link. Each vote appears on voters' timelines, bypassing privacy settings and spreading organically.
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One of the most useful tools for getting your brand out there on Facebook is actually one of the least used. It's called Facebook Questions. Kind of a bad name. What it really means is a poll. Now, what I'm about to show you will only work on your brand page or your fan page. It will not work on personal profiles. A poll essentially, or Facebook Questions as they call it, gives people a very simple question and a number of options for them to vote. Here's why it's really important, is that as soon as they vote, their vote automatically gets posted on their timeline and distributed on the newsfeed of their friends. And here's something else you should know that's especially important for virality: even if they have their profile set so that only friends can see their posts, the one piece of content that sneaks through are their votes on polls. So it's incredibly viral. Let me show you how to get at it. First of all, I should say, as I tape this, this is what it looks like on Facebook. Facebook always changes its user interface, it seems, every week or so, so it may be found under a different location. But right now, Facebook Questions can be found in the status box under "Offer an Event." Click it and select "Question." Now here, type in the question you want to ask. I recommend putting the word "QUICK POLL" in capital letters because remember people will be seeing this on their newsfeed. You're gonna wanna catch their eye. Short bursts of all capital letters with things that stand out to them— "QUICK POLL" for instance— does catch people's eyes. So who would win in an arm wrestling competition? Don't make the mistake of clicking "post" right now. We want to add options for people to vote on. Because if we just said "Who would win in an arm wrestling competition?" people will fill in their own answers. Other people will vote on those answers, and it can kind of run away with, with the, with your question. So instead, come down here and click Add Poll Options. And now type in the options you want to make as far as all of these go. You can add really any number of these. I've seen things with 5 or 10 poll options, but remember, after the fourth option that it displays, people have to click a See More button Those that are below that fold, below the "see more" link, often don't get the same number of votes simply because it's biased that way. Add the options. I recommend only 2 or 3. We'll do Mr. Dressup for one. You'll notice that if it is something that Facebook knows about, it'll offer to link it. That's the right Mr. Dressup. I will select it. I'll also type in the Friendly Giant. By the way, if these references mean nothing to you, you probably didn't grow up in Canada. This is a TV show, so I'm gonna select this, Friendly Giant. You don't have to automatically— you don't have to pick an option. You can just type in whatever you want. For instance, you could type in something like that, and of course it won't link to anything because it doesn't exist in Facebook. Here's something very important: by default, Facebook has this checked, which says "Allow anyone to add options," which means that even though you've added the two you want, Mr. Dressup and Friendly Giant, Anyone can come along here after your poll runs and start adding additional options— the word "pie" or "dog" or "my pants"— and questions get hijacked that way. So in almost all instances, I recommend you turn this checkbox off. If you want to, you can promote this post, spend some money to get it in front of the newsfeed of people who already like your page or are friends, but I just click the post button. And this is what it looks like. Now, this particular page I'm testing this on for you in this video has got about 87,000 people who like this page, so it's not gonna be long before we start to get some results. And I'll refresh the page in just a moment to show you how quickly they can come in. But remember, the reason this is so viral and why it's one of the most overlooked and really useful tools is that when people click a response, not only does it show up in the poll on your brand page, it also shows up on their timeline, even if they have set their page— their profile rather— to completely private. Their votes on Facebook Questions, these little poll questions, go through. They're always public. So it's an incredibly viral tool. Alright, so this has been up for about 30 seconds or so. I'm gonna refresh the page and we'll notice that we've probably got a few votes coming in already. So here's to decrypt it, what this is, is running. So far, 156 people have seen this post, and we can tell from the bars— notice the blue bar on the Friendly Giant is a little bit further over than Mr. Dressup— that means it has more votes. And if we hover over them, over to the right, we can see how many people actually voted for them. Now, if a friend of yours votes on your poll, you will actually see their photograph in a little tiny window right here. If you want to, you can click on that and find out who the people are who voted for that option. Or I'll go down to the Friendly Giant, click on +5, and see who the people are that voted for the Friendly Giant.
