Recently, my blog has been asking people to participate in different polls we do on our Facebook page and I made the decision to send the question to all of my own Facebook friends. After the fifth question I sent out, I was asked by a friend to stop sending him the poll question because he only uses Facebook for social purposes. I obviously adhered to his request, but found it interesting that he would ask me to stop doing but the previous five months of sharing two articles a day from my site was okay. That means that he endured five months of links to the blog, 300 articles in total, but five Facebook questions, once a week, were too much. What is the difference?
Do not mix up the idea that sharing links that someone can ignore and asking for interaction directly with Facebook Questions is the same thing. They are completely different.
Requesting Is Different Than Suggesting
When we provide a link to a recent blog post or a funny video of cats playing the piano, we are offering a suggestion. This means that they can politely and quickly skim over our suggestion and move on to the boy they are stalking or the latest friend’s debate on a football game that just happened. But when we share a Facebook Question that asks for their opinion and shows the question with options, we are in fact asking for their participation and makes it less fun for them to skip over.
You might be asking why I am bringing this up, who cares if we offer suggestions or request their opinion. The difference is that ignoring a suggestion is guilt-free whereas ignoring my request brings about a little irritation that I may be bugging them and even a brief moment of them evaluating if it is worth being a fan of my Facebook Page. Combining guilt, irritation, and a reevaluation of committing to your page once in a while (a month or more) is one thing, but as I found out the hard way, even a question a week becomes spam in many peoples’ eyes.
Short Term Success Does Not Mean Long Term Success
Marketing techniques to increase participation looks great on the stats in the short term. You can increase the reach of your Facebook page by 1000% and get your name out there. But too much in a short time (and that term too much is very subjective) can lead to a long-term lose of fans and views. When coming up with the strategy of how you plan to use social media to promote what you have say, share, or sell, do so wisely and think about how you would react if someone did what you are going to do to yourself.
Would you be annoyed at the frequency of requests or shared links you are putting out there?
If the answer is yes, you might want to cut back a bit.
Ben Miller says
I have to agree with your friend. When you use the “Ask Friends” feature, it doesn’t just post to your Wall; it gives them a Notification, which requires action and is much different than simply sharing a post on your wall, which shows up their Facebook Feed and easily ignored.
Something that we all need to keep in mind with various blogs that we write is that not all of our Facebook Friends will be interested in the content in our blogs.
If your Friends were interested in your Page, they would Like your Page. Then they would see the Questions in their Feed. (For all you know, some of your Friends may have set their Facebook Feeds to hide all of the Page posts you’ve shared on your personal Wall.) To force a Notification onto every one of your Friends who do not Like your page can easily be seen as spam. He tolerated it for 5 weeks, after which he realized that you weren’t going to stop and he needed to say something. His choices were to drop you as a Friend or ask you to stop spamming him with unwanted Notifications.
Jeremy Smith says
Thanks for the comment. Some things you have to learn the hard way because no precedent has been set yet. I agree that there is a clear line that needs to be drawn and hence why recommending questions is off the list now…
Joanna says
I think what you are linking to/asking about makes a big difference as to how much of a problem it is likely to be. Some things I have no problems clicking no on. Others, such as questions about touchy ethical/moral issues put me in a frustrating position. I don’t want to look like I don’t care by clicking ignore, but nether do I think facebook is a helpful place for me to share my opinions. Some friends have been so insistent as to send me personal messages requesting that I respond to their polls or reshare their content on ethical/moral issues. It is also kinda awkward clicking ignore on charity related facebook requests because I don’t want to look heartless
Jeremy Smith says
Definitely agree. At the same time, all of my questions were either about social media or the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.
Joanna says
If that is what they were about, it doesn’t seem that reasonable for people to get angsty about infrequently asked questions
Jeremy Smith says
You’d think so. That is the difference between suggesting and requesting.