Facebook has evolved over the years and has made significant changes in how page admins can access their Facebook business pages and even provided a specialized mobile app that makes it easy for social engagement. So why is it that so many questions posted on business pages go unanswered?
In a recent report by Quintly, a social analytics provider, it discovered that more than 50% of questions posted onto business pages remain unanswered. The staggering number came from a study of 91,000 pages across the social network. This was a shocking discovery, even for our digital agency, considering the value that Facebook and other social networks put on responding to people in your community. It’s not just an expectation of those that follow and engage on your page, but Facebook, for example, integrates that into the overall health of the page.
Why do so many questions go unanswered?
Social Engagement Is More Than “Thank You’s”
For Facebook page admins, it’s easy to review the page and say the “thank you’s” to people who post on your page. For some its easy to answer the easy questions about products and services. But more often than not we’ve seen brands that don’t answer the tougher questions, or answer questions on posts that they consider “too old.”
One thing we know that is on social media, the world is literally a stage. Not only do other members of the community see your page actions, or lack of, but so do your competitors. The tough questions may require a little more finesse, but it’s important that you respond because if one person has the question, then someone else likely does. Also, just because you think a post may be “too old,” remember that for some, they are seeing a post for the first time.
Ways to Manage Social Engagement
The first recommendation we would make is to download the Facebook Pages mobile app that will give you direct access to your business page. Be sure that you allow for push notifications because you’ll want to be notified every time someone does something on your page: leave a comment, post a message, like a post, share a post, etc. If you’re on the go, you will get notifications and when you get some downtime, quickly check in and monitor what’s been going on.
The second recommendation, when possible, is to share the duties of monitoring your brand online. If you are capable sharing these duties, then there’s a higher chance that response time will be quicker, and fewer questions will remain unanswered. Whether your divide coverage by type of questions you both will answer, or perhaps you choose to divide coverage by time of day, it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is reducing and hopefully eliminating all the questions that remain hanging in the wind.
