If your social media presence is feeling a little stale lately, it might be time to hold a Q&A session to engage your followers, share some insight into your brand, and provide fresh content that is driven by the interests of your audience.
You might have heard the expression “Ask Me Anything,” commonly abbreviated as AMA. This is actually a branded prompt that started on Reddit, but it has since migrated to other online platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Everyday individuals and businesses alike are opening up the floor for their online friends to ask them anything and they’ll commit to answering it.
If you decide to participate and answer a few questions, there are a few ways you can go about doing it. Don’t worry — it doesn’t need to feel as intimidating as it sounds.
First, decide what your topic will be.
If you have a new product or service that you want to talk about, you could encourage questions relating specifically to that.
But if you just want the chance to talk about your brand, don’t hesitate to hold an open-ended Q&A (this could be especially good if you’re a newly established business or if you’re celebrating a milestone anniversary). Encourage questions from your followers on any subject — ideally, they’ll be related to your business, but there will always be a few jokesters who decide to go off topic. You’ll have to decide how you want to handle those. After all, you did say people could ask you anything, and even if the topic is completely unrelated to your business, it’s still a chance for you to show off your brand’s values and get a little bit personable. If they ask you, “What’s your favorite type of doughnut?” you shouldn’t feel compelled to ignore the question. Provide a witty response, and find a way to tie it back in with your business if you can. The whole point of a Q&A session is to get away from the talking points that you usually exercise and instead focus on what your followers want to hear.
And if you do hold an open-ended Q&A session and receive questions specifically related to your business and brand, you’ll gain better insight into what your followers want to know and what catches their attention about what you offer.
Decide who will do the answering.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be the owner or manager who answers the questions. In some cases, you might have an entry-level employee or an intern who just has a great personality for the camera. It might be your marketing manager who knows how best to address awkward questions. Whoever is answering should be prepared with thorough knowledge of important talking points, and they should sound comfortable and confident in their delivery. You can go over a plan beforehand on how to handle questions you don’t have a suitable answer for or any negativity that might arise.
Choose your platform.
Figure out which platform will be best for the Q&A session. Facebook and Twitter both have options for live video streams, but you can’t go live on both platforms at once. For Facebook, your live video can be saved and published to your timeline after you’re finished. Instagram’s live video stream can be published to your story and will be available for the next 24 hours.
Although Twitter doesn’t have a live video option, you can still receive questions and answer them in real time via text. If you go this route, make sure your tweets sound personable, not overly stilted or formal. This will encourage more people to open up to you.
Promote, promote, promote.
You want to let people know well ahead of time that you’re doing this so they have the opportunity to tune in. Set a date and time when you know most of your followers will be available and online. You can also solicit questions from people in advance so you have a few to answer while your Q&A session is warming up. Having lots of people tuned in will prevent any lags or dead spots where you don’t receive any questions during your live broadcast.
Encourage questions in real time.
Yes, you might solicit questions ahead of time, but the real fun will be when people watch your live stream and start posting their own questions in the comments section. Fortunately, if you’re using the front-facing camera on your phone, you’ll see the comments pop up at the bottom of your screen and you can address them one by one. If you have more interest than you anticipated, you might not have time to answer all the questions. But you can hit as many talking points as possible and let everyone know that you’ll do another Q&A session soon. If there’s enough interest, you could even make it a weekly activity.