5 rules for soliciting feedback on social media

While useful for distributing content, social media is also an opportunity to learn more about your audience. Here’s how to listen for what consumers are saying.

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One of the best ways to grow your audience is by getting social media feedback.

It will give people the feeling that you’re imbedded in a community, and it will give you ideas for what you should talk about to keep your audience engaged.

So how do you get people to respond to your questions, ideas and queries? Here are five rules for getting more participation:

1. Ask for it.

While you may well already be asking for feedback, what you might not have considered is how you should ask. PR pros and brand managers have this tendency on social media to ask people broadly. When you do that, the sociopsychological phenomenon of the diffusion of responsibility takes place.

The larger a group of people, the less responsible individuals in that group will feel for requests of assistance. This is why, when there is an accident, you’re more likely to get helped when there is only one person there rather than a big group. It’s also why you won’t get the participation you want if you ask everyone as a group.

To avoid this problem, all you need to do is direct your question at specific people, instead of at the audience in general.

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