I suppose I would consider this to be a type of cheating at social media, if there ever was such a thing: posting a question that has nothing to do with your brand or your company in the hopes of spurring conversation.
If not “conversation” per se, then at least comments and impressions, right?
These sorts of bait questions — name an X that does not have the letter __ in its name — have been showing up more and more recently from pages in my Facebook feed. Sometimes they are status updates, but in the past few days they seem to have received upgrades to become images.
(And as [all the social media marketers will tell you][2], [it’s better to publish images][1] than text because [images are more shareable][7].)
I am not above doing [a][3] [few][4] [things][5] on social media simply for the sake of getting comments. I know the things I post are not always newsworthy, but sometimes, when the news isn’t local or particularly interesting, I think it’s OK to post something entertaining. It keeps people on your page or at least with your brand longer, and that, I think, is the path toward loyal readers.
However, I do at least try to post things that I come up with, not just images and ideas reused from other pages.
Seriously, with the proliferation of these eerily similar bait questions in my news feed, I have to wonder whether there isn’t some great big website like the [Meme Generator][meme] where people can just download images designed to share on their Facebook pages.
And no, I’m not talking about Buzzfeed. I mean a place specifically designed to cater to the lazy social media manager.
[1]: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/master-facebook-edgerank/
[2]: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/6-tips-to-enhance-your-facebook-page-with-photos/
[3]: https://www.facebook.com/dailychronicle/posts/10151477565425874
[4]: https://www.facebook.com/dailychronicle/posts/10151472502660874
[5]: https://www.facebook.com/dailychronicle/posts/10151472493405874
[meme]: http://memegenerator.net/
[7]: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33800/Photos-on-Facebook-Generate-53-More-Likes-Than-the-Average-Post-NEW-DATA.aspx