The 4 rules to post killer questions that go viral

by

Ascend 101

Lessons about building a one-person business, writing, and self-improvement

Last week I shared 10 Tweets to include in your content strategy.

One of those was the question tweet. I talked about how great they are for both engagements as well as market research about your audience.

And they are.

But not all questions are created equal. A question such as “What’s your favorite food?” won’t do well. I can assure you.

There are certain rules and guidelines to keep in mind when writing questions to your audience. Following these rules and guidelines will be the difference between struggling to get 5 likes and going viral without any problems.

Here are 4 things to keep in mind when creating question tweets:

1) Stay within your niche

This one should go without saying.

But don’t ask questions about food if your content is all about email marketing. Are you a personal trainer? Then by all means ask questions about food.

Asking questions that have nothing to do with you, your offer, or your audience is one of the ugliest sights there is.

People know what you’re doing. And people will lose respect for you.

There is one exception here, however. And that’s if you can relate the, seemingly unrelated, question to the type of content you usually create.

If you’re an email marketer and you’re able to use questions about people’s favorite foods as a way to illustrate market research and sales tactics. Then that’s fine.

But be aware of how you frame it. Your audience needs to be able to realize what you’re getting at.

2) Ask what’s on your mind

The best type of questions are those questions you’re genuinely thinking about yourself. Or questions you’ve asked yourself in the past.

Let’s take the food question again as an example. If you’re a person who just can’t be bothered thinking about food, let alone caring about what food other people like. Then why the hell would you ask about it?

On the other hand. If you’re passionate about movies and you talk about them all the time. Then please ask your audience questions about their taste in movies.

3) Constraints are key

You might think it smart to ask easy and open-ended questions. But you’d be severely mistaken. There’s nothing as bad as asking such questions.

Imagine if you came across a tweet that said, “What do you think about the importance of an email list?”

Yeah, I’m willing to bet you’re not going to respond to that one. But what would happen if instead, you posted, “In 5 words or less, what’s the #1 best thing about having an email list?”

Yeah, that one’s going to get answered. (In fact, I might even schedule this one)

But why is that?

Simple, people like a challenge. It’s fun to play a little game. Here the game is to answer the questions “in 5 words or less”.

Also, and no less important, I’m asking you about the ‘#1 best thing’, which is a lot more precise than “the importance of”.

The aim here is to:

  • Be specific

  • Make it fun

  • Challenge the reader

On that note, the “in 5 words or less” works wonders. But it’s being abused by everyone. Think about other ways you could make it challenging.

Be creative.

4) Use ‘either-or’ questions

This one isn’t as much of a rule as it is a useful trick to know.

But it’s one hell of a cheat code.

It’s the “either-or” question.

I mentioned how important it is to be specific. Broad open-ended questions are difficult to pull off. The fewer choices people have to answer—the less they have to think about their answer—the more likely you’ll be to get a response. And the better your tweet will perform.

So an easy trick is to only give them 2 choices:

  • If you could only have 1, would you rather have financial freedom or time freedom?

  • You only have 5 hours a week, would you spend your time doing outreach or posting content to get clients?

There are only 2 possible answers to both questions. But there’s a lot of room open to interpretation and reasoning behind those choices.

This is the ideal scenario because people will answer very quickly, but there’s a huge possibility of big discussions. Something that can easily make your content go viral.

P.S. Whenever you’re ready. Here’s how I can help you:

  1. Hop on a Clarity Call with me: Remove all of your uncertainty. Get clear on what you have to do, when you have to do it, and how. Let’s get you on the right track to achieving the freedom you deserve.

  2. Check out my products (free & paid): Ranging from every resource I ever read to everything I know about content creation. It’s all waiting for you to claim it. Start your journey to financial freedom the right way.

P.P.S. Once in a while I post my tech stack.
For those interested, these are all the tools I use:
(These are affiliate links, so if you sign up, I'll get a small referral bonus.)

  1. Beehiiv for my newsletter: One of the biggest, easiest, and best providers for people wanting to build their newsletter. A logical choice to make with its abundance of integrated solutions for easy growth. (e.g., an integrated referral program)

  2. Tweethunter for everything Twitter: From scheduling tweets to gathering inspiration and engaging with others. TweetHunter has everything you need if you’re serious about building your business on Twitter.

  3. Carrd to build my landing pages: You’re building a business. You need simple and effective landing pages for your funnels. Carrd is an easy-to-use website builder that does exactly that.

  4. Testimonial to gather testimonials: Simply drop your clients a link where they can leave a testimonial. Gather everything in one place. And embed it on your landing pages as you wish.