Whether you need fresh ideas for your blog or want to strike up conversations with your social media followers, questions can provide you with a wealth of potential content. For example, if you regularly receive the same questions from your customers, it’s likely that others have those same questions. By writing a blog post or starting a social media conversation around those questions, you are performing a valuable service. Not only that, many users perform search engine searches in the form of a question. By including questions in your blog, your posts could be served up as the answer! Below are a few different ways that you can use questions and answers in social media.

• Create a Blog Post Around a Question – By asking a question in a blog post, all you need to do is answer it. However, don’t just answer the question; go on to explain your reasoning. Give the blog post some depth. The options here are numerous. For example, you could ask, “Which is better: Choice A or B?” and then compare and contrast two relevant options. You could also ask, “Why choose this product?” and then discuss the benefits of the project in question. You can use who, what, when, where, why, and how as you think of different ways to pose your questions.

• Create a Blog Post Around Several Related Questions – Another option is to include several related questions in a single blog post. For example, if you are writing a blog post about an upcoming product launch, you could use a Q&A format to answer questions such as “When will the product be released?” or “How can I pre-order the product?”

• Start a discussion – Ask probing or thought-provoking questions on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites to get your followers talking. Your questions can be directly related to your products and services (such as “What is your favorite part of owning ______?”), it can be focused on the problem your products and solutions solve (such as “What is the worst thing about _____?”), or it can be more general but of interest to your customer base.

• Ask your followers to help – Another option is to ask your followers to help with a difficult question. For example, you may receive questions that you can’t immediately answer on your own without doing some research. Why not give your followers the opportunity to share their expertise? This is a generous way to help others as well as show some humility and that you are not a know-it-all.

Start keeping track of the questions you receive. They’re potential blog posts and social media discussions! In addition to creating engaging discussions on your blog and social media sites, you can use your newly created blog posts in the future when someone emails you that same question. Simply respond with a brief answer and include a link to the blog post for more detail.