I got called out for my basic 'ask me anything' prompts at a local meetup

At a creator meetup in Austin last month, I showed my usual AMA setup. Someone bluntly said, 'Your questions are so generic, you'll only get generic answers.' They were right. I was just asking 'what do you want to know?' I changed it to giving three specific, weird starter options, like 'ask about my failed bakery idea' or 'the time I got lost in Rome.' My response rate went up by like 60% in a week. Has anyone else found that making your own prompts weirder gets people to actually engage?

4 comments

4 Comments

tessap733mo ago

Wait, is this really a big deal though? I just ask what people wanna know and get some answers, it's not that deep lol. I guess @butler.laura has a point about the weird details, but sometimes I just can't be bothered to think that hard about it.

butler.laura3mo ago

Totally. It's like giving people a menu instead of asking them to invent a dish. I started doing something similar on my long drives, telling stories about weird truck stop finds or that one time my load shifted in a crazy way. People latch onto the specific, weird detail. "What's your favorite road?" gets nothing. "What's the strangest thing you've seen at 3 AM in Nebraska?" gets a flood of replies. You have to hand them the first weird brick to build with.

hall.jenny3mo ago

Found the same thing works for asking about hobbies. Asking "what do you do for fun" is a dead end, but asking about the weirdest thing someone's ever built or collected gets stories flowing. You're right, @butler.laura, you have to give them that first odd piece to work with. It turns a question into a conversation starter.

brooket4318d ago

Hand them the first weird brick to build with" is spot on. I tried it at a family reunion last summer when nobody was talking. Instead of "how's everyone been" I asked "what's the most useless skill you've picked up since 2020." My uncle went off about how he can now identify every type of cloud by heart because he got into weather watching during lockdown. My cousin chimed in about being able to peel a whole apple in one strip. It was ridiculous and hilarious and we talked for an hour. You just have to give people that one weird, specific door to walk through.