Social media in general has had a large and everlasting impact on the world as a whole — 58% of marketers have stated that social media has increased their sales. Buzzfeed is one of the more popular social media sites out there. So what made Buzzfeed so popular and how could you implement it into your marketing strategy?
Social media quizzes.
As one of the three most underrated pieces of content available, social media quizzes have somehow stayed under the radar for so many marketers, even though several brands have implemented quizzes in their marketing strategy to help boost both revenue and lead generation.
Interact has helped more than 10,000 brands create over 25,000 quizzes so we know what it takes to create an effective social media quiz. Here’s a short step-by-step guide to help you create your own social media quiz.
Step 1: Pick The Right Kind Of Quiz
Before you choose what type of quiz you want to make, it’s a good idea to come up with a title for it first. Once you have a particularly enticing title in mind, we can move onto the kind of quiz you want to create.
Quizzes usually fall under two different types:
The Personality Quiz – This type of quiz categorizes the audience into personality types based on their answers. From a marketer’s viewpoint, you could create a quiz that places people into personality types and offer personalized product recommendations tailored to each person based on the answers given during the quiz.
The Knowledge Test – This type of quiz gauges the level of knowledge someone has on a given subject and delivers results based on accuracy. As a marketer, you can use this type of quiz as a way to challenge what your audience knows about your brand, its products, or even a popular trending topic.
Step 2: Come Up With The Perfect Questions
After you’ve picked your title and what type of quiz you want to create, it’s time to move onto the questions. The questions for your quiz will allow you to establish a one-on-one connection with your audience. Use this as an opportunity to introduce your brand to your audience, and to build a level of comfort and trust.
Here are several things to keep in mind when creating the perfect questions:
Add A Pinch Of Personality – This almost sounds like a cooking show, doesn’t it? Don’t be afraid to put a bit of personality into your questions. What we mean by this is, approach your audience as if you were talking to them in person. Make it personal. This creates a more relaxed tone for the quiz and builds that trust between your brand and the audience.
A Handful Of Images Can Help – Text-only questions are acceptable depending on the type of quiz you want to create, but it’s a good idea to include some images with your questions. The inclusion of pictures can really set your quiz apart, and can instantly transform it from a quiz, into a trivia game. How fun!
Simplicity Is Sweet, Keep Things Short – When it comes to social media, people like things at a nearly instantaneous speed, so what makes you think they’ll have more than five minutes to allocate to a quiz? Try to aim for 6 to 8 questions so that your quiz takes no longer than 2-3 minutes to take.
Step 3: Designing An Effective Lead Capture
Before giving our audience their results, we’re going to ask for their contact information through a lead capture form. This is how your social media quiz will generate its leads and grow your email list through the capture form gating your quiz.
How to optimize your lead capture’s opt-in rate:
Sweeten The Deal With Incentives – Although it’s an even exchange between quiz results and contact information, try to promise value to your audience by offering incentives like a free ebook or an entry to a free giveaway.
Provide A Friendly Reminder – It’s not the hardest thing to remember, but sometimes people forget that they opted-in, so give your audience a little nudge by reminding them that you’ll be contacting them after they opt in.
Only Ask For What’s Necessary – There’s no need to ask for every bit of contact information from someone. For example, unless we’re cold-calling, we don’t necessarily need someone’s phone number. Try to limit your contact information requests to what you will be using.
Step 4: Delivering Share-Worthy Results For Social Media
You’re almost done. It’s time to work on the results. Your results are just as important as the rest of the quiz. We want to make sure you create results that your audience will share via social media. Who knows? Maybe your quiz might go viral. It all depends on how you set up your results.
Here are a couple of things to keep in mind when creating share-worthy results:
Invoke Positive Emotions To Promote Sharing – Apparently positive emotions induce sharing, so why not evoke those positive emotions by complimenting your audience? Just be sure you’re honest about your compliments, don’t lie.
Utilize Captivating Images To Grab Attention – This is relatively important. As much as we emphasized the use of images in your questions, the images you choose for your results are crucial. This is what others will seen when shared across social media.
Let’s Recap What We’ve Learned
And that’s it! Through four simple steps, you learned how to pick out what type of quiz you want to make, how to create the most effective questions, how to increase the chances of your audience opting in through the lead capture, and how to design results worth sharing. So if you’re interested in using social media to help boost your brand, consider using quizzes as your gateway.
JP Misenas is the Content Marketing Director & Audio/Visual Technician/Engineer of Interact, a place for creating entertaining and engaging quizzes that generate email leads. He writes about innovative ways to connect with customers and to build professional long-lasting relationships with them.