Make Buzzfeed Like Viral Quizzes: Tips To Create Interactive Online Quiz For Your Website

Quizzes are a great way to boost user engagement on your website. Sites like Buzzfeed are already cashing by making fun and interactive quizzes that get tons of social media shares.

If you’re wondering how to make your own quizzes, today’s post is all about it. This post will walk you through the various steps required to design interactive quizzes that will drive traffic and boost sales on your blog.

As marketers, we employ various types of content with an aim to improve customer relationships/loyalties, boost engagement and raise brand awareness. These became some of the top content marketing goals for the year, and 32.3% of marketers already have a content marketing strategy in place.

It’s hard differentiating the effectiveness of one piece of content from another, and with our busy schedules, we don’t have the time to implement each and everyone type of content into our marketing strategy. So for time’s sake, what you want to know is what kind of content has been known to perform consistently well that you can implement into your marketing?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you should be relatively familiar with what circulates on social media networks. The kind of content we’re looking to utilize in our marketing strategy is something you may have come across at least once in your lifetime. You’ve probably even interacted with this piece of content but never considered using it from a marketing perspective, I mean, it is one of the most underrated types of content out there after all.

We’re talking about online quizzes.

Social media quizzes in general, have the innate ability to attract audiences and engage them in an entertaining level, and that’s just scratching the surface. Underneath, these quizzes, when applied to a marketing strategy, can increase brand awareness, generate leads and drive revenue. I am sure you’ve seen how your facebook feed is loaded with random quiz results shared by people. BuzzFeed leads the pack by creating super shareable quizzes. By the numbers, Buzzfeed’s viral quizzes have helped it to drive a massive traffic over the years. I’m sure that was enough to pique your interest, but why take my word for it?

Here at Interact, we’ve helped over 10,000 brands create over 25,000 quizzes, so saying we have a pretty good understanding of quizzes is an understatement. Today, we’ll be showing you how to create your own quiz for your marketing strategy, along with some of the best practices to make the most out of it.
After this step-by-step guide, even you might consider implementing quizzes as an interactive piece of content in your marketing.

Let’s jump right to it.

Step 1: Pick The Appropriate Title And Quiz Type

They say that 80% of readers gauge the worth of something by its title, and that’s quite a bit of pressure on you. So we’re here to give you several templates to choose from that have performed consistently with readers.

Choosing Your Title Template

• 1. The “Actually” Title – Did you know that including the word “actually” in your title can change an average question into a challenge? At that point, you’re trying to see how much someone actually knows about something in contrast to what they know in general. It really tests the boundaries of your audiences, and many are willing to rise up to the challenge.
     For example, the quiz titled “What career should you actually have” has over 5m shares is is one of the top viewed quizzes on BuzzFeed.
  2. The “Which (Blank) Are You?” Title – Have you ever wondered which Disney villain you most likely resemble? This one’s a classic. Because of human curiosity, sometimes we’re just dying to know what kind of ice cream flavor we are. They say curiosity killed the cat, but I say curiosity brings in the leads.
     For example, the quiz titled “What kind of dog are you” went viral in no time with over 3.7m shares.
  3. The “Celebrity Personality” Title – Take the “Which (Blank) Are You?” Title template and put a spin on it by replacing the (Blank) with a celebrity instead and you get this title template. This particular title resonates with more people because of the use of larger names, so if you’re trying to attract a broader audience, this one works just fine.
     For example, almost 77% of quizzes of Playbuzz quizzes that are shared 1m times or more are personality quizzes. It was a never a better time to bank on personality quizzes.

Once you have the title of your quiz all figured out, it’s time to think of the kind of quiz that you want to make. Quizzes generally fall under two types, which we’ll go over now.

Choosing Your Type Of Quiz

1. The Personality Quiz – Because of something called the“self-serving bias,” people generally like to hear good things about themselves. That’s what makes this type of quiz so effective. The personality quiz categorizes people into personality types that tend to compliment who they are based on the answers they gave during the quiz.
   From a marketing perspective, if you were a brand that places an emphasis on product sales, you could place individuals into categories that offers personalized product recommendations based on their answers. It personalizes the shopping experience and develops a closer connection with your customer base through the help of a quiz.
   For example, the color quiz is shared over 5m times.
2. The Knowledge Test – This is your basic right or wrong kind of quiz. You’ll come across the knowledge test frequently on social media, testing audiences on how much they know about a certain subject, then giving results based on accuracy. The knowledge test is a fun way to assess different audiences.
   As a marketer, you could use the knowledge test to assess employees in the workplace, or you could challenge the knowledge of your audience on how much they know about your brand, its products, or any other trending topic.

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Step 2: Craft Questions That Drive Engagement

After you’re settled on a title and the type of quiz you want to make, it’s time to get into the meat of the quiz. The questions are an important part of the quiz because it’s where you as a brand can establish a one-on-one connection with your audience. In a HuffPo post about what makes BuzzFeed quizzes viral, questions played a major role.
Here are a couple of guidelines to follow when coming up with your questions:

1. Become A Part Of Your Quiz – Literally, be a part of you quiz. Your quiz represents your brand, and you can’t let it do all of the work for you. Treat your questions as if you were talking to someone in person. This creates a more relaxed tone, and it helps the quiz-taker get comfortable with what your brand stands for. This really helps when it comes to encouraging your audience to join your mailing list later on.
2. Add Visual Elements To Your Quiz – When creating your questions, consider using images. Text-only quizzes are fine, but including pictures really adds a little something to the quiz. It gives your audience a higher entertainment value, and it also makes the quiz itself feel more like a trivia game.
3. Simplify The Quiz-Taking Process – People don’t have a lot of time on their hands like they used to, and their attention spans are pretty much on the same wavelength. Try to aim between having 6 to 8 questions on your quiz. This will usually take most people about 2-3 minutes to finish, which is just the right amount of time.

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Step 3: Create An Effective Lead Capture Funnel:

Once all of your questions are set up, it’s time to proceed to the lead capture. This is where we’ll create a form that asks your audience for their contact information in exchange for their results. The purpose of the lead capture form is to collect contact information so that you can grow an email list. Collecting these leads will allow you to reach out to them later via marketing automation.
Here are a few ways to increase the opt-in rate of your lead capture via Quizzes:

1. Promise Value To Your Audience – Although we’re already trading someone’s results for their contact information, it doesn’t hurt to give them an incentive to encourage them even further to make the trade. Incentivize your lead capture by throwing in offers like a weekly newsletter, an entry to a free giveaway, or maybe even an ebook.
2. Only Request The Information You Need – Sometimes it is possible to ask for more than what’s necessary, and that’s not something you want to do. Only ask your audience for the necessary contact information. Anything else that your brand won’t be using shouldn’t be asked for in the first place.
3. Be Honest About Your Marketing Strategy – Not everyone will catch onto the idea that you’ll be getting in touch with them after they opt-in, so it’s a good idea to give them a friendly reminder. This not only lets your audience know that you’ll be contacting them soon, but it also prevents them from mistaking your email as spam.

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Step 4: Creating Shareable Results

After you’ve gotten your lead capture all set up, it’s time to move onto the results. Since the results are what’s often shared on social media, you’re going to want to make sure that they’re worth sharing.
Here are some ways to optimize your results for sharing:

1. Compliment Your Audience – People are more likely to share good things about themselves, so it’s safe to say that positive emotions promote sharing. Compliment your audience with your results, but be truthful about it as well. Giving your quiz takes a chance to believe that they share a part of someone or some place they admire makes them feel good about it and they instantly want to share the results with their friends and teammates. This is the reason why quizzes get shared. This is what BuzzFeed has actually done over the years. It’s quiz “which city should you actually live in?” has been viewed more than 18 million times and gotten nearly 2.5 million likes on Facebook. 
2. Use Enthralling Images – Remember how we suggested the use of images in your questions? Well now, the image you choose in your results will play an even larger role since it’ll be what appears on social media when shared. Be sure to pick out images that will grab people’s attention.
   
3. Include A Call-To-Action – You want to assert your brand as much as possible, so don’t be afraid to include a call-to-action in your results. Lead your audience back to your website, or offer personalized product recommendations to keep them interested.

Let’s Wrap Things Up:

Needless to say, quizzes have worked for authority sites like New York Times, BuzzFeed, PlayBuzz etc and they can help you succeed too.
And that’s it. With a push to produce content that can perform well in your marketing strategy, social media quizzes are the way to go. We gave you several title templates to work with today, along with the types of quizzes you can choose to create on social media.

From there, we showed you how to create entertaining questions to drive audience engagement, followed by a few quick pointers on how to create an effective lead capture. Lastly, we included some of the best practices to get the most out of your social media quiz results.

If you’re looking for a fun and innovative way to boost your marketing, consider creating your own social media quizzes. You’re bound to find some solace in the comfort of using quizzes as an interactive piece of content for your marketing. 

About The Author: JP Misenas is the content marketing director and audio/visual engineer at Interact, a place for creating entertaining and engaging quizzes that generate leads and boost sales.