When it comes to social media marketing, the kind of content you deliver will rely heavily on factors like focus, quality, influence, and value. Leveraging these laws for social media marketing can heighten your audience and customer base dramatically, and as a marketer, you’d be more than happy to have such an impact on your brand. But what kind of content can successfully and consistently touch base on these factors for your social media marketing?
You might’ve already come across the answer several times in a single day; I mean, who hasn’t taken one of those silly quizzes that you see on social media networks, But that’s also our point. These silly quizzes are one of the most underrated types of content that every marketer should at least try once.
Social media quizzes have the innate ability to draw in various types of audiences based on their content. Not only are they entertainingly engaging, but they provide so much value on a level that only marketers would notice. Social media quizzes are capable of going viral, and depending on the quality of the quiz, they’re also able to increase revenue and generate leads.
Here Interact, we’ve helped over 10,000 brands create over 25,000 quizzes, so we know exactly what these quizzes are capable of. Because we’ve had so much experience with quizzes, we thought it’d be a great idea to fill you in on some of the best practices in creating your own quiz for your social media marketing.
Today, we’ll take you through a step-by-step guide on how to create your own social media quiz, how to promote that same quiz on social media, and then how to follow up on leads with marketing automation. By the end of this article, you’ll be able to walk away with one of the more successful tools that have helped so many others in their social media marketing endeavours.
So let’s get started.
Pick The Right Title And Quiz Type
When someone mentions a quiz, most people jump right to the idea of questions. This isn’t wrong, but that’s not where we’re going to start. A quiz starts with its title. It’s the very first thing that attracts anyone. 80% of readers can figure out if something is worth reading based solely on its title. That’ s why you have to make it count. Here are several title templates for you to work with when formulating the title for your quiz:
The “Actually” Title – There’s a difference between how much do you know about social media marketing and how much do you actually know about social media marketing. Subtle isn’t it? The mere addition of the word actually can instantly change a mundane question into a thought-provoking challenge, and trust us, no one wants to back down from a challenge. Consider using this template if you want to goad your audience into testing how much they know about a given subject.
The Which (Blank) Are You Title – You might have come across this template in the form of “Which marketing thought leader are you?” or some other kind of variation. This is one of the more popular templates that you’ll find on social media. Because people are so curious about finding out which Harry Potter character they are, this title proves to be one of the more successful ones.
The Celebrity Personality Title – Take the previous title template and replace the (Blank) with a celebrity (or celebrities) of your choosing. This template puts a spin on the previous one by substituting it with a celebrity for good measure. Because we’re using bigger names, the chances of attracting a larger audience increases. Consider using this one if you can’t come up with anything else to fill the blank.
Once you’ve settled on a title, it’s time to pick out the right type of quiz for you. It’s a good idea to have a concept in mind. You could create a quiz based off of your brand or maybe a more broader subject like marketing in general. Whatever you choose, here are two quiz types that you’ll want to wrap your idea around:
The Personality Quiz – With the help of the self-serving bias, humans are naturally drawn to hearing good things about themselves. This is what makes this type of quiz so popular. The personality quiz takes people and categorizes them in different personality types. Each personality is meant to compliment a person based on their answers. When it comes to marketing, you could place your audience in various personalities that offer personalized product recommendations suited to their styles based off of their answers. Run that with a social media campaign and you’re sure to draw in customers.
The Knowledge Test – This is one of the more common types of quizzes that you’ll come across on social media. The knowledge test essentially challenges how much someone knows about a given subject. It delivers results based on accuracy and can often let the participant know whether he/she got their answer right or wrong on the spot. Marketers can use this to assess their internal infrastructure, or they could see how much their audience knows about their brand and its products.
Craft Entertainingly Engaging Questions
Once you have your title and quiz type picked out, it’s time to move onto the questions. You want to create questions that perfectly engage with your audience. At the same time, there are several things that you’ll need to take into consideration to get the most out of your questions. Here are just a few things to keep in mind when crafting questions:
Be A Part Of Your Quiz – Don’t just let your questions do the work for you. Become a part of your quiz by adding some personality to it. Talk to your audience as if you were talking to them in person. This gives the quiz itself a much needed touch of comfortability that sets a more relaxed tone.
Use Images To Liven Things Up – Quizzes that consist mostly of text are boring. We’ve had enough of those back when we attended school all of those years ago, so why not brighten things up with images? Using images keeps things fun and relevant, and it easily changes your quiz from something lackluster, into something closer to a trivia game.
Keep Things Relatively Short – People go through social media at an insane pace. You, at most, will have about five minutes to interact with someone online, so make it count. Try to aim between having 6 to 8 questions in your quiz. This takes about 2-3 minutes for the average person to complete, and that’s just enough time for us to engage with them.
Design A Lead Capture To Grow Your List
As far as social media marketing is concerned, we’re still marketers at the core, so lead generation is still something we value. Before directing your audience to their results, why not make a trade for their contact information? Gating the quiz with a lead capture allows you to pull up a quick form that requests contact information. While some may include the option to skip this segment, here are some ways to increase the opt-in rate instead:
Include Incentives To Increase Opt-In Rates – Even if trading quiz results for contact information is a fair trade as is, there’s nothing wrong with promising your audience a little more value. Include incentives like an entry into a free giveaway, or maybe even a free ebook. Find what works best for you when it comes to growing your email list.
Request Information That You’ll Actually Use – At the bare minimum, most lead capture forms request an email address. It’s completely okay to request a first and last name to. This allows you to personalize the marketing automation emails that will follow. But don’t ask for information you won’t use. For instance, what’s the point in asking for a phone number if you don’t call it?
Be Honest About Your Marketing Strategy – We aren’t talking about your entire strategy as a whole. Be sure to give your audience a friendly reminder that you’ll be contacting them soon. This is usually mentioned in the privacy policy link. This step is only necessary if you want to avoid having your emails marked as spam later on.
Create Results That Get Shared On Social Media
Once you have your lead capture set up the way you want it, it’s time to move onto the results. Now that your audience has made it this far, it’s time to deliver. The results you create for your audience will be what they share on social media, so you have to come up with results that are definitely worth the share. Here are some ways to make that happen:
Be Honest But Uplifting As Well – When creating your results, make an effort to compliment your audience. Positive emotions seem to promote sharing, so make sure your results evoke such emotions. Just keep in mind that whatever you say should be truthful. You don’t want to tell your audience that they’re something they aren’t (or maybe you do, it might spark a quiz retake).
Use Images That Encourage Sharing – As much as we emphasized the use of images in your questions, this is where you really have to make it count. The image that shows up in the results are what most people will see when your audience shares them. Be sure to use a captivating image to draw attention to your quiz.
Integrate Some Kind Of Call-To-Action – Your interaction with your audience doesn’t end at the results. Include a call-to-action to lead them back to your website. Keep that engagement up, it’s why you created the quiz in the first place.
Let’s Review What We’ve Learned
At the beginning of this article, you learned what quizzes are capable of in social media marketing. Following that concept, we walked you through a guide detailing the quiz creation process so that you can create your own for your marketing strategy.
To start things off, you came up with the title to your quiz with the help of templates, along with what type of quiz you’d like to execute in your strategy. We then went over what it takes to come up with engaging questions, followed by the creation of an effective lead capture. Lastly, we showed you some of the best practices in creating shareable results.
Hopefully you can walk away feeling confident about implementing quizzes into your social media marketing. They’re incredibly popular, fun, and can bring a huge boost in audience engagement. So try it out in your marketing strategy and see how far you can get.
About the Author: 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.
