Viral content marketing is perhaps the easiest way of driving traffic from across the web to your site, blog or social media pages in quick time. Once your content, such as assessments, calculators, or quizzes, becomes popular, it creates a rippling effect and results in more people sharing it with their peers, who in turn share it with their friends and family making it travel far and wide. In no time, your business message goes out to millions of people helping you generate leads, boost conversions and push your brand effectively in today’s content conscious market.
It is almost impossible not to talk about quizzes when talking about viral content. Online quizzes have an inherent viral loop; most people share their quiz results enthusiastically promoting the quiz within their social network. In fact, a fair share of industry experts and content marketers have been dotting on online quizzes to drive traffic to their site and push their products in the ever-so-competitive market.
Kapost.com reveals that quizzes generate conversions very well 70% of the time. But this is no secret and everyone is trying to capture the fancy of today’s discerning audiences with online quizzes. So, how will you make sure that your quizzes stand out from the crowd and become viral easily? The answer is simple! You'll need to be heedful of a certain tips, tricks and best practices to stay ahead in the game. Here, we present to you 5 easy to follow steps to help you create quizzes that can become viral instantly.
Step # 1: Title
The one thing that largely affects the fate of your online quiz is the title or name of the quiz. Tryinteract.com says that 80% quiz takers make a decision to take or leave your quiz on the basis of its title. Therefore, it is important to ensure a catchy, professional and appealing title or name for your online quiz. Easy and memorable titles are a good choice. Remember, you’re writing a quiz to connect with and engage your audiences. Therefore, so do well to find out what interests your target audiences. And in order to do so, analyze the behavior pattern of your target audiences. See what your target audience wants, where your target audience loves to spend most time and what type of content do they best interact with. Then basis your research, use titles that appeal to the emotions of your audience. But whatever you do, never forget to play by the rules. That means use titles or names that convey your brand’s personality and have a clear connection with your services or products.
Take for example the quiz below “Which Successful Entrepreneur Are You?”. This quiz does well to engage aspiring business leaders by analyzing and matching their character traits against the profiles of some of the world’s most famous entrepreneurs.
Step # 2: Questions
Questions remain the second most critical tool to attract people to take your quiz. Remember, you’re just one click away from oblivion. So ensure that your quiz questions make customers want to know more about your brand, want to stay. Generate curiosity and build an anticipation with your questions. Quiz takers love personal and conversational tone. So, ensure that your questions are written in a jovial tone. Quiz.lovetoknow.com suggests you to write questions that challenge your audience. Always keep your target audience's interest in mind when creating questions for your quiz. No matter what you do, keep your questions short and snappy.
Step # 3: Design
At this point, you’ve already understood the importance of an interesting quiz title and persuasive questions. But is just enough to make your quiz viral on the web? The answer is NO! You’ll need to ensure that perfect design to ensure that your quiz catches more eyes. Remember, a great quiz is aesthetically designed and perfectly laid out to becharm audiences and persuade them into taking it. When it comes to designing your quiz, organization remains the most critical aspect. Great quizzes are laid out in such a fashion that everything from questions to title and the visual graphics all seamlessly blend to attract the attention of target audiences from the get-go.
It is important to ensure that the design of your quiz is not text-heavy. So, in the grand scheme of things, there should be more space for images than texts. Yet another point is to ensure that your graphics don’t overlap with the content making your quiz look messy. Your logo design should be visible and social share buttons should be easy to find. And above all, these elements should be in a clutter-free space.
Step#4: Results
Results play a very crucial role in determining whether your quiz will travel virally or not. Even before you go on creating your quiz, you would need to determine how you’ll like your results to turn out. For example, when you’re creating a personality quiz, pre-determine the personalities you will use to base your questions on. Remember, your quiz results must appeal to your target audiences. People love to share quiz results that are positive, fun or humorous.
In fact, Boombox.com reveals that quizzes with positive results and fun angle make people excited to brag about them. In addition, Tryinteract.com reveals that 75% tweets sent out from the results page of quizzes contain positive trigger words. Remember the rule of the game is simple: quizzes with something positive get shared the most and thus go viral more. So, ensure writing positive results and don’t make it complex.
Step#5: Promotion
Just creating a great quiz wouldn’t make it go viral. You’ll need to ensure that it promoted and shared extensively. So, do well to share your quiz through your website, emails and social media. Send email to your contacts with an invite to take your quiz. Do include a direct link to your quiz and don’t forget to add share buttons to ensure that your email recipients are able to further share your quiz.
Post a link to your quiz on Facebook wall with a catchy title and link inviting your friends and followers to take the quiz and share it with their social contacts. Similarly, tweet about your quiz to all your followers. Include a picture and a direct link to ensure that your Twitter followers are able to share your quiz. Do well to provide embed code for your quiz. So that your followers and friends may share it on their sites and blogs. By embedding a quiz, your audience can take the quiz directly on your website, without ever leaving your website. But don’t just embed your quiz on your site or blog, also embed your quiz on Facebook. Proprofs.com suggests you to list your quiz in groups, forums, and bulletin boards and generate a press release about the launch of your quiz. Create ad banners, pop-up messages and exit message informing your site visitors about your quiz.
This is it! Now, you know how to create a viral quiz. So if your content marketing has been failing to drive traffic, generate leads and boost conversions, now’s your chance. Go for the change. Use these 5 steps and create a viral quiz to get your interactive content marketing strategies back on track.
How have you been creating viral quizzes for your business? Please leave a comment below and let us know. And don’t forget to sign up for the Promotion World Weekly Newsletter to get more of such interesting content delivered right into your inbox.
[Image Courtesy: Designhill.com]