Have you ever wondered what kind of dog you are? Probably not, but you can find the answer anyway thanks to one of the most popular quizzes on the web (popular is an understatement, because this item has racked up an incredible 11 million views to date). Or, if finding your spirit dog doesn’t tickle your fancy, you can take a quiz to see what American accent you have, courtesy of The New York Times’ most widely-read piece of content for all of 2013, “How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk”.

That’s right – a linguistics quiz beat out all other news items, including coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings, for the entire year.

If you’re thinking these examples have no relevance for your business, you should reassess your stance. Quizzes are an incredible content marketing tool: they’re highly shareable on social media, they increase awareness of your brand, and increase click-through and conversion rates. Travel magazine Afar discovered this when they produced a short 7-question quiz on travel destinations. Once the quiz-taker received their result, Afar provided the most relevant content supporting that result, such as hotels in the area. This relatively simple process brought in more than 5,000 new newsletter subscribers.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a law firm (there’s a quiz created by a law institute here), an education provider (RMIT’s engineering questionnaire is here), or a graphic designer (surprise! There’s one for that too); quizzes can – and should – have a place in your marketing strategy.

Quizzes are the top dog of social shares

We humans are an egocentric bunch. We like to learn and read about ourselves and share this information with the world. There’s a very good reason why one of the most enduring quizzes is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality test. This allocates you to one of 16 personality ‘types’ and then describes ideal careers, relationships, strengths and weaknesses for each. In short, we are our favourite topic.

Quizzes do especially well on certain platforms. According to BuzzSumo, Facebook is the social platform where people are most likely to share their result, with 84 per cent of all quiz social media shares appearing there. On the opposite side of the spectrum, LinkedIn sees the least shares.

There are plenty of sites online where you can create a quiz easily and quickly. Try Qzzr, Typeform or Playbuzz. It’s important to remember that quizzes are not surveys or research. They are usually fun yet informative (although this varies greatly), tell the quiz-taker a little about themselves, and even about the particular ‘tribe’ they feel they belong to.

Before starting, decide whether it should be a graded or an outcome-style quiz. For example, the former might have a result such as “Investor Extraordinaire: You are 90 per cent like Warren Buffet” whereas an outcome quiz will provide you with a definitive answer (e.g., “You are: Warren Buffet”). Also make sure you have a clear call to action on your page. Take a leaf out of Afar’s book and provide just that extra little bit of information to the quiz-taker.

Take a look at these to give you an idea of what suits the corporate world:

Business Insider Australia’s career quiz

Inc.’s Are You a Better Manager or Leader?

VisualDNA’s Who Am I?

Entrepreneur’s Test Your Marketing IQ

 

At Lush, we love crafting content marketing strategies that are tailored to individual businesses’ needs. Contact us to find out more.

And for the record, I was a Labrador. Hey, I had to do it – for research.

 

Like what you’ve read? Sign up to the Lush newsletter for fortnightly advice to help you market your business better, tips from our video production gurus, and a podcast or two from our favourite podcasting team, Brand Newsroom.  In the meantime, you might enjoy these:

Guaranteed ways to unleash your inner creative beast

Content marketing strategy: the power of three

A marketer’s guide to the curiosity gap

Humour, social media and going viral [podcast with show notes]