With the recent data released from CMI about Australian content marketing, most marketing managers are familiar with content types such as blog posts, videos and in-person events because of their proven ability to deliver results.
For those looking to branch out in their content marketing strategies, there are forms of content yet to enter the spotlight and have high success rates in engagement and shareability.
Behold the branded quiz
Although they have built a somewhat cheap reputation thanks to the likes of BuzzFeed, brand-owned quizzes are valuable content assets when used correctly. Although online quizzes are casual in nature, that doesn’t mean you can’t attract an educated audience through their use. Take the New York Times, for example. In 2013 they published a quiz that gathered more views in the first 11 days of publication than any other story that year.
If your audience lives primarily on Facebook, quizzes might drive more engagement on your channels. When analysing the most popular Facebook posts over a six-month period, marketing data provider Kiss Metrics found:
“The most popular content type, by far, was quizzes, which averaged 51,968 total Facebook shares (likes + shares). In contrast, the average article (among the top million), had 15,527 total Facebook shares.”
Indeed, this is one of the most attractive benefits of creating a branded quiz. Content company BuzzSumo claims the average quiz is shared 1900 times. Although a better indication of a typical quiz might be the median number of shares, this is still an impressive number.
Why do people share quizzes?
Put simply, people love to show off and brag. When a participant scores highly in an online quiz that piqued their interest in the first place, they’re likely to share their result with their peers online.
According to data collected by BuzzSumo, the likelihood of somebody sharing their quiz results is directly correlated to how positive their result is.
But this isn’t to say people will only share your quiz if it’s graded. Instead, outcome quizzes are statistically even more popular than graded quizzes, with the most popular quizzes of 2014 all being outcome based.
Constructing a quiz for your brand
If you’re looking to create a quiz for your business, there are certain tactics you should keep in mind.
1) Keep it short and sweet
People don’t take online quizzes for any kind of in-depth analysis or result, so their attention will wane after more than about five minutes. For this reason it’s best to keep your quiz quick and entertaining in style.
2) Flattery is everything
If your goal is for people to share your quiz, you’re going to have to stroke some egos. Either make your quiz extremely simple, or in an outcome-based scenario leave results vague, entertaining and complimentary to make your participants proud of their results.
3) Meticulously craft your title
We’ve written before about how incredibly important headlines and titles are in getting click-throughs to your content. Because quizzes are particularly taken out of curiosity, the need to have an enticing title is greater. In order to achieve the greatest click-through rate, use second person pronouns like “you” and “your” to get the reader involved in the given situation from the get-go. Many quiz creators also advocate the use of the word ‘actually’ in titles - for example, “How much do you actually know about content marketing?” rather than “How much do you know about content marketing?”
4) Compulsory call to action.
All content marketing activity should be linked to business objectives, and a call to action is how you direct your audience to achieve these goals. The link to your website, mailing list, etc., is the crucial part of the equation allowing you to see direct results from your efforts. To spread the reach of your quiz, be sure to include social widgets so your audience can easily share their results with their networks.
If you’d like help producing creative content for your brand, contact Lush Digital Media. We live and breathe content marketing strategy and love the challenge of an out-of-the-box idea.
