How to create engaging social media quizzes

Quizzes weren’t fun when you had to take them in school. But online, they’re massively appealing. In fact, addictive social media quizzes helped BuzzFeed become the media juggernaut that it is today.

Quizzes don’t have to be all fluff — they’re incredibly useful for brands to connect with current and potential customers. According to research from the Content Marketing Institute and Ion Interactive, 79 percent of marketers say that interactive content enhances retention of brand messaging when combined with traditional marketing. Best of all, quiz results give businesses content to share on their social media platforms.

Why social media quizzes are a marketing must

The unique nature of social quizzes can help you reach audiences in a way few other methods can. Here’s what they allow you to do.

1. Gather more insights

If you’re a marketer for an ice cream company, conducting boring surveys about flavor preferences is a sure dud. But a quiz asking “What ice cream flavor are you?” can generate valuable insight about your leads and customers, including

• Their likes and dislikes
• Their lifestyle and behaviors
• Their knowledge of your flavors and your competitors’ flavors
• Their level of brand loyalty

If you can track the answers to these types of questions to individual social media metadata, you can execute powerfully targeted campaigns based on the responses.

2. Diversify content

To draw in new leads and reengage existing ones, you should provide a variety of social media content. That means your posts shouldn’t all be sales pitches. Social media quizzes are a great alternative to more brand-focused content, and they invite audiences to learn something that might interest them.

3. Capture more leads

Getting leads to opt in to the sales funnel is one of the most challenging parts of marketing, but quizzes offer a number of methods to incentivize them to do so. You could require readers’ contact information in order for them to get their quiz results — or you could offer the results for free but require an opt-in for additional information or a reward.

How to create a social media quiz

Now that you understand how important social media quizzes can be to raising brand awareness and generating leads, here’s how to build one.

1. Determine the purpose

Without a clear objective for your quiz, your efforts could go to waste. Before you draft a social media quiz, get clear about a few things:

• What kind of information you want to collect
• How you can use that information in the future
• How the quiz can help your audience
• What you want quiz takers to do

Never skip the step of establishing your goal before drafting the quiz. You might aim for a combination of these common objectives:

• Gain more email subscribers or social media followers
• Raise awareness about products or services
• Sell or give away a product or service

2. Choose an engaging angle

The hook of the social media quiz is often just as important as its goal, so you should develop both at the same time. For example, if you want to promote a new line of ice cream flavors, you can limit the answers for your “Which ice cream flavor are you?” quiz to your new product lineup.

3. Pick the right type of quiz

The type of quiz and its structure should align with your objective and angle. Here are some common types:

• Personality: Matches traits with specific results
• Knowledge: Evaluates skill level or awareness of a particular topic
• Educational: Provides information about your products and services
• Shopping: Recommends products or services based on personality or preferences

4. Ask the right questions

Remember, an engaging quiz should be quick and simple to complete. Be sure to phrase each question clearly and make the answer options easy to understand. Don’t be too overt about using the quiz as a marketing tool. It’s important for questions and answers to be fun and engaging — not obviously about trying to make a sale.

Finally, make sure all questions and answers logically lead to a selection of outcomes that serve your objective.

How to build better quizzes with Jotform

Established the same year as BuzzFeed, Jotform has grown into a robust form builder featuring more than 10,000 free form templates, including more than 140 quiz templates you can customize with your own questions and branding.

Jotform Tables also makes it easy to collect the results of every quiz and connect the data with a customer relationship management program to build more targeted campaigns. Plus, Jotform Tables is the perfect tool for planning social media calendars to schedule social media quizzes that you can share with a click on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Social media quizzes are one of the best ways to engage your audience, collect information, convert leads, and take your sales pipeline to the next level. With Jotform, you can level up your quizzes with more efficient content creation and management processes.

Photo by SOCIAL.CUT on Unsplash