Making Listbuilding Fun by Using Quizzes

One of the many ways that people amuse themselves on the Internet is by taking quizzes.  For some reason, people can’t resist the opportunity to find out “How ______ are you?,” even though they already know the answer.  This is a great way to do some listbuilding from your end.

Building a List with Quizzes—First Stages

The first thing you need to know about building a list with online quizzes is that the quiz itself doesn’t have to have any relevance to any of your products.  This leaves you completely wide open for the subject matter of the quizzes you use.  The most important aspect of your quizzes should be that they have great viral potential.

First, you should analyze the most popular quizzes to figure out what people actually want to see.  IQ and physical feature tests are universal favorites, as are comparisons to popular TV and movie characters.  The trick with the latter is that they tend to be more short-lived than IQ Tests, so if you go that route, be prepared to create lots of quizzes to keep up with the times.

How List Building Works in Quizzes

In social media sites like Facebook, you have the option to create “Apps” or “Quizzes.”  Depending on the social media platform you’re using, this could involve coding language (as in the case of Facebook), or you can use walkthrough tutorials.  However you go about doing it, and where, there’s one essential element that you’ll want to observe.

You should always, in every quiz, provide an opt-in opportunity.  In fact, many Apps will have several, sometimes including the opportunity to download browser add-ons.  If you have one, great.  There shouldn’t be any problem getting it included in your quiz since they will often allow spyware toolbar opt-ins to be included.

Where Your Opt-In Box Should Go

Usually, there isn’t much confusion about where your opt-in should be.  Most quiz builders will figure it out for you.  However, if you encounter a quiz builder that doesn’t decide this for you, you should know where it goes.

Your opt-in should be cued to appear after the viewer takes the quiz, just before they get the results of the quiz.  If it comes before they answer any of the questions, they’re more likely to just bail out of the quiz and not fill in the opt-in.  If it comes after the result, they’re not likely to fill it out either.  They’ve already gotten the reward for taking the quiz and have no reason to do anything else with it.

What’s really great about using quizzes for listbuilding is the opportunity for the quiz to go viral.  Most of the time, people will want to display their quiz results in their blogs, and you should provide them a way to do it if the social media site doesn’t already.

Their friends will see the results and want to take the quiz too.  Now the entertainment value of your quiz really comes into play.  If your quiz is entertaining enough, your listbuilding efforts will grow by leaps and bounds.