Make a quiz for your contest
I won’t hold that clickbait example mentioned in the title over your head, let’s get right into it. The example comes from Viewsbank, a UK site that does paid surveys. They made a fun quiz contest for Halloween that asks readers to take a short quiz, comment with their result, and be entered to win a basket of Cadbury chocolate (which is delicious).
The quiz has more than 15,000 views in three days and more than 500 entries via comment.
How to replicate their success:
1. Good prize
You have to think prizes 2.0. If prizes 1.0 was giving away an ipad for every single contest, then prizes 2.0 is giving away meaningful and relevant prizes for each contest. Viewsbank makes a business out of giving away prizes, so they know a thing or two about it, and came up with a very appealing but also not appalling prize for their quiz contest.
From what I’ve seen, you need to find the balance between providing a valuable prize and making it unique. You need enough value to exhibit a response (commenting), but you also need the prize to stand out – it feels like giving away an ipad can sometimes be perceived as a fake prize.
2. Easy entry
There are two ways to run a contest that seem like reasonable methods of entry.
- Sharing/commenting
This is what ViewsBank chose, and it worked well. In this case, all you are asking for is someone to comment on the quiz contest or share with a certain hashtag. Then you can randomly select someone to win, and it’s a simple enough process. Social networks and commenting plugins have made it so easy to share or comment that this is a completely reasonable method of contest entry.
- Subscribing
The other way to run a contest is to set up a list and require people to subscribe to be entered. This method attracts people who don’t necessarily want to publicly share or comment. Ideally you’d be able to run each of these types of contest entries to see which one your audience identifies with more.
3. Fun quiz on its own
Making quizzes is a bit of a process, but extremely rewarding when done right. We have a nice guide for making personality quizzes that goes over all the necessary pieces for creating a quiz that’s enjoyable in and of itself. Remember, your quiz should be strong on its own and just have the added value of being a contest.
I’ve outlined the whole process in this nice graphic for those of you who don’t enjoy reading (raises hand)
