FaceBook Quizzes

The other day I was marveling at the number of FaceBook quizzes. You know the kind I am talking about, personality tests, what items would you have if zombies attack, which Doctor Who character are you, etc. Some of the quizzes spread like wildfire from one person to the next.

(WebHost Blog) To see how fast things could move, I ran an experiment. Using my personal FaceBook account (the one for family and friends) I picked three topics for quizzes to look for to see how many far they would propagate. I have several friends who are microbiologists or are going to school for microbiology, so for the first quiz I choose “What virus would you be?” Without sending this quiz to others, it had been filled out by 67 people, possibly more, still waiting on my friend network to report how many of their friends’ friends have used it. 67 people in twenty minutes. The quiz itself is not a recent one, it has been around for several months.

The next quiz was something more generic, but also one of those things that is good for nerdy laughs. What Periodic Element are you? Coincidentally I was Gold ( lol ). This one didn’t spread as far as the other one, but not bad considering I know pretty much no one who has any sort of chemist inclinations. 44 people in an hour. Again this quiz was written a few months ago.

The very last one is something near and dear to me heart: “Which Liquor are you?” This one spread like wildfire. Several hundred people picked this one up and ran with it. After the first half day worth (about 10 hours), I stopped keeping track.

Two things I found wrong with these quizzes, one thing I found right. First off, people love quizzes. I like stupid trivia, they enjoy answering funny questions with equally funny answers, and they enjoy getting funny little results. Good quizzes will gather good traffic and great quizzes, well you can see my meaning.

The two problems with quizzes is a) most of them have no thought put into them and b) people don’t capitalize on them as much as they should.

A good quiz can take several days to put together, mainly because you want to give the audience as many different results as possible and you want the questions and answers to be as funny (or thought provoking depending on what you are doing) as possible. If you are trying to monetize the quiz the amount of thought that is put into becomes even greater. Now you have to pick the approach as to how you will make money off of it, how to integrate that, and how to make the quiz coincide with what you want to sell.

Some industries are far easier than others when it comes to putting out great quizzes and being able to profit off of them. In this instance profit can be multiple things. It can be making money or it can be producing traffic or increasing your page rank, whatever. For instance the game industry is perfect for quizzes. Role playing especially, you could make a quiz such as what class or alignment or race are you and then at the end tell them to “join the fight” or whatever.

Web hosting quizzes can be done, though most would probably be more serious with a splash of humor, such as how secure is your site?

Hopefully I have given you a few more ideas to punch around. I hope the general moral of this blog has not gone unnoticed. On a broad scale, you can use any tool, any area of human interaction to garner opportunities. On a smaller and semi more selfish scale (at least this is to help me out), put some attention into these stupid quizzes, I want to be entertained not bored to death. 8-D

About David Dunlap: Over the past ten years David has been a prolific author of hundreds of blogs, commentaries and reviews found here on WebHostBlog.com , as well as WebHostMagazine.com and other sites around the Internet. David manages the daily operations at both WebHostBlog and Web Host Magazine & Buyer's Guide, and as the head editor, David uses his unique analytical skills to ensure that both sites maintain their integrity and tough, but fair minded, reputations. Prior to his active career analyzing the Web Host industry, David specialized in networking and communications for the U.S. government. David's expertise in traditional marketing and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) has helped boost companies both inside and outside of the Web Host industry.