How To Make a Buzzfeed Style Quiz

Buzzfeed did it, you can too.

✦Unless you live under a rock you know that Buzzfeed is annihilating the internet with their quizzes recently.

✦ It’s definitely not too late to get involved, quizzes are continuing to take off, and now is your time to create a Buzzfeed style quiz and join the traffic party.

✦However, it’s not easy to create amazing quizzes (or else everyone would do it) and there’s a path you must follow to be successful in making successful quizzes.

First: Name it right 1/2✦While quizzes can be used for real educational purposes

*yawn*, what people really want to know is “who am I?”.

✦What’s crazy about the quizzes that have gotten so popular lately is that they are often the same quizzes that have been around for a long time, but with a new title they are now growing in popularity.

✦ There’s no perfect formula for creating quiz titles, but take a look at these titles next to each other on the following slide and you can get a feel for what works.

First: Name it right 2/2

Helpful Observations:✦ A lot of the quizzes in the previous slide are pretty much

exactly the same when it comes to their core content and ideas, but the Buzzfeed quizzes are much more fun sounding.

✦ A few observations –

✦ First, all the Buzzfeed titles are hyper-personal, they are all clearly about you. While the other titles are also about you, they don’t state that in their text and it’s non obvious.

✦ Second, the Buzzfeed titles are currently relevant. Tying in celebrities and current events makes them news worthy.

Second: Be snarky 1/2✦We know quizzes aren’t serious; we’re not trying to become

rocket scientists here.

✦ If your quiz answers even at all resemble “Somewhat agree, agree, very much agree,” just stop and start over again. Don’t even dip your toes into the kind of wording that was used on your school quizzes. Keep that divide between fun and learning wide.

✦Don’t overdo it and make a quiz that ends up being sarcastic and off-putting, but use your fun side to write text that asks questions in an interesting way.

Second: Be snarky 2/2

Third: Use images✦Quiz results have been perfected

down to the format on the right.

✦Have an image above representing whatever result your quiz taker is and a short blurb of text below explaining the result. Every Buzzfeed quiz is full of images, and that’s not by mistake.

✦ Images, and specifically faces, can draw us into a quiz and make us forget that we are even answering questions at all.

Fourth: Tell everyone they are awesome

✦Have you ever taken a quiz only to be told that you suck and need to improve? I didn’t think so. If you have, that quiz used an awful technique of generating leads.

✦Quiz results are an exercise in persuasive writing.

✦ Putting together a set of results that tells every quiz taker how great they are without coming off as insincere is the key.

Fifth: Write to a person

✦When putting together your quiz, think about who will be taking it. Write as if you are creating the quiz for that friend or person you know.

✦ Speaking directly to someone in your text will make it more comprehendible and fun to read.

✦ Buzzfeed quizzes read as if they are written to a best friend, and yours should too.

Sixth: Keep it short

✦ Stop it with the terribly long quizzes.

✦Most Buzzfeed quizzes are less than 10 questions, and take about 2.5 minutes to complete.

✦ That’s about the same as our attention span online.

You can do it! Try it out.

✦We’ve put together all the tools to make it very easy to create a Buzzfeed style quiz at Interact. Get started at:

https://www.tryinteract.com