Curiosity May Have Killed the Cat, But it Can Intrigue the Customer in Your Business Blog

I have a theory about human curiosity that I think tests out in corporate blogging:  Our curiosity is at its most intense when it concerns testing our own limits.

Yes, readers like juicy gossip tidbits about sports and movie stars.

Yes, readers have interest in how stuff works in the world and how things came to be.

And, yes, (as I always stress in corporate blogging training sessions), by definition of their having found your blog, readers have an interest in your field.

But (or so my theory goes, anyway), readers are most curious about themselves, how they “work” and the limits of their own knowledge and their own physical capabilities. I believe that’s why magazine “quizzes” are so hard to resist.

Leafing through an issue of WebMD Guide while waiting my turn for a flu shot, I just couldn’t resist taking the challenge: “Take this quiz to see how much you know about cholesterol”. There followed a four-question True/False quiz, with the answers given at the bottom of the page. Granted, I was a “captive audience” at that point – I hadn’t brought along my Sudoku book and there weren’t a whole lot of reading choices around. Still, I just had to see if I knew the answers to those four questions (I got three out of four. – wasn’t aware there’s not an iota of cholesterol in peanut butter, because dietary cholesterol comes only from animal products.)

So, what happened here was I learned a valuable fact about cholesterol.  But I also learned something I can use in business blog writing and in offering business blogging assistance. The thing is – I probably wouldn’t have read through an article about cholesterol. At least for that morning, cholesterol wasn’t near the top of my radar screen. But curiosity about whether I would pass the four-question test apparently was.

As a professional ghost blogger and blog content trainer, I’m going to issue this challenge to you:

Can you compose a blog post with a four-question quiz relating to what you sell, what you know how to do, or to your unique slant on your own industry? Could you, not every time, but every once in a while, tap into that perverse curiosity I think all your readers have about how much they know? And who knows? That little test might just help in search engine optimization for your business blog!

And, sure, since my company Say It For You, provides blog writing services, I’ll rise to my own challenge.  Look for a four-question quiz about business blogging in an upcoming business blog post!