Recently we talked about a couple of tips and tricks for staying close with your family and friends despite the long-distance. In this post, I thought we’ll talk a little more about one of my family’s favorites.
Playing games has been a big thing in our family for as long as I can remember. One of the top things we love to play are trivia games.
In honor of this, we’ve decided to release a very special freebie, which you can get by downloading here. By subscribing to our email you will immediately receive, straight to your inbox, your very own sample trivia pack!
I’ve asked my sister to step in and share her tips on how to be a good trivia host as she regularly hosts virtual trivia for her company.
I’m sure you’ll love these tips and put them to good use right away as soon as you download your very own copy of “Trivia To Keep In Touch”.
Johanan’s Tips on How to be a Good Trivia Host
- Channel your inner game show host and take a page from one of your favorites such as Alex Trebek, Pat Sajak, Bob Barker, etc.
- Banter! Keep the vibe lively! Keep talking and pit your contestants against each other with a little jib and jab. Tap into people’s competitive spirit, if playing live and you can see the leaderboard announce when someone else takes the lead over another player.
- Share a brief factoid on right answers. “The right answer is B! Did you know blah, blah, blah…”. You never know how useful these facts can be till you’re at a cocktail party and needing to make conversation with a stranger.
- Set a timer for your questions! I suggest 20 seconds per question before you jump to the next slide. The idea is to answer quickly and not let people mull over the choices too long.
Scoring Ideas
There are many great ways to keep track of the score in the game. Let’s dive a little deeper into a few ways you can keep track while playing trivia.
ZOOM
Play virtually and use the chat feature to collect answers in real-time. You can also play on ZOOM and use any of the other suggested scoring features below instead of the chat.
- Pro: Can play virtually and have contestants chat their answers to the host.
- Con: Could be overwhelming for the host to tally the score at the end depending on the number of players.
Kahoots!
An online tool that can be used for trainings, trivias and more. We play on ZOOM using Kahhots! when I host trivia for my company because we typically have 20+ players.
- Pro: You can put your questions straight into Kahoots! and it will keep score for you. It’s great for larger audiences.
- Cons: Can be cost-prohibitive depending on the package you pick.
Honor System
The most old-fashioned way to score
- Pro: No cost.
- Con: Depending on your crowd, you may have a cheater.
Worksheet
Have the questions printed out on a worksheet and collect them at the end of the round and tally up the right answers.
- Pro: Easy to facilitate in person. We’ve included a free worksheet in the download!
- Con: Not as practical for online trivia unless you have a delay in announcing the winner while people email you their sheet.
Google or Microsoft Form
- Pro: Can copy the worksheet format and set it up in advance by sending out a link to contestants to accept responses, everyone can edit the form at the same time in real-time.
- Con: Can be a little labor-intensive to set up, and contestants will have to make sure they answer in their correct column.
- Two examples of how you could set up a place for contestants to submit answers in a Google Form:
Option One:
| QUESTION 1 | |
| Name 1: | Name 3: |
| Name 2: | Name 4: |
Option Two:
| Bobby | Jenny | Wayne |
| Round 1 | Round 1 | Round 1 |
| Question 1: | Question 1: | Question 1: |
| Question 2: | Question 2: | Question 2: |
| Question 3: | Question 3: | Question 3: |
| Question 4: | Question 4: | Question 4: |
| Question 5: | Question 5: | Question 5: |
We hope you found these tips helpful! And remember to download your free copy of trivia to keep in touch. We hope you enjoy it with your tribe as much as we do.
If you like trivia, we have plans to make available for purchase some of our favorite challenging ones. On May 4th we’ll release our 75+ question “May the 4th be with your Cinco de Mayo Trivia”, a Star Wars and Cinco de Mayo mash-up. We guarantee you’ve never seen anything like it!
