Many advertisers and web readers despise clickbait these days, and for a good reason—the sensationalistic and ambiguous style of headline writing popularised by BuzzFeed and Upworthy (For example, “This Man Bought his Daughter an Ice Cream … What Happened Next Will Astound You”) developed a web writing style that captivated a global audience of interested readers. However, they have long since stopped clicking on such articles. The websites mentioned above have ruined their online reputation by tricking people into clicking on a worthless article.
In this post, we’ll look at why the old-school approach died out, how adhering to those guidelines can do more harm than good to your brand, and what lessons we can take from clickbait to create powerful headlines today. I will explain why you should stick to good content instead of trick people into clicking on one of your articles. So, without further ado, let’s dive right in.
Wrong Crowd
When it comes to building a brand, loyalty is essential. People must find your website, enjoy it, value it, and return when they require your product again.
Clickbait, which relies on ambiguous adjectives and exaggerated promises, accomplishes none of these goals. Its viral potential draws a lot of first-time viewers. When it comes to inbound marketing, going large can attract a wide range of people, which can be beneficial, but the vast majority of them aren’t interested in your brand—they want to know what happened when Dad gave his daughter the ice cream.
Since clickbait transforms reading into a psychological game, it forces readers to guess the result and then leads them down a rabbit hole to reveal the correct answer. Upworthy has long been the champion of this game; they used to be more assertive, but they still tease out the story in headlines designed to entice you to click.
They don’t say “you’ll never guess what…” as directly as they used to, but the point remains: there’s something shocking about American politics that you don’t know, and the only way to find out is to click. Anyone that has paid attention to any politics should not be shocked by the things they do anymore. Hence, the article should be suspect from the start.
Bad Bounce
There’s a lot of controversy on how important bounce rates are—because they’re so easy to manipulate, Google does not care as much as many people think.
Thousands of people visiting your site for five seconds and then leaving, unlikely to return, is still not a good look. In a 2014 blog post on clickbait, Facebook raised this very issue, announcing that they would penalize writers who used the sometimes deceptive model.
Since clickbait doesn’t usually imply deep, valuable material, visitors aren’t likely to stick around for long. They will form a negative impression of your website, which will hurt you more than help you in the long run. That’s why Facebook started looking at how long people spend on a page as a quality indicator—strictly why authoritative, long posts perform well.
Create Disappointment
Clickbait seldom lives up to the hype. This is linked to the previous two reasons why clickbait is a horrible idea: disappointment leads to bounces, which leads to low interaction and, eventually, a lack of confidence in your material.
This is why, in general, the game has shifted away from abstract headlines and toward concise headlines that tell people whether or not the article contains the details they need right away.
The headline is still attention-getting, and the article is still a tried-and-true listicle, but the specifics have been added. You can tell right away whether or not this article would appeal to you. If you like FX’s show Legion, graphic novels, or both, the article is worth your time; if none of that matters to you, you won’t click.
If they had written something generic instead, such as “Fans of This Hit TV Show Absolutely Love These Little-Known Books,” a large number of people would have shown up, been disappointed, and left right away.
Confusing
Let’s take a look at this from an analytics perspective as well. Let’s say you’re selling ad space on your website to individual customers, and you’re monetizing it with the aid of a few long-term companies.
They would be impressed at first if you tell them you get 50,000 hits a day. Today, any ad agency or marketing expert will delve deeper:
- How much time do they spend on your site?
- What are the demographics of the people who click?
- What city do they call home?
This critical information gets muddled when you depend on ephemeral clickbait. You’ll have a low average time spent on your website and won’t be able to mine your data as quickly for valuable demographic data that marketers care about.
In other words, you might get numbers, but they’ll be useless.
Worn Out Tactic
What year is it, 2011? Users of the internet are more competent than they were even a week ago, let alone a few years ago. Clickbait was a fad born of people experimenting with new forms of communicating in a burgeoning social media landscape. It worked for a while, but now it’s less successful.
If none of the above arguments have persuaded you, there’s one more: clickbait sounds stale and lame. You can learn a thing or two about headline writing from it, but don’t put your faith in it.
Be unique, inventive, simple, and practical. What follows will astound you.
Conclusion
If you are trying to improve your online reputation, your best bet is to give visitors/followers content to keep them coming back for more. Much like television has viewers always craving more, you can do the same with your content. Nothing says you have to give them everything all at once. Leave a cliffhanger. It is not clickbait, rather a tool to have them come back for more when you post again. As with any content, you want to make sure that you give them enough information to feel satisfied and don’t feel as if you cheated them. The key to great content is somewhere between clickbait and cliffhanger. Once you find that happy medium, you will be well on your way to having hundreds, or possibly even millions, of followers.