Clickbaiting content recently has red flags tied around it. I’m pretty sure you’ve seen headlines like “You won’t believe I did this” and usually, people get intrigued and click the content then later on get disappointed
Whether we like it or not, the truth is, clickbait works. Despite the fact that it has a negative connotation to it, it does serve its purpose and that is to grab people’s attention. Of course, we cannot underestimate the power of clickbait but is there a way to use it without betraying your readers or your target audience’s trust?
Yes, there definitely is! And we’ll show you how to do it.
Why Traditional Clickbait Doesn’t Work
But first, let’s talk about why the traditional clickbait strategy is failing for businesses.
Simple, people are tired of it. Sensational and over the top headlines can get people’s interest but it all fails if the main content itself doesn’t live up to your audience’s expectation.
In a study by Chartbeat, 55% of visitors spend less than 15 seconds on a webpage after clicking on a headline.
There are various reasons for this, but what we can be certain of is the fact that readers didn’t get the information they needed to stay longer on that webpage.
Let’s say you hype up your content thumbnail or headline with a sensational clickbait for the sake of getting more clicks but then your readers are dissatisfied.
What do you think will happen?
Not only will you lose your target readers/audience trust but your website’s bounce rate becomes elevated, which in the long run can hurt your website trust rating and overall search performance.
How to do Ethical Clickbait?
Clickbait, when done in the right way, doesn’t need to be shady. The important thing to note is that it can spark curiosity to your readers without making sensational promises that you can’t keep.
Let’s take this example from HouseBeautiful.com:
This headline tells readers that if they click it, they will be given 70 interior design secrets from actual experts and the article actually delivers that. They know right away the value that they’re gonna get even before reading the article and are most likely to read through it longer than 15 seconds.
Also, having numbers in the headlines can help set the expectation from your readers. According to Outbrain, headlines with numbers perform 36% better than those without.
Follow the Data
Creating an effective clickbait doesn’t mean just putting a headline that easily captures your audience’s interest. You have to base it on data driven results.
For example, in a 100 million headlines that BuzzSumo analyzed, they found that emotional engagement is crucial. Headlines that cause your readers to feel awe or amusements tend to have higher engagement. This is where good and ethical clickbait comes in – you can use emotional hooks that can grab your reader’s attention as long as your content matches directly to the headline.
Aside from that, you also need to consider the timing. In a study by Hubspot it shows that posting between 9am to 12pm allows for more engagement. So, even the timing plays a crucial role when it comes to your clickbait’s efficiency.
Focus on What Your Readers Really Want
By now you should have a good idea on the type of content that your target readers want. If that’s not the case, then creating clickbait content shouldn’t be your priority right now. One good idea to make your clickbait even more effective is to find angles in a topic that your target audience haven’t heard before.
For example, instead of talking about effective email marketing tips, you can talk about the reasons why their email newsletters are being marked as spam and how it could potentially make them lose thousands of dollars.
“5 Reasons Why You Are Losing $1000 to $20,000 Per Month Online”
Your content can then focus on the amount of potential leads your target audience could be missing just because email providers marked their email newsletters as spam. You follow this up with tips on how to make sure their email newsletters pass the spam score set upon by email providers like gmail, yahoo mail, etc.
By the time you’ve provided all the 5 reasons why their email marketing newsletter are marked as spam, by then your headline will make sense.
Time to Strategize
Is clickbait bad? Not if you use it in an ethical way. Ethical clickbait can improve your overall content marketing strategy without betraying your readers’ trust as long as your content can deliver value and satisfy your readers.
The key thing is to use it responsibly. Your headline should be intriguing and your content should follow through.
