Clickbait Headlines

Clickbait Headlines
I'm with Randy Milanovic on this one. 

Clickbait = spam for me. I disregard. Give me something to think about.

#clickbait   #contentheadlines  

Originally shared by Randy Milanovic

So You Wore Out Your Audience With Headline Trends… You Won't BELIEVE What Happens Next!

The #clickbait headline became popular when Upworthy used it to great success, and other content empires were quick to follow suit - Buzzfeed, Huffington Post and even traditional media like the WAshington Post.

It's no surprise the format is appealing. Upworthy claims readership rates that leave a lot of online marketers drooling, and their formula for getting your attention is front and centre.

The problem began when everyone else got on board - and you wouldn't believe what happened to every headline on the internet: reading them became entirely exhausting. And addicting.

It makes everything you post sound absolutely earth-shattering. It makes you feel like the reader won't be able to resist clicking to find out what happened next! Except, everyone's doing it. What happens when everyone follows a lightning-in-a-bottle formula without great content to back it up? The form suffers.

Even Upworthy knows the headline clicks don't mean success. (http://www.niemanlab.org/2014/02/upworthy-has-a-new-way-of-measuring-engagement/) They've already changed their key metrics to #attentionminutes, rather than click-throughs. If you're only following a headline format, you're doing it wrong. The trendsetter says so.

The flip side...

If you abuse their curiosity, you'll see your readers packing up to leave.

At the core, that's what these headlines try to do: they want to elicit a knee-jerk emotional response from the reader, get them to click with a heightened level of attention to the content they're clicking to see.

It's manipulative and most of the content behind these headlines is entirely believable. A trendy headline format that tries to push readers' buttons over and over isn't going to improve page views long-term. It's going to leave readers suspicious and bored.

So go ahead and make your headlines interesting, but save the comments about unbelievable results for something truly exciting and engaging - and if you've got content of that calibre, you shouldn't have to tell your readers what it is.

Show them with great content, don't exhaust them by toying with their emotions. Instead of just making our content look more interesting, let's try to be more interesting instead.

http://www.kayakonlinemarketing.com/blog/bid/196888/Clickbait-vs-Curiosity-Making-Waves-13