Clever or Crippling? Clickbait Content

I was recently reading postings on Inbound.com when I ran across a discussion on clickbait. One of the founders of HubSpot was active in the discussion and it really caught my interest. Clickbait wasn’t a term I had significant familiarity with, but the terminology seemed to speak for itself. According to Wikipedia, clickbait is a term describing web content that is aimed at generating action, even at the expense of quality or accuracy, relying on sensationalist headlines to attract click-throughs and encourage forwarding of the material.

After giving it more thought, it was obvious that entire content empires have been built upon a simple premise: People want to know what happens next. Clickbait content is designed to pique interest and raise questions in the reader's mind, promising a fulfilling and intriguing answer. But that doesn't mean that clickbait content is necessarily the best application for digital marketers today. In fact, clickbait can quickly become a crutch in digital marketing, especially when used in conjunction with uninspiring or repetitive content.

The science behind clickbait content
Clickbait content involves both specificity and emotional anchoring. Some titles use extreme, powerful words such as "astonishing" or "incredible" to garner interest, and they may target strangely precise audiences such as "school teachers" or "West Coast parents." Others make promises to generate attention: "If you want to save money on your gas bill, this is the article you need to read today." But at its core, clickbait content raises a question and then forces the reader to click through to get the answer, promising some intellectual or emotional revelation. In fact, as Forbes reported, merely phrasing a title as a question is enough to improve clicks by 150%.¹ So does that make clickbait bad? It seems like an acceptable, and to a certain extent, even a proven practice.

Clickbait is not a new communications strategy, and that's partly why it is so effective. Clickbait taps into human curiosity and even a universal need to fill an "informational gap,"² as reported in a study by the American Psychological Association. In fact, marketers are rediscovering clickbait based on search engine optimization techniques pushing for more accurate, content-complete titles. Clickbait, as io9 notes, has existed for at least a 100 years.³ Newspapers have been using clickbait-style headlines since the 1900s, and they were even used during the early days of the web; it was keyword-focused, search-optimized content that initially drove clickbait out of vogue for digital marketing.

Content confusion: Why readers profess to hate clickbait
An unfortunate, and some might say inevitable, side effect of clickbait is sensationalism. Some content and social media marketers may be looking for the most compelling topic possible not necessarily the most accurate. This leads to article titles that may be extremely disparate from the actual content of the article. When sensationalism is overused it ultimately leads to a loss of faith; the audience no longer wants to listen to the marketer because they expect to be disappointed or misled. But just because readers are wary of clickbait doesn't mean that it isn't effective; it just means that marketers must ensure substance. Though a multitude of sites has been made to mock or satirize clickbait content, clickbait content has remained a popular technique.

The problem of clickbait content in digital marketing
Clickbait has been abused and as a result is getting a bad rap. Facebook, for instance, has been particularly outspoken against the tactic,⁴ taking direct action to weed out clickbait content to prevent it from being promoted on news feeds. But that isn't the biggest issue that clickbait faces. The biggest problem with clickbait is that its goal is purely to gain traffic. Clickbait doesn't care what a reader does after they have actually clicked through and clickbait does nothing to sell a product or increase engagement. It’s one-dimensional, unconcerned about side effects.

And, as noted by Econsultancy, clickbait content gone wrong violates practically all modern search engine optimization techniques⁵; it's incompatible with them. Clickbait is designed for social sharing. This usually results in websites that churn out continuous streams of content in the hopes that a handful of them will go viral. Quality control is often sacrificed in these situations, which can be ultimately harmful for companies attempting to build a strong, cohesive brand and identity.

Using clickbait responsibly in digital marketing
Misuse of clickbait by a few doesn't mean that it cannot be used responsibly in digital marketing. It just means that clickbait cannot be the only tool in a digital marketer's arsenal. As mentioned, simply phrasing a title as a question rather than a declarative statement is often enough to increase traffic; digital marketers can use this technique to punch up otherwise creative, valuable content. Digital marketers can take advantage of the informational gap while still being cognizant of their article's actual content to ensure that readers both click through to their content and stay once they see that the content is truly relevant. Digital marketing does need to ensure titles are reflective of actual content, or marketers risk being punished and penalized by search engines.

Marketing trends support the idea that clickbait techniques work. But they achieve a very specific goal: just getting a reader to click through. Clickbait is entirely geared toward creating traffic and page views. Ensure content provides real value that follows a clever teaser. Underdelivering or misrepresenting discredits clever titles and posts. If you are considering how to evolve your digital marketing techniques, talk with us. Get a personalized assessment and learn 5 new marketing innovations and techniques for 2015.

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