We have all had our share of clickbait. The sensational news headlines couldn't be saved for later. Those smartly worded copies piqued our curiosity, only to crush them later mercilessly by not giving us what we were looking for. Irrelevant information, and news that took us on wild goose chases, only make us regret the time we spent over them. The piece of valuable time that we will never get back.
I am sure we have had at least one such experience. For the more cynical ones amongst us, one such experience was enough. For the more trusting souls, well, we have been tortured enough and we have now put our foot down.
"Enough!"
What content creators and marketers need to understand, sooner than later, is that we need to value our audience's time. We need to understand that we are not just fighting for disposable income anymore, but also for their time and attention. In fact, the latter holds more importance now, more than ever before.
Given in the sea of options and choices available for readers, users, and audiences, we all might get just one tiny chance and we need to make the best of it. If they are really clicking our URL and making a conscious decision to go through our content, we too, have to make a conscious effort to create valuable content for them.
Click baits just can't do that.
The moment the reader feels that they have been duped, they don't just lose interest in your article, but in the brand/URL that is hosting that piece of content. Click baits are left with the tag of not reliable for a long time to come. Something very similar to marking an email SPAM, so as to never receive it again.
Readers, nowadays, have become wary of such click baits. They have started seeing a pattern in the way headlines and sometimes deceiving pictures are used to get them to click on the article.
It is important to remember that getting website traffic using click baits is as good as not having relevant traffic to the website, at all.
Good content helps people skim through not only thane article whose link you shared, but other posts and articles, as well. It is your way of introducing your brand to people and giving them a tour (using CTAs) throughout your website.
My brand is about empathetic marketing. It goes a step further than giving clients what we offer. It is about providing clients services that they require and find indispensable. As such, I find click baits an utterly aggressive technique to catch attention and not deliver value.
An interesting and catchy headline is always welcome, as long as it delivers on the value it is promising its readers. That's what copywriting is all about.
Audiences today are more aware. They value the little time they have on their hands to spend surfing new topics and ideas. We should respect that time and try to find the right topic and audience match, by not only studying our target audience well but also creating content that the audience finds useful.