Understanding Clickbait: Its Benefits and Drawbacks 

In the modern age, most users have got used to seeing clickbait in every corner of the internet. Although clickbait has a poor reputation, when done right, it can be a powerful and effective marketing strategy for raising brand awareness and building relationships with your target audience. What matters is that once you get them to your site, you provide more than simply a striking title.

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In this blog, we’ll explain the following things:

● What is the meaning of clickbait?

● Why do businesses use it?

● Its benefits and drawbacks

What Is Clickbait?

Before proceeding, we would like to address a common question, “What is the meaning of clickbait?” Clickbait is any content on the internet whose sole purpose is to draw attention and persuade people to click on a link to a certain web page. It’s a way to lure visitors into reading, watching, or listening to a piece of linked online material. Using clickbait-y headlines is a preferred method for many businesses to capitalize on the curiosity of readers. However, it leads to content with questionable value or quality. These are headlines designed to get readers to click on otherwise dull or low-quality content on the web or on mobile devices.

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Clickbait is a mechanism or profit instrument used by many websites, organizations, news journals, and other platforms to increase their popularity through higher click-through rates (CTR). It’s identified by an extremely appealing headline and a hyperlink that takes you to content that may not be nearly as intriguing or appealing as the title. Some characteristics commonly found in clickbait include:

● Content that encourages others to share it on social media

● Headlines that bring out distinct and intense emotions, such as laughter or wrath

● Images and videos that are unique or amusing

● Content that is simple to read

● Headlines that pique readers’ interest and make them want to learn more

● Unoriginal content that includes an embedded video or a summary of a longer piece that may be found on other platforms

It’s crucial to note that all forms of clickbait necessarily have all of these traits, but at least a number of them are frequently present.

Over time, content marketers in practically every industry have decided to try to create their own viral successes. This is done by emulating the style and format of clickbait web material popularized by sites like BuzzFeed and Upworthy, the two largest and finest clickbait producers on the internet.

What Are the Benefits of Clickbait?

Let’s look at the potential benefits of using clickbait-y content as part of your strategy.

1. More views

As the sole purpose of creating clickbait, it should come as no surprise that the initial benefit of this form of content is more page views. If you merely want to attract traffic, clickbait is a good method to do it.

Whether you utilize clickbait on your own site or elsewhere, such as social media posts or guest articles for other publications, it can help you get more page views. To determine the efficiency of clickbait posted on your own site, you’ll need to use analytics software like Google Analytics to track the sources of your visitors.

2. Potential for social shares

Clickbait that is good (or effective) is almost as easy to share on social media as it is to be clicked on in the first place. People, however, will not share just anything, since the type of content they share among their social networks is frequently intimately linked to perceptions of their personalities.

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It pays to appeal to people’s emotions in order to boost the social sharing of clickbait. They are more inclined to share the content if they have a strong emotional response to the content. Although pinpointing which emotional triggers to target can be tricky, many social media professionals agree that there are six main emotions attached to social media content. They are as follows:

● Joy

● Surprise

● Anger

● Disgust

● Sadness

● Fear

3. Increased brand awareness

The third advantage of clickbait is that it raises brand awareness. If clickbait generates more visits and social shares, your material can quickly spread over the web. In turn, more people will be exposed to your brand.

Content marketing should lead to increased brand exposure, and creating interesting clickbait is one method to do so. Brand recognition is critical at many phases of the content marketing cycle, especially when it comes to helping visitors remember your material (and consequently your brand), and developing trust.

It’s worth noting that you don’t have to focus on simply virality. This is already being accomplished if the content increases your page views and stimulates social sharing. Of course, the larger the reach of your content (for example, if it becomes viral), the more people will remember your brand.

What Are the Drawbacks of Clickbait?

Let’s move on to the next section, which discusses a few disadvantages of clickbait.

1. It can attract the wrong traffic

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It’s never just about traffic statistics: it’s about ensuring the traffic you get represents value to your business, whether you’re earning your revenue from ads, purchases, or leads.

Will clickbait bring in the kind of traffic that’s likely to convert if you rely solely on conversions? In the vast majority of circumstances, the answer is “no.”

Unlike advice/how-to articles (where users are looking for a reliable source with the expertise to assist them), clickbait doesn’t attract visitors who are looking to buy—instead, they’re looking to be entertained.

It is possible, however, to employ clickbait to build interest in your products or services. You may, for example, create a list of “lifehacks” that show how your items can “transform people’s lives.” By connecting to product pages throughout the post, you might be able to encourage impulse purchases.

2. Misleading clickbait damages reputation and alienates readers

Be mindful that not all readers will feel the same way you do. People may disagree with your point of view, especially if you’re blatantly pressing them to think a certain way and/or you haven’t investigated the correct facts or alternative interpretations of the story.

Furthermore, readers will be unlikely to support you if they find that you are manipulating their emotions for your own benefit (they may even call you out on your behavior, leading to a PR nightmare).

Don’t undervalue your readers’ intelligence; they don’t appreciate being controlled, and they surely don’t like being taught how to feel. Another option is to tell stories objectively, allowing users to make their own decisions. If the content is strong and the story has emotional weight, you can still generate an emotional response from your readers.

3. It may be irrelevant

Many content marketers have hopped on the clickbait bandwagon, creating low-quality content that masquerades as something interesting, in the hopes of boosting page views. These efforts, however, may be in vain, as some experts believe that page views are no longer that important.

Many publishers are over the so-called “click web,” in which clicks and page views are the most important metrics. Tony Haile, now a Senior Director of Product at Twitter, referred to it as the alternative model as the “attention web” back in 2014. It means that audience attention and engagement are becoming the defining metrics of content success.

Clickbait can be beneficial in the appropriate conditions, but in the end, well-researched, well-written, and highly relevant material will bring you more long-term success. So, create content depending on your unique needs, and make sure to revisit and revise it from time to time.

If you need premium web content that is also SEO-friendly, you can try out Pepper Content’s website content writing services.

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