What is clickbait and how to use it favourably?

What is clickbait? 

Have you ever been brown on the internet, be it a video sharing site like YouTube or a social media platform like Instagram, and seen a headline that seemed too unbelievable to be real? An example could be: “Person arm wrestled over 100 people and never lost. Find out how! ” That is an example. Suddenly, the website leads you to a blog about a bicep workout machine for sale. Was it a lie? Kind of, but not really. Who knows, maybe that one product managed to help out a very specific person, and the use of clickbait even helped boost viewership on said product. That is essentially what clickbait is: a flashy headline that ensnares the public into thinking they must click on it. Now, it can be both good and bad, but it for certain is very beneficial to expansion of a website, product, or even company in many ways.  

 

Accumulation of traffic and a way of marketing 

Clickbait is a method that many people use in order to build traffic into their website, article, or video. With such a flashy headline and the “this is too good to be true” sensation flooding the reader's mind, curiosity drives the reader to feel as though they must click on the headline in order to understand the information presented to them. These kinds of headlines push the public to a certain place. What can be done once there are so many eyes on a single website or video? That is where marketing comes in. Clickbait is a valuable asset in not only bringing eyes to a product, but also finding a subversive way to market said product. Consider the guy with the honeybee extract. With the attractive headline bringing eyes onto the article, he can now market the product to multiple different people.  

 

How to properly use clickbait 

Headlines 

The more ridiculous, the better the headline. That is the most fundamental part of clickbait. If a headline seems unbelievable, then more people are curious to find out exactly what it could mean or how it can possibly be true. Similarly, when it comes to video sharing websites like YouTube, a thumbnail is imperative. A thumbnail is the image that appears below the video title that essentially shows what the video will be about. A clickbait thumbnail includes attributes like big words in red font saying things like “you won’t believe this” or “this is crazy!” 

 

Content 

Whether the content being advertised by the clickbait is accurate to the description or not is purely up to the promoter or creator. While many view this method as an unethical practice to lure unsuspecting people, it can also be an attractive way to explain a useful product or service that would initially garner no attention at all. Circling back to the bee example, that profit could contain many beneficial medical applications that consumers are initially unaware of. Clickbait video titles could also bring in people who are interested in learning something new or valuable. Just because it may seem like a way to falsely market to the public doesn’t mean it has to be that way. It’s all about intent and the way people go about using the clickbait. It can be a very imperative tool for companies to be able to get their product out to the eyes of people who may never get the chance to see or learn about it otherwise. On one hand there is the draw, which is where marketing comes in, but there has to be a good payoff or else people will generally get upset or feel cheated by the image or flashy headline.  

 

We recommend that you keep updating yourself on the latest trends and acquire the right knowledge. If you want to know more about clickbaiting, I invite you to look closely at the Online Master's Degree in Digital Marketing.