By Colin Ball, B² Interactive
“This Baby Dancing to Beyoncé is the Best Thing You’ll See This Week.”
You would click a link to a story like that, wouldn’t you? We all have at some point in time, and it’s because click-bait headlines (like the one above) satisfy our natural curiosity.
If you’ve never heard of “click-bait” before, it’s a content marketing tactic used by news sources and blogs—such as Huffington Post and BuzzFeed—to convince online audiences to read content. With purposely vague titles and adjectives that promise “surprising” or “mindblowing” content, it’s easy to draw readers in. For example:
Kittens reenact “Scandal” and we can barely handle it http://t.co/ykgrtrUa2D
— Huffington Post (@HuffingtonPost) September 24, 2014
29 Things You Can Only Get Away With In The Midwest http://t.co/J31Sfu1wqI pic.twitter.com/SFYiijViz7
— BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) September 24, 2014
While this type of headline works for entertainment sites, it’s not a good content marketing tactic for businesses to use.
Sure, click-bait headlines with questions receive 150% more clicks, and those written in second-person narrative receive 175% more clicks. But content marketers who rely on click-bait often sacrifice quality content in order to get clicks.
Just because a reader is curious doesn’t mean they aren’t smart. In fact, they’ll see right through that “mindblowing” headline when the content behind it doesn’t deliver. And when they feel as though they’ve been duped, they probably won’t come back to your website again, which means you’ve just lost a potential consumer.
That’s the problem with click-bait content that no one addresses. It hurts the relationship between your business and your consumers. Again, an entertainment site can get away with using these headlines because their goal is to get people to share the content. But when you’re trying to convert site visitors into loyal customers, click-bait isn’t going to help.
Instead of focusing on getting clicks, your business should strive to create honest headlines with content that helps site visitors learn something. It might not garner the same amount of clicks that click-bait content receives, but it gains something else that helps you become a credible source of information—trust.
Being honest in your headlines doesn’t mean you can’t ever use lists or questions. You just shouldn’t trick readers into believing your content will shock them when it won’t.
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B² Interactive is a full-service digital marketing agency in Omaha, NE that fuses web development with content marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization, local listing management, and more to offer a well-rounded web presence for businesses. The co-founders of B² Interactive have years of experience building, operating and promoting sites—small and large, local and national. Services offered include Website Design and Development, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, and Paid Search Advertising Management. Follow B² Interactive in Omaha socially for our latest updates: B² Interactive on Twitter, B² Interactive on Facebook, B² Interactive on Google+.
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