Is Click-Bait Right For You?

No. No, it isn’t.

We chose this topic after noticing something on one of the sites we sometimes use for news on current content creation trends. Fully 60% (six of ten) of the articles featured on the front page on a recent day led with numbers: 5 Ways to…, 7 Tools That…, 3 Questions to… and so on (worse, half of those stories used an “X Ways to…” headline template).

This sparked a brief discussion: Is this what content creation is devolving into? Is it careening down a path where the headings will look like they were modeled after bad social media click-bait ads? Do the kind of customers targeted by our clients fall for click-bait style links, or have they learned to tune them out? The “click-bait” label aside, is this kind of strategy effective?

Our consensus simple (and reassuring!) answer to each of these questions was “no!”

• No: This is not where content creation is going. It’s moving simultaneously in a number of different directions, but this isn’t one of them. To be fair, while one of the lead stories on that page was fresh, the others had publication dates across a four year period and might have appeared together that day as the result of a random shuffle of existing content. The sort of thing we saw that day on that web site isn’t really typical—although many content creators did flirt heavily with this format only a few years ago. They seem to have learned that it doesn’t really work and have returned to a more creative (and responsible) approach.
• No: Customers don’t really go for click-bait. That’s especially true for customers of the kind of clients we serve. They’re “pull” customers: they’re out there actively looking for the services our clients provide and they’re influenced by meaningful search results and content. They’re not “push” customers who passively encounter links to this content and might, out of curiosity, give them a click. (The use of push and pull here might seem backwards; we’re viewing it from the customer end in this case.)
• No: For the kinds of clients we produce content for, this style of ad isn’t going to be effective. That’s true for the same reason that it was for the previous answer: you’re not casting a net to catch random internet users who might become customers. Your strategy is more analogous to putting out a lamp that shines with a specific frequency of light which attracts a specific moth; or you’re leaving a trail of a very particular kind of breadcrumb that only one species of critter would want to eat.

In the end, what began as a mildly agitated discussion of click-bait seeping into content creation soon gave us no cause for alarm. Click-bait is not taking over.

It struck us as odd that most of those pieces with the terrible click-bait style headlines actually contained good, thoughtful, and useful content. That’s a shame, because we felt the poor headlines made users at least slightly less likely to read the linked stories. The odds are good that most of the authors hadn’t created their own headlines. In one case we were certain of it: the headline seemed awkwardly grafted on and didn’t accurately represent the content of the article.

In our own content creation process, each writer suggests a headline that fits the content of each article; the editor or account manager then accepts that headline or might write an entirely new one to better fit the content and the client requirements; each client is always free to alter or rewrite a headline if they choose.

We’re also certain—judging by the bylines, author bios, and the site itself—that these articles were all written to rough templates. Everyone uses templates for content: they do, we do, even you do if you produce your own material. Some sites require it, or at least heavily recommend it, especially if their templates have been designed to impose a desired structure on the material or to leverage the way it will be used by search engines.

But as with every other tool, templates can be of varying quality: some are good, some are bad. It’s also very true that they’re only as good as the person using them: a great content writer can succeed even with a terrible template, while a poor writer might produce trash content even with a great template. We also shouldn’t forget that templates have specific and appropriate uses: the aphorism that a man with only a hammer for a tool thinks every problem is a nail applies here. No good carpenter will have only a single tool, and a good content writer will have a library of templates to work with.

Templates and how we create and use them are important topics themselves. We’ll delve deeper into them in future posts.

It’s important that your business give the best impression possible to potential customers. When you work with Waltham WordWorks, you have a partner who takes the time to learn your business. We produce content that shows off your expertise on the topics that matter to customers. Contact us today to shift your approach from “bait-and-click” toward showcasing your abilities in a way that builds long-term value.