Clickbait How?

Last week we discussed and explained what is clickbait and its history. This week we will cover what are the types of clickbait and next week we will discuss how you can implement them into your business.

BuzzFeed has created a large digital company off the back of bringing clickbait into the 21st century. They have mastered the act of clickbait.

However, BuzzFeed didn’t invent any of this. They just do it better than anyone else. Their specific examples are absurd, of course. You’d never want to use them word-for-word on your buttoned-up website that caters to insurance agents. But. You can look at what they’re doing, understand the basic fundamentals of why it works, and adapt accordingly.

Here are 3 clickbait techniques you can apply to your website:

Donald Trump is currently the one of the most effective topics for ‘newsjacking’.

Fake news hustler John Egan from Vancouver, Canada, told The New York Times that his pro-Clinton site didn’t take off as expected during the election. But when he switched to anti-Clinton, things hit a fever pitch:

“It’s all Trump. People go nuts for it.”

‘The Hot Topic’ is using what is currently ‘newsworthy which helps create attention. People care about it and it you can leverage that to gain eyeballs to your ‘boring’ thing.

Okay. Pushing the envelope a bit. You might want to dial it back. But still. It perfectly appeals to a specific audience and plays against the fears, stereotypes, realities, and challenges they face.

What else might get people to “treat you differently”? There’s your hook.

The Cliffhanger is pattern interruption at it finest. It teases just enough that there’s no way you can’t click to see more.

The tittle of last weeks blog uses the concept of a cliffhanger in its clickbait tittle to attract readers.

Cliffhangers are extremely easy to implement. For example we can apply this template to multiple industries “Things Nobody Tells You About” [Problem Your Customers Face].

• Things Nobody Tells You About Term Life Insurance
• Things Nobody Tells You About Email Open Rates
• Things Nobody Tells You About Your Roth IRA

And on and on and on. You can even spice things up a bit and throw a number in front of “Things”.

Those are the 3 clickbaiting techniques: Newsjacking, The hot topic and The cliffhanger.

What do you think of these techniques? Have you ever come across any of these in techniques and been drawn in. Which technique is your favourite? and what are you thinking about the clickbait series so far? Let me know in the comments below.