A digital salesman of yours, who somehow convinces your audience to follow up the content. Clickbait has been a topic of discussion over the years, every person has a different opinion and different idea about using clickbait. In the early years, the audience had partially explored the market and its strategies. So fooling the audience by using clickbait was super easy. But now that the current scenario is paradoxical the audience is much smarter and choosy, they don't get stuck in traps too easily.
Basically, your clickbait shouldn't seem like clickbait. If you succeed using clickbait then it will be very beneficial. But if it doesn't work out well then it can highly disturb your digital appearance as well. It is very difficult to bring your audience back once they lose trust in you. Clickbait can either make you or would break you.
Clickbait is surely an old-school strategy but it still works for many websites and content sharing platforms. Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, News Channels, Newspapers, WhatsApp forwarders, and many other websites use clickbait as a weapon just to target the targeted audience.
Let's dive deep into clickbait and its advantages and disadvantages. And lastly some FAQs about the same.
Let us begin with breaking down the word Clickbait. 'Click' means tap and 'bait' means something used to persuade someone. Clickbait can be anything, a thumbnail of a YouTube video, a title of a YouTube video or the headline of news article. Clickbait can be defined as "Needless depiction of a certain thing in over-exaggerated form to bait, that is to convince the audience to watch, read or share the content."
Clickbait often misguides you in many ways. It is digestible when the clickbait strategy is used humorously, but when websites or news channels or content creators do this just to bring a large crowd and encourage social sharing, it becomes highly indigestible. Because many times the thumbnail has nothing to do with the inner content and it was there just for the sake of a strategy. The sole purpose of clickbait is to satisfy the need for more engagement.
Many times news channels use clickbait and they deliver the news by adding their own spice, they don't care about the audience, or what impact the headline will create on the outer world, it is only about their TRP and their popularity. The one who uses clickbait always stays in the public eye, often in the bad eyes.
While clickbait is an old-school technique yet it has multiple advantages. Some of them are:
A good number of views and greater engagements are the reason why clickbait is used. Contents having clickbait have a good chance of getting viral. And this brings more pageviews.
For example - If the one following up got pranked, and didn't see anything that was mentioned in the thumbnail. The person will surely send it to his friends or family just so that even they get fooled.
If used clickbait appropriately your content might stay on the explore page or news feed for a longer time. And it may enjoy a good amount of engagement and social reshares.
If clickbait makes your content viral then your page will be exposed to many people. More people will come to your website or channel or social media handle and some may stay as daily readers or viewers. Clickbait can be used to increase brand awareness in less time.
Clickbait accelerates the online performance of your content as it directly tops up the curiosity, and people enthusiastically click on the bait they notice. This way clickbait guarantees faster growth.
Clickbait is good enough and has multiple advantages. But one must not forget that clickbait has some disadvantages as well. Some of the are:
Clickbait is surely a successful strategy, but it is really an older concept.The concept should be improvised cause fooling your dedicated audience is unethical. Also, nowadays audiences have become very smart, your bait works only if it is appropriate and attractive.
Clickbait highers the gain of your brand digitally, but after a certain point, the audience gets pissed off, of getting fooled every damn day. Verbal communication is still the strongest weapon. People might discuss how you cheat, they might plan to unsubscribe you or websites. Wall built up on weaker pillars doesn't stand still for a longer time.
No matter how dedicated your audience is, usage of clickbait frequently can erode trust. One may miss out on the friendly connection, which they felt before.
Only online businesses have a privilege to practice clickbait. Everyone who got trapped in clickbait won't make efforts to walk in your traditional online business. Page views are subjected till online concept only, in real life the number of consumers is counted.
No one likes getting fooled. After a certain point of time, one starts thinking whether to "trust this content or not" or "should I watch certain videos or not?"
After researching and taking public activities into consideration, it is proven that YouTube content creators use the Clickbait strategy frequently. YouTube is a large platform, with 30 million active users per day. All the videos that are watched are Clickbait, either the thumbnail or the title. But those creators who use clickbait are still on the top when it comes to engagement and views.
5 minutes craft enjoys a huge number of subscribers and views. But their thumbnails are 100% Clickbait. And they often use old clips in new videos. They have over 72.3 million subscribers and a sum of 20.2 billion views. Netizens are of the view that the particular channel isn't the right place to learn the craft.
PewDiePie has a huge base of 100 million subscribers. He claims that he uses clickbait for fun. But deep down we all know it is a game of two words "page views."
Troom Troom is another weird craft channel that uses clickbait and it also has absurd content which is barely applicable in real life. Troom Troom also has a sum of 10 million subscribers.
A YouTuber with 22.9 million subscribers and 5.71 billion views once made a controversial video where he used the term dead body as a Clickbait to gain views. But later the video was taken down.
He enjoys a huge fandom of 10.4 million subscribers and 2 billion views but uses clickbait very often. His content pulls off 1 million views in just 12 hours. Though he uses clickbait he owns a place in people's heart and netizens are in his favor.
We have answered some of the commonly asked questions about clickbait.
In the end, clickbait becomes a story that disappoints you. There are surely a lot of opinions about content creators and news channels that use clickbait. Clickbait has been proven beneficial for them but also has ruined their reputation to some extent. And once if the tables turn, clickbait could ruin your career just like it made once! Clickbait used under fair use policy that is clickbait that attracts an audience but doesn't fool them are negotiable. But using clickbait where the thumbnail or headline depicts a different story and the inner content is something very different, isn't a good practice. Clickbait isn't for the person who looks forward to consistent growth, because clickbait gives short-term success.
