Each week, my colleagues and I receive data on how many clicks our blog posts have received from our weekly newsletter. A healthy dose of jokes are made at the expense of the person with the lowest number, and we swiftly move on with our day (and we certainly don't spend any time whatsoever mourning the repeated loss week-in-week out).
Unsurprisingly, the most clicked posts are usually the ones with accessible, informative, and intriguing titles. Unsurprisingly, weak titles make for irrelevant articles, and irrelevant articles means less traffic for your site. Now, there's a fine line between writing a good headline and writing clickbait. Clickbait headlines are usually sensationalised or provocative by nature and deliberately omit key information in a bid to incite the reader to click through to the host site.
From my own experience, the actual content behind a lot of clickbait headlines is fairly thin. As the below articles states, headlines are key in helping readers decide whether or not to invest time/effort in your content. Repeatedly churning out clickbaity, misinforming headlines that link to subjectively unrewarding articles can ultimately cost you the trust of your target audience. Doing this over time can cause their perception of your business' credibility to wane.
Consider content marketing a war zone. The battle is for attention and your headline is your weapon. The reader’s perpetually – but subconsciously – asking, “Why should I read this?” Answer the question. Make it unmistakably clear what the reader gains by investing time in your content. The pulling power of a magnetic headline traces to its promise. Simply stated, it’s a benefit.
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