I Found The Key to Success, and You Won’t BELIEVE It.

Clickbait. Clickbait is the key to success. And it can be used for good.

Now I know what you’re thinking, but yes: This is a serious article.

You have to make them feel something.

One particularly lethargic midnight, I came up with a new philosophy. An “Aha!” moment where I drew the connection.

I had just played some music for a few friends in the living room earlier that evening, hoping that they would listen for all the perfected details in the lyrics and music. They picked some up; good enough. Once they left, I had noticed that all the cool things that I had lying around, to give the house character, were completely ignored. I’d also been working hard on my resume with the mindset that no one will ever notice most of the details I had slaved over, and I was right.

So where does clickbait come in? Getting the ball to roll.

At times, you’ll have content at hand that someone might absolutely love, but they won’t seem to even check it out. One great example is the “Nice guy/girl” in the dating scene: “I’m nice, I’m successful, I’m social, I’m a good listener. I have no idea why I can’t find somebody!” But see, most of the time potential partners just never get to see that side of them. Why? Because there was no lure to the content. Another example would be a genius researcher, or master engineer who just can’t get the wow-factor in their work across.

So we’re back to where we started: Clickbait is, by definition: content of provocative nature whose main purpose is to attract attention and draw visitors to a particular web page.

If you have a great web page, no one will ever know unless you get them curious. Interested. You have to make them feel something. The same goes for your art, your resume, your research, your work, your opinions, and yourself as a friend or a partner.

Perform a cool stunt right before you sing an important lyric. Put a bunch of buzz words that your employer is interested in over important sections of your resume. Shower and dress nice before you go to a bar (or anywhere really). Show an investor how he can get rich and/or famous by funding you.

Because when there are 1,000,000,000 books, people WILL judge a book by it’s cover.

Suddenly, it makes sense. The content is useless if you can’t motivate or stir a desire in it’s consumer. Similar to the concept of product-centric marketing vs consumer-centric marketing, you can build an incredible product and end up failing if no one feels any motivation to give it a chance. You need to care about what they want and use it to get them hooked, because when there are 1,000,000,000 books, people WILL judge a book by it’s cover.

Bonus: If Trump’s opinions weren’t so clickbait-y, he probably wouldn’t have gone this far. He spent only $10 million on paid advertising versus Bush’s $82 million. However, he has almost $2 billion worth of free advertising only rivalled by Clinton’s $750 million ($28 million paid). The 3rd position was Sanders’ $321 million ($28 million paid). This is an interesting point of view I got during a marketing lecture while we studied Donald Trump’s eerily successful use of public relations. (source: mediaQuant, SMG Delta By The New York Times)