You Won’t Believe What’s in this Article…
Did I catch you? Did this bait you enough to clicking on my blog post?
If so, well, I’ve done by job. I can sign-off now. I’ve lured you into consciously clicking on this article; I’ve persuaded you into thinking that you were going to discover something bountiful within the confines of this page. But, instead, this article leaves you empty-handed; it’s the opposite of what caught your eye in the first place. It’s called a “click-bait” — a term us technology-savvy minds have become acquainted with.
Click-bait marketing doesn’t have to be specific. Nor does it have to be fruitful or authentic. All it has to do is just bait you to click on my article so that publishers and potentially, advertisers (or in this case, me) can leave happy. I’ve got you to become aware of my brand, either in a good or bad fashion — doesn’t matter. The extremity of the title of my article is a cheapened way to get you to click on my online media.
Check out “Photo 1.”, and see what I mean. It’s a YouTube thumbnail by renowned click-bait figure, Yousef Erakat — or, better known by his stage name, “FouseyTube”. He’s known as a “prankster” on YouTube, and to his credit, has accumulated nearly 10 million subscribers on his channel because of it. I’ve strategically placed it above this paragraph to preserve your attention for the remainder of this article.
Anyways, onto the methodology.
The backbone behind Photo 1. primarily has to do with the title accompanied by the image provided with it. Yousef wants the viewer to think there’s some drama or “beef” going on with another YouTube star named “RiceGum” — catching the eyes and minds of his subscribers and outside media. Alas, it turned out to be a social experiment done by Yousef himself, claiming that people only watch YouTube videos for others’ misfortunes and negativity. While he is right, it ultimately has to do with how he frames the title(s) of his video — it leaves with a cliffhanger, thus, waiting for the click of a viewer to happen. The title disregards of what’s actually withheld of the videos’ content, misleading the viewer to think it is something more, rather than what it actually is. 14 million views later, it certainly worked.
Click-bait marketing thrives off the psychology of human activity and its emotions; anxiety, excitement, humour, and most of all, shock. These are all first impressions of human behaviour when acquainted with online media; merging with anticipation and curiosity of the short-attention span mind. But since many click-bait online media is often extreme in its title, the content itself shares a collective feeling of disappointment, manipulation, and being deceived from its lurers. And it’s probably why FouseyTube’s video from Photo 1. shared a ratio of 700,000+ “likes”, versus nearly 300,000 “dislikes”.
The rhyme or reason of click-bait marketing hasn’t quite been figured out as of yet (like much of social media trending these days), leaving the marketing world scratching their hair-slicked-back heads. So far we know that it is a cheap, short-term marketing strategy that first shows an overwhelming audience, but eventually drifts off into the over-compensation of other click-bait media.
Regardless, click-bait marketing as a primitive strategy to content building works in its context of online media; a medium that is filled with always-evolving, easily-readable, short content. Would it have been as effective in print media, or even broadcasting (television, film, radio, etc.) media? Probably not, because with those forms of media, the viewer is already locked into the strategy: the newspaper is already in one’s hands, and the television is fixated on one channel from the viewer’s choosing.
With that, I’ve put together an equation that epitomizes click-bait marketing, and its online media context:
Cheap, Dramatic marketing + Lazy minds of our generation = Clicking behaviour.
That’s all. Okay, you can leave now.
