Facebook’s recipe to creating more effective content
Inform, set expectations and share mindfully
A month ago, Facebook announced that friends’ content will be more prominently featured in newsfeed, at the expense of publishers. Yesterday, they announced another substantial change: getting rid of clickbait.
This is pretty great news, as less clickbait makes for a better, more readable newsfeed. However, it also means that Page admins need to pay closer attention to the content they’re sharing.
So what is clickbait? Essentially, it’s a headline that attempts to lure click by withholding and distorting information. Here are some examples from Facebook’s press release:
“You’ll Never Believe Who Tripped and Fell on the Red Carpet…”
“Apples Are Actually Bad For You?!”
And my favorite…
“You’ll Be SHOCKED By How Shredded His Abs Are After Eating This Superfood…”
💪.
Going forward, using such headlines would result in less prominent newsfeed placing and less traffic from Facebook. Here are Facebook’s official guidelines for avoiding clickbaits and crafting newsfeed-worthy headlines:
1. Inform
Do not intentionally withhold information. Let the audience know what the key event described in your story is. Your readers should be able to anticipate the content of your post just by reading its title.
2. Set appropriate expectations
This guidelines deals with headlines that are exaggerated or misleading. Writers tend to do this to lure more people to reading their articles.
3. Share without clickbait headlines
Facebook will also penalize pages that share clickbait content. This means you also have to be watchful of the type of content you share, and apply the aforementioned guidelines to it. Is it informative? Does it set appropriate expectations?
Clickbait is tempting: tempting to click and tempting to write. As I was wrapping up this post, I noticed that my initial headline was clickbait:
“Facebook’s secret recipe to creating more effective content”
That’s an unfriendly headline. It forces you to click to make sure you’re not missing some incredibly important secret, instead of helping you decide how to use your time effectively. It doesn’t inform, and it doesn’t set appropriate expectations.
That’s why I ended up including the tips directly in the title. This way, you’d only click the article to read more in-depth information about its subject.
Clickbait is designed to compensate for poor content — content people wouldn’t click if its headline accurately represented it.
Truth is, creating content that requires clickbaiting is simply doing it wrong. Instead, try writing authentic, bite-sized pieces around your specialty. Then, use your headlines to reveal as much information as possible about your article.
Example: for an ice cream parlor, writing about “How To Make Ice Cream At Home ” is more friendly and less clickbaity than “15 Most Popular Ice Cream Flavors: The Winner May Surprise You!”.
Psst, we know a friendly way to feature high on newsfeed: timing! Yala makes it easy to time your posts perfectly to maximize your content’s exposure. Click here to try it out yourself.
Like this post? A 💚 would be super appreciated.
