Content marketing is often used by businesses for generating traffic. Getting the attention of your website visitors and making them attracted to your site, is the key to success for any online business. Yet in the past few years, there has been a rise in small business owners and marketers who are trying to find an easy way to boost traffic. This is done by promoting and producing ‘Click-baiting’.
When used smartly and economically, click-baiting can turn out to be a very effective advertising tool. To get maximum impact out from it, you need to tread it carefully otherwise it could turn out to be disaster. This knowledge will help you with the right ways to use in your business promotional strategies without causing any harm to it.
About Click-baiting
In simple words, Clickbait is a content that deliberately misrepresents or over-promises so as to pull visitors onto a specific website. This technique captures the attention of website users with a snippy, and sensationalist headline that could be like “you would not believe this” etc.
When the user clicks on the link and reaches a different website for which Click-baiting was created, he fails to get results as per his expectations. One of the popular forms of Click-baiting content is to generate “listicles” that combines content from different websites to pull a wide segment of users on a particular website.
How does a click-baiting article look like?
Click-baiting articles generally execute under three hundred words and do not include original content and ideas. In place of this, they are a summary of an embedded video or a long story which when examined, fails to match the corresponding headline.
Click-baiting tickles the curiosity in the user and provokes them to click a particular link to reach to a specific website. It is used in the form of a storytelling to build interest in people. This strategy helps a business to connect with a wide audience. When user reaches an intended website, they are being asked for entering their personal information to get a free product.
How does click-baiting benefit a business?
Several small businesses and marketing firms prefer to use this promotional strategy as it is the quickest means to produce web traffic and generate desired results. Industry specific listicles can save visitors a lot of energy and time attempting to combine information.
The consequent increase in website traffic with this content, results in improving the presence of a website amazingly. This leads to a “win-win situation” for a business as well as online audience. Though the generated traffic translates into higher rate of conversion, but an increase in sale is a little tough to say. If firms become over dependent on click baiting, then this strategy is sure to impact their business adversely.
Reason to be careful when using Click-baiting for your business marketing
The main issue of this marketing strategy is “under-delivers” and “over-promises”. Due to this reason, there are many possibilities that most of the future customers of a business would try their best to avoid it whenever possible. Nobody would like to feel like they have wasted their time or have been duped. So, if a business starts to publish or promote this strategy frequently, then your brand may get popular as toxic or a waste of time.
By keeping this in mind, the best way is to think twice prior to hosting it on the company website or spreading it on social networking channels. When used thriftily and artistically, it can yield positive traffic that could, in turn, strengthen the online presence of a business. This enhanced profile comes along with numerous indirect benefits.
However, depending a lot on this marketing technique is a sure and certain way to harm your SEO, damage trust in the brand and lose website’s social media followers. By treading carefully you have a better chance to achieve your goals.
Conclusion
Click-baiting is undoubtedly a good business marketing strategy when used in a limit and with precautions. In-depth knowledge about it would help a business to use it properly and gain benefits from it. When done right, it can become a powerful method to get people to notice your business and give their attention.
