What Is a Clickbait?
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| developmentvitality.com |
Why Are There Clickbaits?
A Clickbait is good for a marketing or publicity stunt, but it's a feat that aims to deceive the audience. Why? Because it tends to over-promise and misrepresent intentionally, in order to sensationalize a certain subject matter that's not even supposed to be given attention to. The wording used is usually hyperbolic or exaggerated and may tend to sound like something phenomenal or out of the ordinary. Some of the usual clickbait-y wordings utilized on the web today are:
"What Happens Next Will Shock You"
"You won't believe"
These two are generic clickbait wordings, so if you see them, turn your cursor away from the headline right away. However, a headline can be a click bait without utilizing those words.
Clickbaits exist to serve the purpose of pulling in more traffic and page views of an online entity. Anyone who's attempting to disseminate information online is at the mercy of big publishing companies which are saturated by various publishers fighting their way to the featured page in order to gain more page views. Apparently, one of the ways for them to succeed is to make their headlines catchy. Most often than not, they tend to cross the thin line between substantial information and fraud.
When Is It Okay to Use Clickbait-like Headlines?
Clickbait is only good in pulling in traffic and increasing page views, however, it's never good in building a site's reputation. It may saturate your page with traffic, but in the long run, this audience who gets "misled" to your page by Clickbaits will eventually outgrow such feat. And, they'll never come back to your site. So, the next time you try to throw in a catchy headline, make sure you don't oversell it or at least you live up to the hype that you've built in the title. Remember, a headline only becomes a clickbait once it does not live up to the superfluous title that came with it. It's not okay to use Clickbait headlines, but it's okay to magnify interesting highlights of a subject and sell it in the title without losing its actual context.
How to Avoid Clickbait?
So, basically, there's no getting around Click baits but to get through it. That is why it's easily one of the most annoying things that you can find on the internet. You won't know what it is until you've read through it.
How to Getting Rid of Clickbait Publishers?
However, if you recognize a publisher who's been using clickbait headlines in every content that they publish, the best way to deal with them is to stay away from their post or website. As mentioned above, these are the type of people who are hungry for traffic because traffic is equivalent to income. So, if you don't click on their misleading headline, that will be 1 less traffic for them. Also, it helps to not share their content on social media even if you're simply warning your friends about it. You can just simply screen cap on their headline and the name of the publisher and post on social media so that your friends will still be informed but won't risk clicking on them.
Apparently, this has become a growing trend online, even in many credible news sites. Some are meant to misinform, some are meant to start a conflict, while some are simply used to persuade the unsuspecting. The only way we could stand up against it is by not giving them what they want - traffic. When you read a headline that's suspiciously bizarre, a simple search on Google can easily clear the air for you. Research, compare and be critical in everything that you read online because gone are the days when the internet was just a harmless virtual library.