Hello, and welcome to the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. I'm Esther.
And I'm Melanie.
And today we're talking clickbait. Love it or hate it, what's your opinion on it, Melanie?
I think there's a place for it. But I think most of our audience are now quite educated as to what clickbait is, and I think a lot of them will probably avoid it where possible.
Yeah. I mean, this is something that's been going around for years and years and years. Okay. So clickbait for those that aren't familiar with it. It's the little phrases before an article or a video that says you won't believe point number three and things like that just to try to get you to literally click into the article.
Look what happened when she opened the door.
Yeah, you read through it and go, she didn't even open the door. But they're just doing that to get clicks on their article, to get the analytics to look good. If you click on one of their ads or on one of their things on their social media, then you're more likely to start seeing it again and again and more things from them coming up in your feed. So it's a lot of businesses and it's a lot of way to get around the algorithm in a way, because the algorithm sort of likes to share out things that are new, exciting. You mention a baby or there's a pet in it anywhere. The algorithm automatically pops it up to the top of your feed, at least in my feed anyway. There's lots of people like having newborns, and it's right there. And I haven't seen stuff from them in years. But it's happy news, so we like to see happy things on our newsfeed. So businesses got wise to this and started using phrases that would make you happy, and phrases that would entice you in and phrases that would sort of Pique your interest so that you would click and once you click, then the little cookie bots in the background start gathering little bits of information about you. And then they can retarget. And then they're not obviously finding your name or anything or where you live. It's not that bad. But they get more information about you. So then they see what sort of people are clicking on their stuff. But clickbait? Well, not just recently, but a lot of people became wise to clickbait. And now it's the whole "not another one of those". Not another one of "is point number seven what you expected?" It's like, no, and I don't care. Not going to click on it anymore. So how can we get around it now?
Well, what happened before clickbait? Do you know?
We were just normal people?
Well, what happened before was a descriptive, sometimes referred to as quirky headline. So your headline would be a descriptor rather than sort of scandalising the topic. It would be a descriptor and maybe even a play on words. And as a journalist, that's something that we use all the time. The last thing we want to be accused of, certainly because I don't work for tabloids, is having anything particularly clickbaity. So sometimes I will play on words. Well, sometimes puns, but that's kind of overdone as well. But you see, a lot of people think the only way to get people to click is to use a short punchy headline for their blog. But I'll be honest with you, you got a greater chance of your blog or your post, let's say, or your podcast being found in search if it's longer.
Yeah, well, that's all part of the SEO.
Exactly.
Which we'll talk about on a different day.
Yes. And I know you've got a maximum amount of characters you can use, but it doesn't mean you can't use more. It just suggests you use only so many. Okay. But the whole thing can still get found in a search. So sometimes you can have a little bit of fun just being creative, using a descriptive way of letting people know what's in it for them to read your actual post.
Yeah and I mean people don't like being tricked into reading things either, or tricked into signing up for stuff. It's especially awful the ones that say, oh, read this, it's wonderful, it's brilliant. But in order to read it, you have to give them your name, your email address, and you get it and it's not even any value to you. All you wanted to do was forget about work or forget about things and just have five minutes of relaxation reading something funny. And it turned out not to be. So it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth as well. And it's the same as true with watch bait, which is basically doing the same thing but on video. So it's when you start watching a video and they say "watch to the end and you'll not believe" or "watch to the end and you could win". It's just trying to get people to sign up and to improve their algorithm. Sorry, not algorithm, their statistics, because the long term.
It also does still work a degree.
Oh it works, but do you like it? I mean, personally, on a personal note here, do you like looking at clickbait reading clickbait things?
It really depends on the time that I have available to me, whether I feel it's something that I'm currently researching or have a genuine interest in. I've recently watched like in three weeks, The Vampire Diaries, all eight seasons in three weeks.
Wow, slow at work?
No, I was on holiday, I got totally involved and I was Googling stuff and I was looking up Facebook groups. And so, yeah, there was some videos, some watch bait that I was watching trying to get spoilers and that sort of stuff. But it's not something I do all the time. And I do know I'm going to be beaten around the head now by the algorithm over the next couple of weeks. But that will pass.
It will. The algorithms got wise to it as well. Yeah, and it's now not showing as many things with clickbait, so it is something that we will see less and less and less of. It's not something I think will ever go away. There will always be those who use this method and it has a time and a place.
But I don't think it should be something that's a staple diet for your marketing.
No.
Maybe just to change things up just to shock your audience every now and then, throw something like clickbait or watch bait into your strategy just to see what happens. Just shake things up a little bit, because I think all of our brands can get a little predictable after a while.
They can. But that's where the creative needs to come out as well in the titles and topics and what you're discussing or what it is that you're selling, even. Is there a more creative way for you to sell snow to Eskimos? You might think you've exhausted every single angle, but you haven't. There's always plenty more ways to be promoting yourself and to be showing off your products without going as far as clickbait or watch bait, but I think it would be a cool experiment. If you're going to do it, if you're going to try it, let us know how you get on. Let us know how it impacts your analytics, and we'd just love to see it. And if you see anything from us, you'll know it's because we're trying it out, too. "You'll never believe what she says at the end of the podcast". In case you haven't listened to some of ours to the very end, there are times that Melanie keeps talking after the music. There's always those to wait around for. We don't do it on purpose.
No, not all the time.
Sometimes. But we never tell you at the start of the podcast that we're going to wait until the end and see what Melanie says.
No, we kind of have now.
But this is the end of the podcast
Oh this is true.
So they've already listened to the end. So that's it for today, guys. Thanks for listening to us rambling on about Clickbait and watchbait. If you have any opinions on it, we would happily receive your messages and we'll be back next week with more Monday morning marketing. Until then, bye bye.
Bye bye. You do realize that you just managed to finish exactly at ten minutes there.
That's the second one
I could see you speeding up. She's not going to do it. Damn, she's done it. She's done it.
I'm that good. It's only taken me over 120 episodes.
But yeah, about bleeding time really, isn't it.