You must have come across clickbait titles in your time on the World Wide Web. You may not know it but you have been clicking on it too, falling prey to the lure of the clickbait. If you think you have not, read through the article and you will see that you might have.
What are the clickbait titles?
Clickbait titles are those titles that make the users fall prey by tempting him with attractive and engaging titles and makes him click on it to read more. The websites usually lure the users through fake news, half-truths, money making scams, sensationalizing celebrity news or any other way. The main objective of the clickbaits is to garner as many click as possible so that it gets money from user clicks.
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Do clickbait titles work?
One might think that if clickbaits so heavily depend upon phony stuff that is usually a molded version of the truth and people come to know about it too then it will not work and would die down soon but that is not the case. The research has shown that clickbaits are successful and make the people earn a lot of money. That is why they are still so popular and people are looking for newer clickbait titles everyday.
We have practical examples too. If clickbait did not work then how would sites like Buzzfeed and Upworthy get millions of visitors to the website everyday. This shows the true potential of clickbait and how it can lure more traffic to your page.
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Why do Clickbaits titles work?
People do not learn easily, that is one thing that the popularity of clickbait has taught us. Also sensational headlines are an easy bait for people to click upon. Here are some examples of typical click bait titles.
Here are three typical clickbaits.
As you can see these three use more or less the same tactic. An eye catching photo with a caption that might shock or surprise the reader. The main purpose is to arise your intrigue and curiosity while in actuality when you click on the actual title to go to the story you will see that there is nothing surprising or interesting there at all. They have just created fake eye catching title that will make the user click on them to get to the required page and once you are on the page you realize there is nothing to get excited about….again.
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Characteristics of clickbait titles
Here are some typical characteristics of clickbait titles
- An exaggerated and sensationalized heading that is aimed at either giving the reader shock or surprise or promise to give him some big reward.
- Make the reader believe that if they do not click the title they are sure to be at loss.
- A complete lack of quality content once the user is directed to the main story.
- The clickbaits are usually based on partial truths, or are completely fake.
- Clickbaits would generally pick out popular topics and make you think they can give something new about the popular topic for example
Here we see that the popular topic of child star transformations has been exploited. Adding a picture of a popular child star Mara Wilson Next to a grotesque photo that is not her and labeling it as a transformation is a big crowd puller. Readers being gullible would like to see that if it really is her. Even if they know it is not they would like to know who the person in the next picture is.
Top clickbait headlines
Here are some very commonly used phrases in the clickbait titles. Usually clickbaits use one of these are a variation of one of these. More than one of the following phrases can also be used for clickbait.
- Lose 15 pounds in one day using [product name]
As weight loss is a commonly used high volume keyword, the clickbait here uses the human weakness and makes the heading that women trying to lose weight will not be able to resist from clicking.
- [Story] you won’t believe what happen next.
This is a commonly used clickbait title. First your start with telling an engaging and interesting story. After that instead of giving out the complete information you would just write something like you won’t believe what happen next or read the ending to know the horrifying ending so the reader will click the clickbaits title.
- The hot new [product name] that everyone is going crazy about
It usually turn out to be a dumb product that was released long ago.
- How to make $$$$$ monthly from your bedroom
The lure for money always works.
- This simple trick will change your life for good
If we think rationally there is no miraculous product that will completely change your life. So do not be tricked into clicking the link and end up being tricked into buying something that they have, and it is not useful at all.
- You won’t believe what []
The headlines starting with the you won’t believe are very popular. Most of the clickbait titles are the ones starting with you won’t believe phrases.
Now you must have a good idea about what clickbait titled articles are all about. Let us look at some of the clinkbait titles generator.
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Clickbait Title generator tools
As clickbait titles are very important resource to get more to your blog, there are a number of online tools and techniques available that would help you create new clickbait titles
Contentforest.com
Content forest is very simple and easy to understand website. It is a one page only site and it will generate for you clickbait titles. You just need to press the generate another one and viola, there is a new clickbait titles for you to explore. If you do not like it this, you can try again. This tool is free of cost and you can generate as many titles as you like to.
Upworthygenerator.com
Another popular clickbait title generator is the upworthygenerator website. It is also a simple and straight forward website like the contentforest. Here also the working of the site is quite simple and you just need to click on the Generate another button. But here not only the title is published, infact the whole article is generated through the upworthygenerator.
Linkbaitgenerator.com
This is another tool that generate clickbait titles. However the quality of titles that are generated is better on this website as compared to the previous two examples.
If clickbait is bad why is everyone after catchy titles?
So here is the most important part of this article. Firstly is clickbait bad? Well of course it is deceiving the readers by over promising them and making them believe that there would be something good in store for them while there is not.
However not every clickbait title is bad. Actually people who are writing normal articles also go for catchy and attractive titles. In fact there are a number of blogs and viral blog posts that would instruct you about how to write attractive titles for your posts. So if you have a great content in store then it is good that you give it a title that would make the user click on it at every cost. So that your content will reach to as many people as possible.
However on the other hand, in clickbaiting the only good thing is the over sensationalized news and bad content. So the difference between a normal article or blog post and a clickbait post is the quality of the post. If the clickbait title says
Top amazing Yoga postures that you did not existed
And in the post there really are a few unique and different yoga postures with pictures and explaination then that is a good clickbait article. So clickbaiting would be okay if what we are being promised is delivered but that is seldom the case.
Facebok’s fight against clickbait content
Facebook launched its fight against clickbait titles in 2014. It tries to minimize the clickbait content because of its low quality and misleading headlines that would tarinish the overall experience. it encourages the users to make their opinion hear and they can report the page or news and thus play their part in banning a socially grotesque page.
Top Websites based on Clickbait Content
These are some top websites that publish clickbait content.
Buzzfeed
Buzzfeed is an extremely well known website. It is full of clickbait titles and it get milions of visitors as traffic every year. It is considered as a viral lab. It was founded in 2006 and since then it has so many visitors and people keep coming back because the quality if articles is not very low as you would expect from normal shady roles.
Upworthy
Another very popular website that deals with viral content is the upworthy website. It is full of articles with clickbait titles. It is also a viral content website and in order for the content to go viral it must have great catchy titles. That is what the upworthy content has. In fact here is an interesting news about upworthy. It is a site that invite guest posts. The guest posts must be accompanied by 24 different titles. So each guest post must have 24 titles. The site will choose one that it thinks I most clickbait worthy.
Distractify
Distractify claims to be an entertainment site. It is full of amusing anecdotes and news. The titles of the articles here too are clickbait titles. It has a huge library of content and people are constantly adding to it too. A number of articles on distractify go viral within few hours of it being published.
Viralnova
Another home to the viral stories, viralnova is a fun website. It also is full of stories and pictures that would be then shared through the social media.
These are some of the top websites that are known for publishing and sharing clickbaites titles based articles. However their content is of better quality and is not always full of false and fake news.
What is your opinion about clickbait titles? Do you find them interesting or annoying? Let us know what are your views about clickbait titles by commenting below.
