We all fall for the click-bait celebrity gossip headlines — “Kim Kardashion takes yet another naked selfie,” “Ciara throws the ultimate shade to Future,” “Kanye West says he made Taylor Swift famous,” and the list goes on and on.
However, how do we capitalize our own content to be click-bait worthy?
As a marketing and social media manager , I struggle with the idea of “click-baiting” content. Reason being is because you want to uphold the good name of your brand and not ruin your reputation with titles that are misleading. So instead, I will offer some three tips on how to make content more “clickable,” to your audience.
Watch your word count:
The number one rule to having click-worthy post on social is keeping them short. You’re competing for eight seconds of their time. So make your post readable within that eight seconds. If they can’t scan it within that amount of time, you’ve already lost them.
Although this tweet isn’t within a recommended 100 characters, you can read it within eight seconds. Do an 8-count of your post and watch link clicks and see if it makes a difference in your engagement.
Tease ’em:
You have the recipe on your website, but you don’t want to give it away on social media.
However, take bits and pieces of the recipe and throw it onto social media.
Offer enough information to spark curiosity for further reading. For Public Narrative, I recently shared an article about the science of telling great stories as a nonprofit organization on Twitter. In the article, it provided a six step process for storytelling. In the tweet, I simply told my audience what the steps were, but left the choice for them to click and read in more detail.
Again, I gave a piece of the recipe — but it’s up to them to follow along for more information.
Get the timing right:
FYI — If you are looking to learn how to gain and maintain success with your website, I highly recommend taking the class below. It will be a great one, I promise you.
You want to make sure that the most people are seeing your content as possible. It’s not just important how you present the link on social, but more important on when you post it.
For Public Narrative’s Facebook page, I know that the best times to post is around 6 pm – 10 pm for high engagement. However, I know that our best clickable time is around 12 pm – 2pm.
If your engagement goal is to simply have people click and read it, then you want to watch your analytics to see what time gets them clicking.
Follow Social Media University on Facebook. Also, follow Deontae on Twitter @deontaemoore.
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