What is Click Bait? Should I Use Click Bait?

Yes, use click bait. Use it wrong, and lose credibility.

Click Bait, according to ComputerHope.com

“Most click bait type links have catchy or provocative headlines that are difficult for most users to resist and often have little or nothing to do with the actual web page.” 

Click Bait advertisements

You have probably all clicked on those intriguing ads that pique your curiosity, click on them, and you do not get the information you were hoping to find.  This is a Click Bait. Click, and we have taken their bait.  We may end up on a controversial advertisement or a page that we have no interest in and would not usually go to. The baiter is happy – the bait took you to a page where he/she wanted you.

Pinterest

We are encouraged to pin other people’s pins every day. Pinterest sends emails with ideas you have shown interest in.  Yesterday one of these emails from Pinterest contained a pin I was very interested in. Sometimes I just repin without going to the source, thinking I will return to it later. This time I checked it out first, one click and I was watching a presentation promising to make me $millions. Absolutely nothing to do with the pin cover.

Putting that pin on my board would have resulted in me losing credibility when others clicked on it.

Quite some time ago a pin took me to pornography, I reported that one to Pinterest.

Check the source of the Pin

I have a board to collect beautiful flowers. An email from Pinterest informed me they had removed one of my pins. They assured me I was not in trouble, but the pin on my board was bait to take the clicker to a site not indicated on the pin cover.

Checking the pin source will ensure it matches the pin cover. As a result, you are not propagating a baiter’s cause and your credibility is protected.

The Blogger’s Pit Stop

We value all the blogger’s who come and use this platform to share their posts. The quality and variety they present along with the author’s interaction make for a great blogging community.

Our Crew members are an incredible team who give of their time and effort to encourage others, promote their posts and maintain the linkup quality.

They help keep our Pit Stop family friendly. Recently six posts were found to be click bait. Their covers were interesting bait, which when clicked had no content, just irrelevant advertisements.

Losing Integrity

We don’t like to feel deceived or manipulated by anyone. I get a little annoyed, for example, if I follow a delicious recipe photo and then to find I need to click on another link for the full recipe.

I am not talking about roundup posts that necessarily do this for copyright reasons.

It is the habit of always trying to force me to go to more and more pages that is a bit irritating.

Compelling Headers

This is a hard one and there is a fine line that cannot easily be defined. The guru’s tell us to write headers with powerful, emotional words to connect with the reader.

It is good advice. The problem comes when time after time the promise in the headline does not deliver in the content. Every day I get emails promising to show me how to increase my traffic by thousands.  Just follow three easy steps . . .  I take the bait in the headline and I can learn from that email, but I don’t suddenly get thousands of visitors. Hey, it is not that easy!

I am sounding a bit grumpy here, but I start to lose confidence in the writer and I begin to take those awesome headlines with a grain of salt.

You can use click bait!

Yes, make great attractive graphics and use powerful headlines to entice us to read your posts. Without this ‘bait’ we won’t open and read it.

Use the best bait to attract readers

To maintain integrity a good rule is to under promise and over deliver.

Use all the bait you want when your post is going to add value when I read it.

I hope this post has alerted you to the ‘good’ and ‘not so good’ ways to use Click Bait. If you are reading this, you took the nice bait that I left for you.

Have you ever clicked on the ‘not so good’ Click Bait?

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