By: Chris Piehler
If you’re reading this expecting a blog post about how to tell your prospects you love them, then my clickbait-y headline has worked. Just to be clear, this post is not about the business benefits of pouring your heart out to anyone (or everyone) on your email list. It is, rather, about the attention-grabbing power of clickbait-y headlines, and the three-word phrases that make those headlines irresistible to B2B readers.
I’m not talking about trashy clickbait, like “Doctors Share the 7 Grossest Tumors” or “Lady Gaga wore WHAT NOW?” I’m talking about the kind of strategically deployed clickbait that edtech marketers can use to hook some new customers.
According to a recent analysis of 10 million articles that were shared via LinkedIn, certain words, phrases, and numbers excel at inspiring B2B readers to not only read but share what they read. The linked article is a long one, but really worth reading for anyone who works on PR, marketing, or blog content. It even offers advice about how long your headline should be.
To see if we could make some of these phrases pay on our own blog, we recently held a contest where three teams were randomly assigned one of the top three-word combos to work into the headline of a post. You can see for yourself how they creatively incorporated “of the year,” “in the world,” and “X ways to…” And please vote with your clicks: the team that attracts the most traffic will win blogging bragging rights—along with some extra PTO.
One of the most useful lessons I’ve learned from this contest and the one we held last year is that adding an element of competition instantly reinvigorates your team’s interest in your blog. Because let’s be honest: blogging sometimes gets pushed aside by time-sensitive, customer-facing work. As we’ve written before, though, blogging consistently is an enormously effective way to attract new prospects and customers, so giving your team a sense of urgency about writing for the blog is a great reminder that it’s not just another item on a to-do list. It’s an integral cog in your sales and marketing machine.
Which brings us back to clickbait. If you want your target audience to read the sage advice and entertaining stories on your blog, you first have to draw them in. Here’s an easy way to start teaching your team how to write eye-catching headlines and to fill up a calendar with blog ideas at the same time:
Having a clear idea of upcoming topics will make blogging seem less daunting, and using research-proven verbiage will give your team confidence as they begin to master the fine art of strategic clickbait.
Thanks for sharing!