Clickbait wasn't always the best strategy
Channel: Matthias talks YouTube
Date: 2021-09-13

Clickbait wasn't always the best strategy.

It seems more and more youtubers are moving to clickbaity titles.
And by clickbaity, I don't just man misleading or dishonest titles, 
but generally trying to be intriguing to get people to watch the video.

And from what I see, it appears to be working.  I know a lot of you
say you don't click on clickbait, but there is a majority of others
who do.

So why has it goten so long for most of us creators to move on
to clickbait?

Well, it used to be that there was a different strategy most of us used.
Back in 2006, the New York Times  had an article titled
"This boring headline is written for google"

Because before social media dominated like it does today, traffic came
from search, mostly google.

I used to use google trends and google suggest to try to figure out what terms people were most likely to use when  searching for a topic, and tried to make my article and video titles reflect that.

It was all about trying to provide useful information for people looking for that.

But that stopped working in recent years.  Google nowadays often just answers the question themselves using stuff they scraped off the web instead of sending you to the page that might have an answer.

And nowadays it's all become about standing out on people's feeds, so titles are now all about catching a human's attention to get them to click.

But with more creators, competition has become fierce, and everybody is trying
harder to suck people in.

And they are successful to a significant extent. I keep clicking on "hide all from xxx" on facebook when it suggests interesting stuff, but I hide one, and facebook just finds then more to suggest to me!

And while a lot of these things are enjoyable to watch, it sucks up time, time that could be used being productive, being outside, or socializing.

It feels to me like we creators have become like makers of cigarettes.
Sure, the smoker's life is enhanced by the experience of smoking a cigarette, but overall, the smoker's life would be better if he wasn't a smoker.