Here's a perfect example to prove that click-baiting sucks

Michael Sam, the first openly gay athlete to be selected in the NFL draft, wasn't fortunate enough to make the lineup of any NFL team. On Friday he found a home with the CFL's Montreal Alouettes.

The Huffington Post wrote about it and posted a link to their article on Facebook (image on the left), giving us the headline and the key information we needed to decide if we were interested in reading more or not. NFL.com, the click-baiters on the right, gave us nothing. They teased us, forcing (or baiting) us to click to find out which team signed him.  

In the HuffPo example, they may not get as many clicks, but the click-throughs will be engaged readers, interested in all HuffPo has to say about this story. In the NFL.com example, they will get more clicks (probably the same number of engaged readers as with the HuffPo example, and a few more of the curious uninformed) which, presumably, allows them to sell advertising at higher rates. But at what cost?

In my case, I'm annoyed by NFL.com. They've given me so little information that I'm forced to click to get the basic information that I need. So annoyed in fact that I didn't click on that link. Instead, I continued down my Facebook feed and clicked on the HuffPo link to read the whole story. 

LESSON(S) FOR MARKETERS

1. When you intentionally annoy people with blatant click-baiting, your brand image suffers damage. Why wouldn't it? 
   
2. If you're buying online advertising, beware the inflated traffic numbers of blatant click-baiters like NFL.com. In the above example, they may have more clicks than HuffPo, but those additional clicks are NOT engaged readers... and they're NOT likely to see your ad.
   

YOUR TURN

What do you think? Am I the anomaly? Is it worth it to annoy your readers to get more traffic? Comment below.