How #stopclickbait will impact the world of PR
As the #stopclickbait brigade battles the ongoing stream of shouty, click-inducing articles, Agent 99 PR’s Sharon Zeev Poole explains why fishing for clicks shouldn’t be anyone’s long-term PR strategy.
As we all know, journalists are constantly seeking to publish the first and best story, and PR specialists have always strived to provide them with the content to do so. One of the ultimate goals for publishers is to generate traffic through ‘click’ responses, and reporters utilise catchy headlines and bold images to achieve this.
Demonstrating how imperative the headline is, a recent study found that “59% of all links shared on social networks aren’t actually clicked on at all” indicating that the body of the article generally has much less of an emotional impact on its readers.
As publishers caught onto this, it manifested in the journalism industry and subsequently clickbait was born. People understand clickbait as articles that fail to offer any useful, credible or informative content to its readers. Social media is now inundated with clickbait articles, so what does this mean for the credibility of journalism, and how will this impact the future of PR?
An excellent article. A key role of PR people is to generate quality information, to produce good stories, in pursuing their clients’ interests. This is where the creativity – that is, coming up with excellent ideas – comes into it.