The vast majority of people on the planet today are on some form of social media. Whether it be Facebook, Twitter, or TikTok, news outlets have a great opportunity to get their message out to the public. The credible news outlets such as Fox News and CNN for example, both tend to use similar strategies in an attempt to get you to click on their link to their news stories.
Both of these platforms always have a picture in their post that will grab the eye first. Some times it is a celebrity like Johnny Depp, from his highly publicized civil lawsuit with Amber Heard or sometimes it’s a Politician like President Joe Biden. The picture always grabs you eye first but the caption under it, that grabs your attention.
Fox News on June 6th, 2022 posted to Facebook a picture of Elon Musk with a Twitter logo spanning behind him and a caption the read “MATERIAL BREACH, Musk says Twitter is actively resisting and thwarting his right to information on spa…”. This is effective on may levels one being Elon is a very popular CEO at this moment and has a very diverse group of people that would be interested in hearing about him. This ranges from people wanting to invest in his companies, people thinking about purchasing from one of his companies, and personal fans of his.
What I find very interesting is that they stopped the quote just short of vital information in an attempt to get you to click on the link. It attacks a persons natural curiosity and you start thinking "what is spa...., is it talking about SpaceX, maybe its talking about spanning Tesla, maybe its even talking about the Spanish Inquisition!!!! I MUST KNOW!!!!!!" and the next thing you know you have clicked the link and are reading the article.
This is called “Clickbait” and has proven to be a very effective strategy in getting people to go to their websites. From my small research pool multiple different sources implement this strategy on their social media accounts to further drive their website/story views.
“Online is old news. Online in social media is today’s news. Social media is not a subset of the Internet. Social media is the internet.” – Sean Case.
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