8 Reasons Not to Write Click Bait

Gentle Reader,

I have identified what part of my problem writing has been.

Social Media.

I had given it a great deal of thought and realized that my problem was I was attempting to write click bait style content. That's not my bag. In fact, click bait is not helpful to getting quality writing done. You're just writing for the next series of clicks and like notifications, not for the content quality or cause/story itself. I humbly submit to you eight reasons not to write this style of literature.

1. Click Bait doesn't go past the first few lines. If you are lucky, you get a paragraph read by your audience. I'd like to congratulate the person who made it past my opening paragraph to get this far. There's more gems ahead, I assure you.
   
   
2. Click Bait is not focused on content. It is focused on headlines. Let me reiterate that point. Click Bait is focused on headlines over content. They want your initial attention. They then try to carry that attention farther with more salacious headlines. Don't believe me, just follow a few click bait threads farther than three clicks, how much advertising are you seeing versus content?
   
   
3. Click Bait is selling YOUR TIME. Just to carry forward the point I made above, click bait is selling your time to advertisers. Every click bait item you find will bring you to pages laden with advertising and additional click bait. Their goal is to waste enough of your time to get you to possibly click on and advertiser's link and/or gain enough information about you through your click bait history to target advertising to you.
   
   
4. Click Bait is not building your audience. I have been attempting to do some research into marketing. I learned something about click bait that made me angry. Click bait is presented as a possible way to generate quick audience. The problem is most of those click bait visitors are single clicks, not return ones. This is bad for business. It is the equivalent of having a single advertisement in a magazine. People will look at the ad but they're not going to follow up because they satisfied their curiosity with that initial glance.
   
   
5. Click Bait is not building your morale. Writing for clicks is grueling work. It is also something that can suck the life out of any author who is left wondering why they're doing the equivalent of data entry when they could be writing. When you get not feedback, no signs of an actual audience, or anything that indicated that something other than a spambot looked at your site, you start to want to throw in the towel on this writing business and take up underwater basket weaving. At least with that one, it has interesting challenges and you get to have something in the end.
   
   
6. Click Bait is selling YOUR TIME!! I can't stress the importance of this one. The time you spend on click bait, be it the writing or the consumption of it, is time lost for working on that novel, screenplay, or essay that you have your heart set on. The purveyors of click bait are getting you coming and going on this one. They're not just data mining on the people who are coming to click on material, they are often exploiting their writers for 'exposure' or something similarly non-committal. The number of sites that pay for click bait writing are lower than the number of sites that pay for ghost writers of blog entries. (I did some investigation into this at one point considering ghost writing.)
   
   
7. Click Bait is stealing your creative energy. Writing takes energy. Grinding out click bait articles drains your energy for the projects that you truly have passion for. Write for yourself and your passion, not the clicks. You'll find it more rewarding and more sustainable.
   
   
8. Click Bait sets unrealistic standards for your writing goals. One article going viral or becoming the talk of a specific group is a rare event. Click bait claims to make this a sustainable thing as long as you keep the clicks coming. The goal is not single visitors but a steady stream of repeat readers. Click bait also frames the argument that any real discussion must happen in soundbites and condensed into a few words. I promise you, Whitman's Leaves of Grass can not be condensed down into a few lines but it is worth the read.

If you made it this far, get yourself your favorite beverage and a cookies. Thanks for sticking with my rant and random posts thus far. I'm going to try to post more actual content not that the kids are in school.