I was thinking tonight about whether we were going to cover The Walking Dead spinoff. So of course, I decided to Google it to get more information on the show and it’s schedule. I came upon this article on MTV.com that claimed to have that information in it’s title which is “‘The Walking Dead’ Spin-Off: Robert Kirkman Confirms The Surprising Location”. So that’s the information I expected. Instead, I got a joke about it being on the moon.
That headline is clearly designed to attract clicks like mine, people who are looking for legitimate information about the show. I understand why they do it. The way to make money on the internet is to attract eyeballs and questionable headlines like this do just that. I think there’s a more important consideration that is being ignored though, trust!
At Bald Move we could easily do the exact same thing. We’ve had interviews with TV producers, writers and composers, all of whom have talked frankly and joked around. We don’t pull those comments out of context or design false headlines around them. We don’t do those things because we don’t want our users to think twice about whether the baldmove.com link they’re about to click is going to take them to the information they expect. Because we’re honest and stand behind the quality of our content, they know it will.
If you produce quality content, you won’t have to resort to cheap tricks to get your users to view it.