Engagement Bait

We are now living in the Engagement Bait Era*.

Forget Clickbait, this next evolution of content is everywhere right now.

In short, it has become incredibly difficult to know when content is ‘real’ or ‘fake’ in our social feeds. And that is just those of us who are conscious of it; many don’t even know this is a thing (or don’t care).

Added to the fact that views now matter above all other engagement metrics and that the definition of a ‘view’ has become even shorter and we can start to see why this is such a hot topic.

As The Atlantic says, “Racking up a lot of views is crucial for achieving greater visibility, as well as moneymaking opportunities - and confusing people is a pretty innovative way to do it.”

Let’s dig in to why this is important…

Are People Now a Commodity?

This isn’t new - there is already a book on a closely-related subject - but it feels like we are reaching a tipping point.

As Ed Cotton writes:

“We become what we attend to — nothing more, nothing less. A steady and exclusive stream of reality TV, entertainment gossip, social media chatter, and “breaking news” about the latest celebrity scandal or Trump’s most recent tweets — all endlessly cycling into each other — turns us into the bland clickbait of the attention harvesters. Yet, though we justifiably consider the enslavement of bodies a terrible wrong, we willingly surrender our minds for the profit of others. This new, almost hip, kind of slavery is sought, not fought.”

Love/Hate

If you like content, you are inclined to… well, like it. If you love content, you are inclined to send it to someone you know via DM. But if it irks, irritates or confuses you, you are more inclined to comment.

As Business Insider writes, “On pre-Elon Twitter, retweets were the main way a post would spread. This rewarded things like the Ellen Oscar selfie, Dril jokes, and sweeping political statements. You want to retweet a funny joke — not reply to it.”

Safe to say that everything has changed since then.

Pause for Effect

The best posts don’t just stop people in their infinite scrolling; they require several views to get close to understanding either what’s going on or - if you care - whether it’s real or not.

A great example of this type of post is here and this Instagram feed is full of them.

Like with most trends that go mainstream, it started getting big on TikTok but it’s now all over every platform.

What does this mean for marketers?

With the rise of AI content, there will inevitably be more engagement bait across all social platforms. At the very least, it is important to understand that this is how large swathes of the internet now looks.

Firstly, you need to know if your customers are engaging with this sort of content (they probably are).

Then, you either need to learn how to compete with it or how to create content in the same vein (if it fits your brand).

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*EngagementBait is very similar to RageBait, but a broader term for content that doesn’t just annoy people. Click here for a great summary on the latter.