💡Why We Still Read Clickbait Articles

Hey—It’s Mohammad.

Yo has anyone seen Arcane? Great Tv show. It flips expectations every episode.

And that’s the focus for today: Flipping expectations.

Read Time: 3.1 minutes

If no one reads what I wrote, does it even exist?

If you’ve published anything online, you had this thought before.

We need eyeballs on your writing even if we’re not building an online business. Not because of money but because we’re social. We like when people engage with our writing.

How do we get more people to read our writing?

Use a Contrarian Framework to get people to read.

It follows 5 steps:

1. What do most people believe?

2. Why do they believe it?

3. Why it's actually wrong.

4. What's your Contrarian Belief

5. Why it's actually better.

Yuval Noah Harari used this framework in his books:

• Homo Deus

• Sapiens

• Nexus

It works well because it interrupts a pattern. If you say what most people think, no one listens. But when you give an opposite way, people perk up.

I wrote a post a while ago about how Most Writing Advice is Useless and 44.19% of you opened it.

It worked well because it was a pattern-interrupt.

But there’s a caveat to use this framework.

Don't say opposite stuff just to get attention.

This is super common in headlines. You know what I’m talking about. Those sensationalist headlines just to get you to click only to say something really simple or backtrack in their article.

Here are a few:

• Sonic Frontiers Composer upset, says 'These People' are RUINING the game

• Think Your Cat Loves You? It's Actually Plotting to Make You Sick

• What Happened When I Clicked Here And Asked Her On A Date

• How I Made $1 Million Last Week From Clicking Here

• The Perfect Vegan Meal Plan Doesn’t Exi-

• Millennials are destroying X industry

Your headlines are promises to your reader.

If you break those promises by not living up to them or ignoring them entirely, you lose them.

You can’t just say crazy stuff. You need to have evidence and a reason for it.

If you don't have any reason, people will ignore you.

You lose their trust forever.

Here’s a Strategy for Improving your Writing:

The Diagnosis: What’s the root problem?

• You aren’t getting eyeballs on what you write.

The Compass: What’s the true north to follow?

• Focus on education & value for your writing, not sensationalism.

The Action Plan: What are the tactics to solve the problem?

• Identify the most common pitfalls/mistakes/errors/insights from your field.

• Share your take on them.

• Document your journey as you learn new skills/areas.

• Share your journey of the tools you used and how you learned them.

Hope this is useful.

See you next Saturday— Mohammad

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