In the modern world, clickbait marketing has taken the internet by storm and websites like Buzzfeed are leading the charge. You’ve probably seen their articles with catchy titles like, “20 Reasons the 90’s were Awesome,” or, “10 of the Cutest Cats You’ve Ever Seen (#4 is so cute you’ll want to explode).” You’ve probably clicked on more than a few of them. You may have even taken one of their many quizzes. While many may feel that these kinds of sites are heralding the end of intellectualism, no one can deny they’re effective for driving traffic. Discovering and using their techniques can boost excitement and interest in your program. These can help increase engagement and retention with your eLearning content. If BuzzFeed can make people excited about taking a quiz, wouldn’t it be great if you could do that with the quizzes in your eLearning? So, without further ado, here are four ways BuzzFeed dominates their industry and how you can use their methods to dominate yours.
1. Lists, Lists, Lists
What they do: The Buzzfeed business model, while not the first internet company to use lists, is definitely the most prolific and for good reason. Lists are a proven way to generate interest in a topic. Cleverly named lists are some of the most-engaged-with content on the web.
What you can do: Take information you want to deliver and present it as a list. Not only are lists the most convenient way to categorize information, they also let participants immediately know how much content to expect.
2. Anticipation
What they do: The writers at Buzzfeed are masters of creating anticipation with catchy headlines. They use attention grabbing titles that not only pique curiosity but provide a challenge of sorts, betting readers that they have not seen a cuter cat, thus drawing people in.
What you can do: Presenting your content in the best light possible from the very beginning is key to developing interest. People are excited to learn things that are exciting and setting that expectation early can lead to more engagement later. Give your learners a reason to care and dare them to be interested. Just make sure they have good reason to be excited, or they’ll be disappointed instead.
3. Graphics
What they do: Buzzfeed articles are full of graphics and small animated GIFs. These images add color and life to the article.
What you can do: No one wants to read a “wall of text.” Using imagery that is related to the subject and also constructive can increase engagement. “Zoning out” is a major issue that can be helped with additional productive stimuli.
4. Short and Sweet
What they do: Buzzfeed articles are all about getting in, getting to the point, and getting out. No fuss, no muss. Content is intentionally kept short in order to provide bite-sized entertainment for busy people on the go. Every article either has very few entries or each entry is no more than a sentence or two.
What you can do: Presenting information in smaller chunks dramatically increases understanding. It’s natural to want to explain things fully and clearly, but taking a step back and allowing users to digest information a little at a time will actually lead to better results in the long run.
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