I have come across the results of a study by the folks at Techxplore that offers some insights about how readers react to “promos” that aggregators present to lure the audience to articles.
As we know, in today’s environment most people aren’t getting their news directly from news sites but via social media or other places on the internet. It is, therefore, important to pay attention to what works in terms of getting readers to notice the content we produce.
I maintain that headlines are very important to seduce readers. We also have noticed in our own experience via focus groups that some readers “share” an article based on the headline and snippet of information they get from aggregators or social media, often without reading the article themselves.
Now this study offers some insights and I suggest you read the results here:
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-03-stories-clicks-social-media.html
Some takeaways:
The study examined how key design parameters, such as the length of the text snippet that an aggregator displays about articles, the presence of associated images, and the number of related articles on the same story, affect a reader’s propensity to visit the content producer’s site and read the full article.
- The study found that as the extracts grew longer, people were less likely to click through to the article on its original site. It appeared that an article’s headline could often provide all the information the audience needed. Any additional information provided by the aggregator, in the form of snippets of text or images, actually decreased click-through rates.
- Interestingly, the opposite happens when the snippets of several related articles of the same story compete for readers’ attention. Aggregators tend to group these snippets together, which creates direct competition for readers. We found that in cases like this, 30% of readers do not click through to any article and 66% of readers click through to only one article—paradoxically, it’s the snippet with longer text and accompanying images that gets the clicks.
My take:
I advise my clients to start the pitch of a story internally with a headline. I go as far as to also suggest that they try to sketch how that headline and visual would work on a first screen for mobile.
However, as this study suggests, the selling of the story is going to take place with a short extract of its contents.
Another tip. Ask yourself this question: What are the shareable aspects of the story? Include those in your headline and/or snippets.
While the goal of story promotion is ultimately to get people to come read the original article, it is also important to make sure that the story is shared as much as possible.
Another noticeable point in this study:
“Aggregators tend to group these snippets together, which creates direct competition for readers. We found that in cases like this, 30% of readers do not click through to any article and 66% of readers click through to only one article—paradoxically, it’s the snippet with longer text and accompanying images that gets the clicks.”
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TheMarioBlog post # 3302