Zero-Click content is the future of marketing

Also: 3 bite-sized copywriting tips.

Marketing Qualified
August 04, 2023

Happy Friday! August is officially here, and so are this week’s marketing topics:

Zero-click content is the future of marketing. It’s time to reframe how you think about promoting your content on social media.
3 bite-sized copywriting tips. We pulled out a few favorites from our swipe file.

🚫 Zero-click content is the future of marketing.

In the olden days (2005-2015), marketers could follow a pretty simple formula to get eyeballs on their content:

Publish content on your blog or website.
Use social media and forums to distribute it by creating a post that links to your website.
Get a fair amount of traffic from interested readers.

We’re talking 10%+ CTRs on posts. These days, getting 1% is a miracle, and rates are only declining further each year.

But times changed. Around 2015, all the social media giants sat back and said: Wait a dang minute! We make our money on ads and user data. So why are we sending traffic away from our site and to someone else?! Let’s keep them on our platform forever!!!!

They changed their algorithms to be biased against posts with external links — deprioritizing content with 3rd party links and prioritizing content native to their platforms.

Some platforms like Instagram even went so far as not to allow links on posts at all.

Source

Ever since this switch, using social media as a primary traffic driver to your site has been nearly impossible.

Yet, most marketers still bang their heads against the wall, trying to use old methods that no longer work. The reality is that the day of the click has passed us by.

Marketers need to adapt!

The new hope: zero-click content

Zero-click content (sometimes called clickless content) is precisely what it sounds like. Its goal is not to get a click thru to your site.

Instead, its goal is to work with social media algorithms to get eyes on your content and capitalize on that attention later.

It works like this:

You take your content and post it directly to the social media platform.

You still post your content to your site but do not directly promote it via social posts. Instead, you break it into smaller snippets and publish them as standalone posts on social.

But here’s where things get different.

At the end of the post, where you would usually insert a link, instead, say something like, “If you found this helpful, follow for more content like this,” or “To learn more, subscribe to my weekly newsletter” or “Send to a friend if you enjoyed this.”

There is a reason you don’t see social media influencers linking off to their 3rd party sites. They understand how social media algorithms work. They’ve embraced zero-click content and use it to build massive audiences.

The idea here is to optimize for visibility and engagement, not clicks. The goal is to get readers to think, wow, that post was great. I want to hear more of what they have to say.

Then, have them click to view your profile or search for you on Google.

Readers aren’t stupid. They know how to find you if they want more. Just because you don’t spoon-feed them a link to your site doesn’t mean they won’t end up there.

Focus on creating great content and getting eyes on it. Not on getting click thrus to your site.

📰 In the news this week.

🔎 How Redditors use the platform to research tech products.

🛑 Google wants to make ad blocking near impossible.

💬 TikTok is adding text posts to compete with Twitter and Threads.

🤖 6 social media algorithms marketers need to know about.

🧒 What marketers need to know about Gen Alpha.

✍️ 3 bite-sized copywriting tips.

We keep a swipe file with our favorite marketing examples and tips. It’s getting pretty big, so we figured, why not pull out a few of our favorite copywriting tips to share with you?