Unusual punctuation in headlines makes people more likely to share news stories on Facebook, but phrases like “this will blow your mind” are a turn-off, finds a study
Peppering headlines with unusual punctuation makes people engage more with news stories posted on Facebook – but asking questions doesn’t make people want to answer, according to a study of thousands of articles.at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany and her colleagues analysed the level of engagement, including the number of likes, shares, comments and reactions – where users can respond with preset emoji – on more than 4400 news stories.
The researchers measured engagement with, and sharing of, news stories on Facebook itself, rather than how many people clicked through to the story, which doesn’t necessarily tell you what they thought of the article, they say.“When people click on an article with a fancy, clickbait headline, their attention is caught,” says Jung. “But at the end, they don’t interact with the article. They don’t send it to their friends, write a comment or leave a reaction.
Longer headlines reduced the number of comments, but didn’t affect reactions or shares. Doubling the number of words in a headline led to 24 per cent fewer comments. The length of words used also affected responses: in headlines, long words reduced interaction, but in the text in the accompanying post, they increased it.phrases like “this will blow your mind” reduced all interactions by a quarter compared with stories that didn’t use them.
However, Bruns points out that the research focuses solely on text, because the information comes from five years ago, so the reality of what works might have changed. “The past few years have seen a substantial shift towards greater use of visuals, especially photos, in news posts on social media,” he says.at the University of the West of England in Bristol, UK.
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