Websites try a great many things to get you to check out their #content (Chatelaine included), and headlines are a big part of this calculation — which is why a lot of sites are no doubt paying attention to a new report from content marketing company BuzzSumo. The report analyzed 100 million headlines published online between March and May of this year. What performed best? Headlines hawking something that "will make you" feel a certain way do gangbusters on Facebook, gaining twice as much traction as the second most popular strategy (an attempt to poke our curiosity with a "This is why" construction). Other top performers played on emotions — headlines that end in "[this] will bring you to tears," for example, or anytime you can say that people are "freaking out."
How often, you might ask, are people really "freaking out" over something online? A very quick and cursory search revealed that people all over the world are currently spazzing out over:
• Steve Carell getting old and grey and therefore now kinda hot?
• A giant sea creature washing up on a beach (Okay this is legit freaky)
• A giant Ho Ho cake
(We freak out over cool looking cakes, too.)
People are freaking out over this terrarium cake (yes, we said cake!) https://t.co/ror7ONS3Y5 pic.twitter.com/1ZPD32Ug5Z
— Chatelaine (@Chatelaine) June 27, 2017
• Dolly Parton's 'Jolene' slowed down to 33 revolutions per minute (RPM)
• A genius method for reheating cold pizza
• White stripes on chicken meat
• Unicorn frappuccinos (surely we're done freaking out about unicorn stuff by now, right?)
• A blanket. Yup, a blanket
*Ed note: This list of 10 things is totally on purpose because, of course, Buzzsumo also reports that people overwhelmingly click on headlines that include the number 10.
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