Imagine this: You promise a trip to Disneyland to a 7-year-old. She eagerly hops into the car, wearing her favorite Elsa T-shirt and holding a Mickey Mouse water bottle.
30 minutes into the drive, you disclose that the real destination isn’t Disneyland but a dentist’s appointment. She’s terrified of dentists, so you improvised and made her believe it was a trip to Disneyland instead.
In the short run, it’s a win. While the poor kid can shed a few tears she would have no option but to face the whirring sound of the dentist’s drill.
But something’s lost. Something so precious that once lost, it is hard to regain.
Trust.
The 7-year-old would take a really long time to trust you again.
As Creators, when we use clickbaity headlines to optimize for clicks, hoping that more clicks would equal more business, our audience loses trust. Your analytics will show you a lot of clicks. But they won’t show you the trust you lost.
You lost your prospects… forever.