I know, it sounds counterintuitive. As a marketer, you want people to click that link in your social media post, your newsletter, and Google’s search results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The only thing is; they won’t. At least, not anymore…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A decade ago, social media were a great tool to drive traffic to your website. Specifically Facebook and Twitter<\/a> (now X).<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, times have changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The owners of the most used social media platforms want people to stay on their platforms for as long as possible. So they can feed them ads. And… make a sh*t load of money*.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The same by the way, is true for search engine Google. Which tries to guess the question behind your search query and provide the answer directly in the search results. While making a staggering $ 264.6 billion in advertising revenue<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Enter: zero-click content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stand-alone content that can be consumed directly on the platform it was published on. Whether it’s social media, a newsletter, or even Google’s search results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Amanda Natividad, VP of marketing at SparkToro, wrote an interesting article about zero-click content and the platform-native world<\/a> we now live in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “In a time when content saturation is higher than ever before, you need to be value-driven,” Natividad argues, “You need to continually win over your audience\u2019s attention.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n For you as a marketer, this means you’ll need to stop hiding “the juiciest information” behind the click. Instead, you’ll need to develop stand-alone, platform-specific content that is optimized for impressions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It doesn’t mean you have to remove the link from your content completely. You can still try and get people to click. However, it should no longer be your goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Additionally, Natividad points out that zero-click content means “less time wasted” for your target audience. Based on all the juice you’ve given them, they can decide for themselves if they want to commit more time to hearing what you have to say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “If a creator is generous enough to give you the punchline or the three most salient takeaways, you know the long-form version of whatever it is they\u2019re promoting is going to be worth it,” says Natividad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And also, “when you create content so valuable that it doesn\u2019t need to be consumed off-platform, it becomes even more likely that your audience will like you, remember you, and trust you enough to eventually smash that CTA.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let me know what you think!<\/p>\n\n\n\n * In 2024, LinkedIn generated $ 16.4 billion<\/a> for their owner Microsoft. Meta generated 10 times more. $ 164.5 billion in 2024<\/a>, most of it<\/a> through ads on Facebook and Instagram.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This Spark was published as MBD Boost #031<\/strong> on March 11, 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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