Gareth Hodgson explores the rise of ‘engagement bait’ on social media – why content that is intentionally wrong, controversial or misleading can often outperform more accurate or interesting posts, and he explains what this means for brand trust, credibility and long-term audience relationships.
You’re scrolling through Insta reels, YT shorts, TikToks, Facebook, X posts (probably accidentally found yourself on “For You”), take your pick, and then you see it…
The post with a massively obvious error. Presented in a serious and factual way.
- It might be a music page with a picture of Liam & Noel and a caption like “Oasis are the biggest band from London.”
- It could be “No word begins with B and ends in A, bet you can’t prove me wrong.”
- A typo on a critical word or someone pronouncing something in a ridiculous way.
- You might see a Godfather Part 3 movie-still emblazoned with “Pacino’s best movie”.
- It might be a football page with a photo of Liverpool’s 2025 trophy parade but presented as being Arsenal’s 2026 parade to prove that the Gunners’ was bigger.
Your brain reacts. You immediately want to reply to tell them how wrong they are. But you don’t. Because you are not an idiot (clearly… you are reading this so you obviously make smart choices). And then you click into the comments anyway to see the 17,000 comments who felt it necessary to tell them.
You didn’t reply. But you spent valuable seconds on the post. And you clicked.
Congratulations. You have just been engagement baited.
Where once content engagement (be it print media, TV or even social media) was driven by accuracy and quality, the need to cheat the algorithm and achieve interaction means that purposefully being wrong can (and regularly does) outperform being right or interesting.
It’s a shortcut to achieving clicks and comments. And worryingly it is becoming more and more common because this gets you seen.
As if cutting through wasn’t hard enough (both in terms of your message and getting past the sea of bots), you’ve now got an army of creators short-cutting past you to the top of the feed.
And you can see why some brands would try and follow the trend for an easy algorithm-hack.
Some already have. Coors famously ran their “refershment” campaign last year and it generated more engagement than “refreshment” ever would. And plenty of back-slapping plaudits from marketers on LinkedIn for their cleverness. But the VP of Marketing admitted that for some customers it triggered concern and schadenfreude amongst the wider public.
The thirst for visibility might make this a dangerous strategy for others to replicate.
It’s all well and good to go down this route if engagement is all you’re interested in (content creators looking to achieve a short term £/$ grab for views and clicks), but when you’re an established brand, there’s more at stake.
What does your audience actually think beyond the engagement?
What are the implications for brand trust?
What does this mean for brand credibility?
Such activities can also quickly become perceived to be lame or behind the curve, which in turn have implications for brand perceptions.
As always, the best insight comes from scratching beneath the surface.
Before you go celebrating that viral engagement hit, you need to think about why people are engaging and what the impact is on your brand.
Maybe that engagement doesn’t mean much after all.
Engagement bait shows how social media metrics can be misleading. Deliberately provocative or incorrect posts can drive clicks and comments, but may harm trust, brand perception, and long-term audience engagement. Understanding why audiences interact, and what motivates their behaviour, is key to building effective, responsible content strategies.
Brands need to think beyond the engagement numbers. At Mustard, we help organisations understand not just how audiences interact with content, but why they engage, and what the implications are for trust, credibility, and long-term loyalty. If you’re looking to create content that connects meaningfully without compromising your brand, get in touch.