What even is "zero-click content"?

How I made it make sense and got even more clicks because of it.

Day 147/100

 

Hey—It's Tim.

Back in Vancouver. Or, as locals keep calling it, “the Lower Mainland.”
(I’ve stared at a map, folks. Looks perfectly upright to me.)

Yesterday the mercury hit 36 °C.

For a guy who grew up in a northern-England drizzle soundtrack, that’s not weather—that’s cosmic punishment.

I’m writing this half-melted, iced Americano IV drip plugged in, trying to convince my laptop that those droplets on the keyboard are “ambient humidity,” not sweat.

Perfect conditions to talk about content that doesn’t need to travel anywhere to work.

Zero-Click Content: the one-sentence definition

Make the thing so self-contained your reader never has to leave the room.

No link.
No “read more.”
No dropout to a landing page that loads like treacle.

Everything right there.

I didn’t get it when Amanda Natividad coined the term. Thought: “Cool buzzword, but why would I willingly surrender traffic?”

Then I started this daily newsletter.

Results?
The emails that stuff every scrap of value into your inbox - no click required - trigger the biggest replies, the warmest “THIS changed my day” notes, the … unsolicited forwards to people I’ve never met. Turns out generosity is a growth hack you can’t fake.

How the algorithms tipped their hand

The algorithms are jealous ex-lovers.

Slip a link into a LinkedIn post and your reach nosedives to a tenth of normal.
Instagram flat-out bans links in captions because it’s terrified you’ll wander off.
YouTube pretends to be chill, but only if you keep viewers locked in its endless autoplay casino - feed them one more video, then another, then another.

The second you hint there’s something worth seeing elsewhere, the algo yanks the emergency brake and buries your post in the feed graveyard. Zero-click is the only way to speak freely without getting kneecapped first.

This is the move: unload every ounce of value right where the reader is standing.

No breadcrumbs. No “read the rest on my blog.” The gold’s already on the floor - pick it up or keep scrolling.

Give it all away.

Not the polite “what and why” while hiding the “how.” That’s diet generosity.
Serve the how on a silver platter:

The micro-opinions you earned the hard way, the shortcuts you bled for, the tools that never screwed you, the receipts you can wave in a skeptic’s face.

You can’t fake that stuff, and people know it the second they read it.

Does “all” mean a 12,000-word behemoth? God no.
Sometimes it’s:

  • 400 words on “this tiny process is my smallest domino for the day”

  • A two-minute clip walking through the toggle nobody touches.

  • One screenshot with the four keystrokes that solve the problem.

Complete, but compact. Enough to let them run.

Funny twist: when you stop begging for clicks, traffic still shows up—because humans drag their friends to the source. The algorithms may throttle exits, but they’ve got zero jurisdiction over trust.

Numbers go up anyway. Paradox solved.

Give them everything and they’ll give you anything.

✌️ Tim "Don’t hide the good stuff" Hanson
CMO @Penfriend.ai

Same brain, different platforms: X, Threads, LinkedIn.

P.S. Got any tips for keeping cool? I’m considering just jumping into the Pacific at this point.

 

Penfriend.ai
Made by content marketers. Used by better ones.
 

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