Well, here’s a topic I haven’t touched upon in a very long time, so let’s look at it again shall we?
If you’ve checked out any blogs on the topic of blogging, you’ve probably read that one of the post popular types of posts are list posts. It is what it sounds like; it’s a post where you have anywhere from 3 to 20 numbered lines where each one tells something about the topic at hand. I’ve written lots of list posts on this blog, some long, some short, as well as my other blogs.
 John Ryan via Compfight |
Why are these posts so popular? Here’s a list lol:
1. Lists are easy to understand because they usually begin with a highlighted line so you know what each line is about. Sometimes the list only consists of lots of single lines.
2. Lists can be pretty easy to read, and fast as well. If you only have to take in a few words, less than 20, things move along fast.
3. List posts indicate in the title most of the time how many points there are going to be. This can be a misleading indication of how long a post will be. You can bet that a post with only 3 points is going to be much longer than you think, whereas a post with 10 points could be either long or short, as this post of mine on another blog listed 10 points but was close to 2,000 words; I’m kind of proud of that post, just so you know. 🙂
4. List posts can help you get people to ask you questions. You can use a list to highlight things without getting into detail, and if people are interested you can bet they’re going to ask you more. That could be good for business if used properly.
5. List posts are very easy to write. As opposed to having to write a lot of words to try to draw readers in, like I do, a list could just be a bunch of random thoughts strung together and yet still convey everything you want it to.
Go ahead, try it out to see how it feels. Just so you know, there are many blogs where every post is a list post, and it probably suits the writer and their readers just fine.
