What writers and others say
“Love them or hate them, informational posts presented in list format are easily digestible, and allow for an efficient transfer of your value proposition to the reader.”
— Brian Clark, founder, Copyblogger
“Nearly everyone loves reading top 10 lists. Whether it’s listing the most beautiful celebrities, the world’s richest people, important features you need to know about a new product, or even cats that look like Miley Cyrus, a top 10 list is a winning format.”
— Amanda DiSilvestro, Top 10 Tips on Writing Top 10 Lists
“How could we take something named listicle serious? It reminds me of popsicles. But the truth is: list posts work.”
— Henneke Duistermaat, founder, Enchanted Marketing
“At first, we think that a list is primitive and typical of very early cultures … But, in cultural history, the list has prevailed over and over again. It is by no means merely an expression of primitive cultures.”
— Umberto Eco, renowned Italian author
“You might hate it. Think it’s lazy and overused. Yet while the web is clogged with list posts, they continue to work.”
— Dean Evans, The Good Content Company
“Maybe Martin Luther started a trend when he nailed a list to that door. Readers love lists. Content marketers love lists.”
— Julie R. Neidlinger, blogger
“As bloggers, we love [lists] because they’re fun and straight-forward to write, and they do well on social media. As readers, we love them because they’re easy to scan and to take one or two great points from. And both bloggers and readers love the fact that list posts are fun to comment on and link to.”
— Darren Rowse, founder, ProBlogger
“I love lists. Always have. When I was 14, I wrote down every dirty word I knew on file cards and placed them in alphabetical order. I have a thing about collections, and a list is a collection with purchase.”
― Adam Savage, cohost of MythBusters and Unchained Reaction
“List, list, O, list!”
― William Shakespeare, in Hamlet
“A list is just a scaffolding for a story. It’s just a way of organizing information. I mean, The Odyssey is 24 chapters. You could call that 24 Chapters About Odysseus. That’s, like, a really great list. Really top notch. Really, really viral. Super viral.”
― Jack Shepherd, editorial director, BuzzFeed
“A listicle, to me, is something that is literally an arbitrary grouping of things. Ten ghosts. Or 11 Songs We’re Listening to Right Now. Things where there’s no narrative … driving it.”
― Jack Shepherd, editorial director, BuzzFeed
“A number is a nice booster, but it’s not a substitute for strong writing, solid content strategy, or effective promotion. And that’s the problem with how most people look at list posts. They start with the number in the headline — but that’s not the right place to start.”
— Sonia Simone, chief content officer, Rainmaker Digital
“I think what we found ultimately is the amount of time it takes to compile 200 of something could be better spent actually narrowing it down to 20 and figuring out how to make it a really rich narrative experience. The megalist phase of 2010 was an interesting experiment, but one that has mercifully gone by the wayside.”
― Noah Veltman, Knight-Mozilla fellow
How do you reach nonreaders with words?
Most readers spend, on average, fewer than 15 seconds on a page, according to a study by Chartbeat.
So how do you get your message across to skimmers, scanners and other nonreaders?
Learn to put your key messages where readers’ eyes are at Get Clicked, Liked & Shared, our content-writing workshop.
You’ll learn to write better listicles with our 6-step list-writing makeover. How to tear down the obstacles to reading your post. And leave with a simple search engine optimization approach that will help you get found while producing high-quality content.
