Why List Posts dominate
In any article providing tips on how to be successful with a blog, you’re likely to see List Posts figuring prominently. Want a bunch of viewers, want to spike those stats? Do a List Post.
It hardly matters what your subject is. You can have equal success with 5 Ways to Use a Screwdriver as with 17 Principles of Advanced Aero-engineering.
You may be a serious blogger, examining issues of global concern complete with scholarly research and heartful connections to the Dalai Lama and thousands of followers, but your “11 Tips for Using Toilets in India” is still your most popular post.
If you’re the blogger, don’t despair. There’s nothing wrong with your intelligence or sensibilities. It’s the reader who’s warping the reality here.
Because, as surely any keen observer will admit, we have no time for reading these days. Or, to be more exact, we read in an entirely different way than we have in the past.
We look for keywords, we think in outlines. We fill in the details later.
I can say this, because I do it myself. A long, involved post or web page has lost me before I start reading. For me, even the best writers/thinkers/companies/institutions merit no more than a bookmark on long posts.
The bytes into which my day is divided just don’t allow for lengthy sessions of pure reading. If your post is more than 700 words, it will definitely be banished to a file. I say banished because, once housed there, it’s about 87% likely to remain unread.
When online, I skim the keywords and links; I can tell from these and the title, the ‘look,’ the style, and the attitude whether or not I want the details.
This means that the writing must be delivered in the same size bytes as I am ready to consume. If it’s not candied and ready-to-swallow; if there are long paragraphs of undistinguished prose; if the syntax doesn’t bother to enthrall me – then honestly, I can’t afford the time.
On the web, if you can’t tell me in 5 seconds, you can’t tell me.
Your content should also contain as much raw personality (i.e., drama) as daily in-person life and dialog may normally involve. It must evoke my respect and deference as if it were a flesh-and-blood person in the room with me. If not, why should it command my attention at all?
Writing online is not writing in any traditional sense; it’s speaking, tagging, and categorizing. It’s sculpting
- a motivating title,
- easily scanned text,
- lots of formatting and graphics,
- and brilliant labeling
into an instantly compelling (while informative) whole.
The written word is no longer a flat object: it has taken on a third dimension. To maximize visibility online, writing has be a living, squirming, wriggling thing; a tuned-in dialectic surfing the convo.
