10 Successful Tips to Write Top 20 Successful Lists to Boost Your Presence in Social Media
21. Aug, 2008 
33 Comments
You all know by now how important is to give your readers good tips, so they stay motivated to subscribe and read your blog regularly.
But do you know what’s even more important than giving your readers useful tips?
Giving them in form of lists.
If you believe what I’ve written so far, that’s OK, your readers probably love you already. But doesn’t this blogging world start to look like a cookbook? Take two eggs, scramble them on a plate, add some salt and pepper, some small cut bell peppers, throw everything in a hot pan, wait one minute, turn on the other side, wait another minute, put everything on a plate, decorate with parsley, eat, enjoy.
Although there are great recipe books available for almost everybody, some of us are lousy cooks. Or maybe we are good, but the ingredients we use aren’t always that fresh. Or our timing is not exactly the right one: 30 seconds more on the fire can change the taste of the food we make.
Do you see my point? Why writing in lists, when the outcome would be unique anyway? Why respecting the cooking recipe, if I think my food could have a better taste if I cook by inspiration? Do you think the guests you invite for dinner care more about your cookbook rather than about the result, the food itself? If I were a cooking expert, supposed to produce the same outcome each time I combine the same ingredients, that would make a sense. If you go to a restaurant and order a Caesar salad, each time you expect to get the same combination of foods which we use to call Caesar salad.
But cooking by the book when nobody expects that can be a little frustrating, don’t you think so? Having an infinity of blank pages waiting for me to fill them in could be a challenge for creativity and not for making more and more lists. Why limit myself to a given frame, when I feel like crossing the boundaries? Only because I assume that readers cannot focus enough to read a whole page which is not broken into bullet points?
I’m smarter than that and I’m sure my readers are smarter, too.
What do you think about lists?
