A Good Blog List is a Work of Art

“A good list is a work of art,” says Jessanne Collins, Editor-in-Chief of Mental Floss  magazine. Collins herself, she admits, is biased.  A list-maker by nature, she claims to have a to-do list with 17 subdivisions. And of course the magazine, which nine times a year presents facts and trivia in a humorous way, is filled with lists.

While my Say It For You blog can hardly compete with Collins’ 10 million users a month, I’m a list fan in my own right, because including lists in the content of a marketing blog can be a super strategy for engaging interest and providing information readers with value.

A short list of things readers are likely to type into their search bar which could bring them to your blog include:

• Their need
• Their problem
• Their idea of the solution to their problem
• A question

OK, now those visitors have arrived, it falls to you as a blog content writer to think of lists that might:

…engage the interest of online readers who have found your blog post
…provide valuable information to them
…clarify what you have to offer to fulfill their need

“There’s something nice about the way any topic or task can become digestible when it’s neatly organized in a list, Collins avers. (As a corporate blogging trainer, I couldn’t agree more.) But the editor goes on to say that she and her staff take pains to make sure each list is comprised of items readers truly need to know about. Once each item is “vetted”, she says, the real fun of list-making begins: fitting the entries together. “We want to make sure our lists educate and entertain, but also – and this is critical – bring something new to the table and surprise you.”

A good list can transform a business blog post into a work of art!