“Lists are tiny coded messages that mean everything to a targeted audience and nothing to everyone else.”
-Wired Magazine, “To 10 Reasons We Like Lists” #4, 03|2007
“By filtering and condensing, the link blog turns online chaos into a tidy little stack of clickable potential.“
-Rex Sorgatz, “Click to Enter” WIRED 03|2007
Lists are remarkable in their ability to make us feel smarter and more resourceful simply by finding and reading them.
Unused, they are useless, yet they still make the reader feel like they know something more than they did before.
More than ever, a list of resources on the web is a happy island of utopia in a vast sea of noise, confusion, and pre-designed tactics to tear us away from our intended purpose.
Just reading a list evokes comments from readers like “This is the best list of ____ I have ever seen!”
Yet few comments are ever registered about the specific rewards people have gotten out of putting these lists to use!
People like lists whether they use them or not.
When I encounter a good top 10 list, I bookmark it and feel as though my arsenal of knowledge and power has grown… by exactly 10.
I may never have an occasion to sit down that click all 10 links in the future, but I have collected them and they are ready to do me good whenever I should need them.
Collecting resources is like saying “I have no time whatsoever to learn this stuff now, but I will bookmark it for later.”
Did you get anything out of the last list you forwarded to your friends and associates? “No, but I could if I wanted!”
The bottom line for bloggers is this:
Lists have intrinsic value in and of themselves. People love lists because they are “tidy” and quickly consumable.
They give readers the power to feel as though simply boomarking them gives them the knowledge and power of knowing everything the information contained in the links…
…regardless of whether they actually follow the links and learn now, later, or at all.
Lists bring loyal readers.
Almost everyone enjoys a good list and when you are known for continually having the best lists in your niche, you become the authority in that niche.
Google has the biggest list on the web. Still think people hate lists?
Don't
Miss Out On Free Traffic!
Subscribe to the FTR RSS feed
or our
email list so you don't miss out on real, traffic driving tips from Jack
Humphrey! You can also and Follow Me on Twitter! Thanks for visiting!
Related Friday Traffic Report Posts - How to succeed at building a profitable, high traffic web business. I have never met a successful person in life, business, love, or happiness who is lacking in passion for what they do....
- 4.6 Million Wordpress Tools and Training Resources I could be off by 4.5 million or so, but I really can't be bothered to count up the actual number of Wordpress tools and resources this post points to. Let's just agree it's a lot and get on with life. Here I attempt to organize resources into groups for......
Related Websites - Losing free web services in a recession I was chatting with family a couple of weeks ago and he was recalling how tiny the content window was on one of the services he uses. There was this little window that had everything he wanted to see, and the rest of the screen was plastered with ads. Then......
- Can Hypnosis Help You Lose Weight? First of all, I'd like to thank Israel for the opportunity to be a guest blogger on this wonderful site he's created! He has done a super job with it and he's an inspiration to all of us. Whether you need to lose weight or would just like to be......
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 0 comments… add one now }