I read a lot of blogs…about technology, UI, web programming, web trends, business, guitar, drumming, photography, cooking, restaurant reviews, movie reviews, etc, etc (dang…I have too many hobbies). With this much reading, and RSS feeds clogging up my inbox…I usually end up glossing over any given blog post for about 20 seconds or less.
I’m assuming many of you readers of Methink exhibit similar blog reading behavior…so how do I, a blogger, capture your attention and send you off with valuable & memorable information? I considered the Tumblelog approach to fight short attention spans…but I find it ineffective for informational blogs.
In light of this…I decided to adopt a new best practice for Methink.com blog posts…TOP 5 lists! Being an avid blog reader myself, one of the things my eyes are first drawn to (sometimes first and ONLY) are the lists that bloggers include on their posts. What are the best guitars? … 1. Goodalls 2. Collings 3. Froggy Bottoms 4. Larrivees 5. Taylors. What are the cheapest DSLR camera’s on market? … 1. Canon XTi 2. Nikon D40X 3. Sony A100 4. Pentax k100d 5. Olympus EVOLT. On Amazon…I almost always go straight to the list of other things people bought when looking at a product.
Sometimes, I don’t even care what bloggers write in the body of the post…just get me to your list so I can research stuff myself! Lists can be a great way to quickly deduce the conclusions of authors without reading entire posts. As an informational resource, lists are invaluable for quick reference. Lists also allow readers to expect how much information they are expected to absorb.
So how long should lists be? Too long (let’s say 10), means that nothing on the list is really useful enough to narrow down or the author has no opinion. Besides, I hate David Letterman. Too short (let’s say 3)….means that the author hasn’t done his homework and can only come up with 3 things. So…I will be incorporating some kind of TOP 5 lists on EVERY blog subject I write about on Methink.com. So to start…if you’re a fellow blogger looking to get ideas on how to capture your audience…here’s my:
TOP 5 Resources for Capturing Your Web Audience
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