Day 2 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog – List Posts

Day 2 of ProBlogger’s 31 days to build a better blog was all about List Posts.

We’ve all seen them:

• 5 ways to enhance your relationship
• 10 of the cutest dogs ever
• 4 reasons why cats are better than dogs…

In Darren’s podcast today, he talked about the success his Digital Photography School had when using List Posts, including this post which has had hundreds of thousands of hits. Darren’s thoughts on list posts included:

Advantages of List Posts

1. They’re scannable
2. Digestable
3. More succinct than non-list posts
4. They look neat
5. They keep ideas in order
6. You can break down certain points
7. They tend to be shared more often
8. They break down complicated arguments

There are 3 types of List Posts

1. Bullet points
2. Extended lists – a 2 or 3 paragraph intro and then paragraphs for each point (which can include sublists)
3. A list in the middle of a post

Another tip from Darren was to insert images into the list – this draws people further down into the blog post. Here’s my effort…

And the final tip was the one thing more effective than bullet points is BIG, LARGE subheadings. Use your “H” Headings to do this. I’ve done this a little bit above using the hot pink.

Now today’s homework was to create a List Post of your own. I could cheat and say this blog post is a List Post but I’ve created a very brief new post about being a home-based business and thriving in the school holidays. You can view it here.