This is Day 2 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, a group project 50+ other bloggers are doing together in an effort to help each other become better bloggers. You can read more about it and still sign-up to participate here.
What an awesome first day we had in this series yesterday. I am blown away! To see my observations from yesterday check out 6 Things I Learned from Day 1 of #31DBBB.
Today’s lesson is about the list posts. If you’ve been reading blogs for any length of time, you know list posts are very popular. In fact, we have done our fair share of list posts here at Christian Web Trends. Here are some examples…
Top 5 List Posts on Christian Web Trends
- 20 Ways to Share Your Faith Online
- Top 10 Signs Your Church Website Needs a Redesign –
- The 10 Commandments of Social Networking
- 12 Ways to Ensure Easter Attendees Don’t Come Back to Your Church Next Week
- 10 Things I Learned from the Online Church Blog Series
The lesson gives several reasons list posts are so popular. They are easy to write. They’re easy to read. They break the main point up into clearly identifiable bite-size nuggets. In fact, you could make the case that list posts are the Chicken Nuggets of blogging. (Would you like some dipping sauce with that?)
Personally, I have my own theory for why list posts are so popular…
Geeks like numbers.
But that’s just one number-loving geek’s theory. (Full discloser: I was on the math team in high school)
Assignment
The assignment for today is to write a list post for your blog. If you’d like some more advice about writing list posts, check out 10 Steps to the Perfect List Post
Discussion
- Do you agree that list posts are both easier to write and easier to read? Why or why not?
- Of all the tips you’ve read about list posts, which do you think are the most important?
- If you did the assignment and wrote a list post, include a link your comment.
The Extra Mile
A few other things you can do to take your blog, other bloggers, and this project even further today…
- Reply & give other bloggers feedback on their list post
- Go back to 31DBBB – Day 1: The Elevator Pitch & check out the elevator pitches.
- Tweet, share, & bookmark this post. (You could win a $25 gift card!)
- Ask & answer questions about blogging but unrelated to elevator pitches in the forums.
303 Comments
Larry,
This post is PACKED with useful information! But, IMHO, you need a better headline. How about "Five Tips for Bible Study Beginners" or "Five Tools You Need for Daily Bible Study?" You want to draw the readers in and let them know that you are going to give them some solid advice. Plus, a title like that will get you lots of "Google juice." You have already written a great piece with practical info —let us know that in the title!! (In fact, there is so much info in this post that you really could break it into two posts: "Five Tips…" and "Five Tools," or something like that.) Again, all of this is my humble opinion. Can't speak to the content…just looking at it from the perspective of writing, driving traffic, etc.
That is excellent advice to drive traffic. I notice you are using blogspot as well. What do you use to view the number of hits you receive to your page? Is there a 'widget' to add?
Kathryn, thanks for the input. I settled on "5 Simple Tools For Bible Study Beginners." Title writing is a big struggle. Contrary to all of the advice to labor over the post title I still have the tendency to give it very little attention.
Paul – your post here contained a list post about list posts. Does that mean you get extra credit?
Here's day 2 assignment:http://trainingcrucible.blogspot.com/2010/05/5-to… . I hope it's helpful.
Great job on this assignment. This was a very informative and helpful post.
I think you did a great job, JDE. I'm not a runner, but if I were, I'd be delighted to have this info. Well done!
Here's my post of the day for those who understands french :http://lemondedenathalie.ca/2010/05/04/defi-du-jo…
Comments in english are accepted!
Yup, that looks like a list all right! lol I wish I could read it. 🙂
After my earlier comment I went back to read a second time and found this statement. "For more info on the Nike+ system check out their website." This would be a great place to have a link so that they could access it from your site. Not sure how everyone else does it but I always have the link to open in a new window so the person does not have to leave my site to do further research.
The links are there, however on the new blog templates that I am using it is hard to tell. In previous templates the text with links would show up in different colors or be underlined. Yet another lessoned learned from changing templates.
WOW, that was quite difficult to do. Even though I am a person that loves structure and order, writing in lists is something I don't do, so on the question on whether lists are easier to write, the answer for now is no.
My list post, however can be found here: http://www.unsafechallenge.com/2010/05/04/3-thing…