The top 10 reasons top 10 lists are overused
Posted by Brian Schwartz in Advertising / Marketing on Wednesday, July 14th, 2010.
- They are easy to write
We don’t need to worry about things like facts, paragraphs or writing style. Just bang out a point and a sentence or two to convince the reader. - Content is king
Or so I’ve been told. In the interactive world, impressions to your site matter. An easy way to do that is through blog post or articles. When you lack inspiration, just come up with another top 10 list. - They don’t require tricky things… like facts
Research is tough, why bother, just make broad generalizations and people will believe them anyway (e.g. “Impressions to your site matter”). Besides, they are reading your post, you are the expert. - You are busy
We are all busy, so why waste your time reading something that requires concentration. If you wanted to do that you’d buy a book or a magazine. - Twitter only allows 140 characters
So people must not like to read anymore. One of the great things about not having editors and facts is that logical failures (like the one in previous sentence) go unnoticed. - People search for them on the internet
See the chart below. I’ll leave the interpretation of the data to your imagination. But believe me search engines are important.
- People retweet top 10 lists
They really do. Honest. Heck here is a picture of a top 10 search results on twitter. Some of these have been retweeted. - It makes the reader feel smart
Readers may think to themselves, “This is easy, I could have written this” (note, they are probably correct). So instead of a smug journalist, you come off as smart, but not-too-smart-for-his/her-own-good blogger. - Counting is fun
We learned to do it as children, and unlike Calculus and Algebra, it’s something we actually use every day. People usually put a weak point in #9, to reinforce the strength of their 10th point. For proof, watch David Letterman’s top 10 countdown. - Top 10 lists can drive comments to your site
People can think of one you forgot to include and say “Hey Brian, great list, but you forgot to talk about engagement. Social media is all about engagement these days”.
If I missed any reasons, please do this below and prove me right. If there are no comments, I’ll just assume my list was perfect and you found no flaws in it.
I think you should have used 9 items, I really didn’t want to comment due to #10, but felt like I should anyways.
LOL. Thanks for the comment Chris. Number 9 was a stretch anyway.
Next time I will do a post with the top 9 reasons to do a top 10 list.
This is definitely one of your top 10 best posts.