David Cummings on Startups

7 Ideas for X Blog Posts

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David Cummings

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Last week I ran an experiment where I published seven blog posts that had seven ideas each on a specific topic. The goal of the exercise was to see if that style of post, with a specific number of items, was more successful in terms of visitors and retweets.

Here are the seven posts:

Now, I don’t know how the above content compares to the standard content, but the stats are dramatically different: the 7 ideas for X blog posts received an average of 25% more visitors and 3x the number of retweets. People like numerated lists and it drives more traffic.

What else? What are your thoughts on using lists as a theme for content marketing?

Comments

4 responses to “7 Ideas for X Blog Posts”

  1. Mike W Avatar
    Mike W

    In the book “To Sell Is Human”, the author, Dan Pink cites a 2011 study by CMU professors that analyzed email subject lines. He summarizes this study by saying that people open emails for either (1) extrinsic reasons (i.e., work) or (2) intrinsic reasons (i.e., to satisfy curiosity). The researchers concluded that subject lines should either be obviously useful or mysteriously intriguing (but not both).

    However, I think what’s driving higher than normal interest in your recent posts is the degree of specificity that you offer. The author of the book goes on to say that in addition to utility and curiosity as the primary drivers for getting someone’s attention, there is a third principle: specificity. He then gives this example: the subject line “Improve your golf swing” is less effective than “4 tips to improve your golf swing this afternoon”. The titles you used in last week’s blog posts mimic the “4 tips to improve your golf swing this afternoon” example.

    Reply
  2. herahussain Avatar
    herahussain

    Reblogged this on herahussain and commented:
    I love this idea. In fact, I will do this in a style of ’10 tweets on X to get you started’. Sounds good?

    Reply
  3. Rob Bazinet Avatar
    Rob Bazinet

    I can confirm this as well. On my blog of the past several years I have posted various posts with a different number in the title, 7, 10 and lately I tried a long one..33. The posts with 7, coincidentally to your, received a considerably larger number of reads and tweets. Looking at my stats over the past number of years, the posts with the highest continued reads are those posts with 7 and 10 bulleted items.

    Reply
  4. Little Bird's Dad Avatar
    Little Bird’s Dad

    I have a work blog where I break my lists into multiple entries, and post them on various days. The response is staggering. I’m a service-business, so I don’t have concrete sales data, but my page views per user jumped dramatically and my page views before contact funnel shortened considerably.

    Reply

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