7 Tips For Writing a Mega List Post
7 Tips For Writing a Mega List Post - It’s a bit odd to suggest how to write a mega list post by only listing 7 items! However, I’m a firm believer in only including as many items as I can think of. Maybe I stopped thinking of list items a bit too soon. Anyway...
1. Don’t Start it as a Mega Post
Step 1 is to think of a topic. Step 2 is to start writing the items for the list. If you start out by saying “I’m going to write 100 tips in a mega post!”, you’ll either give up if you don’t reach the full quota, or you might come up with a lot of crappy tips just to pad out the post.
If you manage to come up with 50 great tips, well done! If you aimed to write 100, that’s not a failure. Just publish a 50 item mega post.
2. Divide it into Sections
I consider a “mega” list post to contain at least 25 items. That’s not especially “mega”, so perhaps 50 items should be your lower limit for this particular tip.
If you’re writing a truly mega list post, it’ll be a lot easier to digest if you split it into relevant sections. So don’t just dump 100 random items into a massive list – split them into 10 lists of 10 items.
Of course, you might decide you’d be better off splitting your list into 10 smaller posts. Which is fine! It’s up to you.
3. Write it Over a Number of Days
I’d go crazy if I forced myself to write a list containing 100 items in one evening. It might stimulate some really good ideas but it would probably contain a lot of junk.
If you find yourself running out of ideas, try to jot down your last few tips and then give yourself a break. Come back in a day or two and see if you can think of any new ideas.
You might find that you can think of a few more things if you write the post over a few days. Better to do that than to publish a list of 25 items, only to think of 10 more a day later. Of course, you could post a follow-up...
4. Bring Together Unfinished Lists
Have you ever tried to write a list post that doesn’t really get off the starting blocks? Maybe you think of two or three items before wondering why you bothered?
Hopefully you haven’t thrown those posts away. A mega list post gives you the opportunity to revisit all of those unfinished list posts and bring them together in one post.
Don’t worry if they’re only loosely connected – you could either split up your post into sections (see #2 above) or publish a list of 50 random tips that you couldn’t work into any other post.
Sometimes you’ll uncover an incredible range of tips just by dropping the requirement for them all to be on a single aspect of your niche.
5. Consider Writing It as an eBook
One issue with writing a mega list post is that it’ll require readers to do a lot of scrolling. Maybe readers don’t really mind this, but when you scroll and scroll through a neverending post, I think it’s quite likely you’ll give up at some point.
An eBook may well suffer from the same problem, but at least you’ll have page numbers to help you remember where you got up to. Or you might read it via an iPad PDF reader app, which will remember your place for you.
6. Draw From Your Archives
Are you writing a mega list post that will summarise months or even years of knowledge from your blog? If so, it’s a great opportunity to link to any posts that provide background info on the points you’re making.
You can still make new points you haven’t touched on in the past – just don’t forget to link to older posts as and when necessary. This really helps to get readers to look at more of your content.
7. Get Feedback Before You Publish It
Proof-reading before publishing your posts is a good idea anyway, but it’s even more important with a mega list post. By its nature, a mega list post has a lot of content – so there’s more likely to be mistakes in it.
Ask friends to read the post before it goes up. Get them to proof-read it and highlight any errors. Solicit comments that will make the post better. It doesn’t have to be perfect – just make sure it makes sense!
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