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3 Reasons List Posts Rock
Every morning I set side an hour specifically to wake up, make a cup of coffee, and sit down with my favourite newspaper: the Internet. Yes, I have the Toronto Star delivered to me every morning, but I much prefer to sit down and read what is going on in my industry. The latest design and development headlines are delivered along with my favourite blogs immediately through RSS feeds.
Most people who get their news online, especially via blogs, are familiar with posts formatted like a list. We see them all the time. Some sites specialize in roundups like TopRoundups. Despite what Nuttall says on his blog, list posts make life easier for busy people. Here’s why:
They’re Easy To Read
Some of us are too busy with other things to read every word of every article all the time. There’s so much that shows up in my RSS reader that even if I tried to do that I wouldn’t find any time for work! Sometimes, we just want to get the gist of a topic and get out as quickly as we can.
Despite what Nuttall says, I rarely see posts with over twenty items that aren’t just external links to resources. Generally speaking, lists posts are short, straight to the point, and have large subtitles to skim through. If a topic really catches my eye from the subtitles, then I will go back and read the rest of it.
They Make Good Resources
Those resource lists are useful in their own way. Articles like Smashing Magazine’s “15 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts” make great reference materials. These types of articles gather resources we may have never seen before, and some that we have, and categorize them so they are easy to find if you save them for later.
Having a collection of resources on my computer saves me valuable time when I’m doing work on other projects.
They’re Quick And Easy
… to read. You don’t have to spend hours wading through dense, poorly spaced paragraphs of text. You can read an article, get a few good ideas, relax your work muscles, and then go right back to what you were doing. Speaking of which, don’t you have work to do?
James Costa
James is the founder and Creative Director at The Phuse. Managing the majority of projects that come through the company, he can also be found keynoting conferences in North America, DJing, or spending time with his son.
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Design Informer on December 17, 2009
Great points that you brought up James. I think list posts are great, I just think that it’s good to keep a balance and not just do lists everyday.
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