Have you seen the article about why invest in google ads in our blog?

Some choose to go through clickbait, others charm the readers who prefer practical lists instead of long and boring articles.

For whatever reason, listicles are increasingly present in our daily lives and are increasingly used by agencies in digital communication.

What is a listicle?

Listicles, also known as list articles, are blog posts structured in list form. Each item expands on more information to keep it useful to readers.

Ahrefs does this, for example, in its article on Public Relations tactics, even giving examples of campaigns.

why create a listicle?

Apparently there are 127 reasons to like lists; personally, 4 reasons occur to me that easily justify why at Critec we think about creating listicles on a regular basis:

1. Capture the attention – increasingly, we need to create short and memorable content to capture users' attention. Aside from specific podcasts and that Netflix serie, we can't or don't want to pay attention to something for much longer than a couple of minutes
2. Easy to measure – knowing that, for example, this article has 10 steps to sell on social media, we can easily find out how long we have to go to the end of the article.
3. Easy to skim – it will be enough, for the less patient reader, to read the titles and understand what is referred throughout an article
4. It's not boring – as we are talking about articles made up of small topics or paragraphs – which must be focused and concise – they are easily consumed without tiring or losing interest.
   
5. Catchy headlines – users easily click on articles they find on social media with headlines that catch their attention. These titles usually answer questions such as Who?, What?, Where?, How? Why?.

Ensure visits to your website or your blog with useful lists for your customers and potential customers.

Format and size

Not all topics are suitable for creating a listicle type article. For some topics, search engine users (yes, after all that's what we work for) look for another type of content – ​​a step-by-step, scientific article, etc.

Let's see: the user looking for a pudding recipe doesn't want to find a list of 137 reasons why pudding shouldn't be eaten in the morning; just as anyone looking for “how to tie a tie” wants a step-by-step guide.

There are some tips on how to define if a topic is interesting to build a listicle:

• Search intent – the user is looking for something specific and something like a recipe. Certain words define the path that the user wants, they are called search modifiers. In this example, if the search, in addition to “internationalization” includes the modifier “steps”.
  
• Google your topic – if you know that your potential customers are looking for “birthday party ideas” and, when you replicate this search, in the first results you only came up with lists of ideas and tips, then this is the content you should create to satisfy your customers and for it to appear in the top results of Google.
  
• Gather your team – expose your idea and brainstorm on the topic. If they manage to create an interesting and useful list on the topic, go ahead!, this is the right content for your blog.
• Wrap up – you should be able to close the topic with a paragraph that ads value, that closes the subject or even encourages the reader to contact you or consult another article or page.

Examples of Listicles

In our blog:

• 6 marketing trends 2021
• 5 trends after covid-19
• 5 free tools to manage remote work teams
• 4 steps to internationalization

Other blogs:

• 5 things I learned from Google’s productivity expert
• How to Start an SEO Business in 6 Steps
• 17 creative ideas for you to produce your rich content

Wrapping up

Creating content for a blog can be a difficult task – you must consider all the SEO: search engine rankings, keywords, backlinks (and we've created some here), social media shares.

So, using listicles can be a facilitating strategy for the generation of this content and an excellent guarantee that it will be well received whenever you focus on interesting topics that your target audience is looking for.

If you want to learn more about how digital marketing and content production strategies can help you increase sales, talk to our team.

If you have any questions or any suggestions, ping me on twitter.