“Content Creation with List Articles”
Jim and Stew discuss the simplicity of making and reading list articles. Whether it is a top ten list, three ways to avoid issues, or a 5 step program, lists within an article, blog post, video and even memes work well for all types of content for your readers / customers.
Helpful Tips:
- Add in a sale of your products in one of the lists.
- Multi page article lists with call to actions / links at every level of the list.
- Avoid click bait list articles
Let’s Do This: Make a list article this week and ask people for their ideas to help you make it. Post it in the Sales Copy and Content Marketing Hacks Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/groups/copywritingandcontenthacks/
Don’t want to miss any episodes? Subscribe to “Sales Copywriting & Content Marketing Hacks” YouTube Channel Here for more information about creating successful sales copy to sell ANYTHING:
The Transcript…
Jim Edwards: Hey guys Jim Edwards here along with…
Stew Smith: Stew Smith.
Jim Edwards: And today we’re talking about listicles and Oh, and I didn’t do the right intro…
Welcome to the Sales Copywriting And Content Marketing Hacks Podcast
Yay…
I don’t know what episode this is, but we’re in double digits…So praise, praise the Lord…
Stew Smith: 13…Lucky number 13…
Jim Edwards: So, today we’re talking about listicles and no, this is not something you need to have examined by a urologist…Right, Stew?
Stew Smith: I almost made a joke about it, but you beat me to it.
Jim Edwards: That’s right…No fungus on your listicles today.
So what exactly is a listicle?
Well, this is some sort of millennial-made-up word for a list article.
Stew Smith: Yeah, that’s what I call them.
Jim Edwards: Yeah, that’s what I call them too because I don’t need to feel cool about using slang…
Stew Smith: Top ten articles.
Jim Edwards: Yeah, it slides so trippingly off the tongue, those listicles do…
But hey, I don’t judge…
So here’s the thing…
Why do people love list articles?
And when we talk about list articles…
Give a couple of examples of list articles stuff that you do Stew, what would be a list of that.
Stew Smith: You know, I would say “top 10 reasons why you need to do something.”
“Top five ways to build something.”
Jim Edwards: “3 steps to a specific result.”
Stew Smith: Right.
Jim Edwards: Seven deadly, seven fatal mistakes…
Stew Smith: There you go.
Jim Edwards: In whatever area. Another one that people love are like “My top 10 resources for this”
“The seven best apps for that.”
I wonder people have lists of books. What do you call those?
List of books list…
So Lisel books, liberal, liberal liberals…Libels
Stew Smith: I dunno, man.
Jim Edwards: Listicles…
Jim Edwards: Listhooks, I’ll have to work on that…
But the thing is people love lists…
And the reason I think they love lists is because lists…
You’re looking for that hidden jewel…
We’re looking for the little treasure map.
We say, “You know what if there’s 10 of these that help get this result…
Then maybe there’s one I’ve never heard of, or there’s one that is going to be the thing that I’ve been looking for.”
Or it’s,
“Let me see if I’m super smart and if I know these steps.”
or
“Let me make sure I’m not an idiot, and I’m not making any of these mistakes.”
It’s just lists are cool, and people love them.
What do you think, Stew?
Stew Smith: They’re cool, and they’re easy to read, and they’re easy to write as well.
Jim Edwards: That’s is true.
Stew Smith: I think as a writer, you know when I have a list article on my mind I’m like,
“Oh man, this is, I’ll have a thousand words real quick.”
Jim Edwards: Right. Cause you don’t have to think too deeply about any one particular topic on it…
If you think about it.
Let’s say it’s your top 10 of anything…
Well, it’s pretty much the title of whatever it is, whether the title of the mistake, the title of the resource…
And then it’s a who, what, how type set up where it’s a couple, three sentences, and then you’re onto the next one.
I mean, those are the ones that you can do super, super fast.
And when I was in the newspaper business…
When I was thinking of your dad “when I was in the newspaper business.”
When I was a syndicated newspaper columnist back in the day when people actually read paper newspapers…
The highest compliment that you could be paid as a columnist was a refrigerator article…
Where people liked your article so much that they would clip it out of the paper and put it on the refrigerator and put it on their bulletin board because they wanted to refer back to it…
And that was really the ultimate way that I could gauge the success of an article was how many people said,
“Hey, I love that. I put it on my refrigerator.”
Now again, this is back before the turn of the century back when we did stuff with crayons and
Stew Smith: back in 1900.
Jim Edwards: Yeah, back in the 1900s with torches on the walls and stuff.
But listicles, list articles are super cool for that.
So, you were telling me before we got started
…and I always loved it when Stew does this…
We’re talking about the episode and Stews like,
“Yeah, the other day I was doing this and that and that and that and this.”
And he gives all these great details and shit…
And then when we get on the thing, he said,
“Yeah, I did this article, list articles…Yesterday I put it on Facebook and worked out pretty good.”
I’m like,
“Dude, just be quiet…Tell him he got to the end.”
So what were you talking, what, what were you going to tell me about something you did yesterday or the day before?
Stew Smith: No, you just use crowdsourcing is a great way to get content.
Jim Edwards: What do you mean?
Stew Smith: You don’t necessarily have to ask a question, but you can say,
“Hey, I’m doing a top 10 list of products that I use for recovery. What’s your favorite?”
And just then you just gather information, and then you have you pick these 10 products that people are using and maybe pepper them with another question like,
“Why do you like this product? What’s it do for you?”
Like,
“What injuries are you recovering from when you use it?”
Things like that…
Jim Edwards: And you can do that in the comments.
Stew Smith: Right in the comment section. And then you create this conversation about recovery that really is your article has just been created for you.
Jim Edwards: Yeah… Or at least the hard part has been…
And the cool thing that you can do when you do one of those articles is make sure you either the first…
…And it’s kind of a Ninja trick…
The first and/or the 10th or in somewhere in between might be a resource of yours so that you’re listing all these things that people are cool with and including yourself in the list in some kind of way…
Cause you want to make sure that you’re a part of it…
And then these things really lend themselves to the granddaddy of sales copy, Jujitsu moves, which is when you get to the end of the article, we’ll use Stew’s as an example for recovery…
“By the way, if you would like to know more about the number one book that tactical athletes over 40 are raving about for recovery, you need to check out my newly revised tactical recovery for athletes over 40 (or whatever the name is) available here.”
“In fact, use the coupon code ‘Recovery’ and get an extra…”
$10 off or 50% off or whatever…
And that’s the ultimate move because they read that and then they go,
“Oh yes, juice kind of book on that and I don’t have that yet, and he’s going to give me 50% off, but it’s only good through tomorrow…
Holy Crap!
Let me drop everything I’m doing and go buy that sucker right now.”
And everyone needs to go over to StewSmithFitness.com
Especially if you’re over 40 and you feel like crap.
Stew Smith: Hey, real quick, let’s talk about the lists that are annoying.
You ever get on one of those lists? because this is real.
Jim Edwards: Yeah…
Stew Smith: We got on one of those lists like you give me an online,
Jim Edwards: Give me an example.
Stew Smith: You go online, and you might have like a hundred whatever, like
“celebrities before and after.”
Jim Edwards: Oooohhh those Click Bait article,
Stew Smith: Oh my God, they’re horrible…It’s just like… It takes you 20 clicks… to see the person you want to see…
Jim Edwards: I want to see what Claudia Schiffer it looks like in a bikini now…
Stew Smith: Right…
Jim Edwards: Ahhhhhhhhh!
Stew Smith: Hahahaha! Yeah, they’re exactly clickbait articles…
So I would have personally would avoid when you do a top 10 list to… I mean there’s a reason why people do them…
They probably work, but…
Jim Edwards: It’s to get ad views that,
Stew Smith: I mean, it’s easier to read if you just have a straight list on one page.
Jim Edwards: Right.
Stew Smith: But you know, an option is to create a list with 10 pages…
Jim Edwards: But…
Stew Smith: That have pictures and video, and you know, so you can really expand these things as big or as small as you want.
Jim Edwards: Right. And here’s the thing, here’s something to think about…Okay.
I’m going to draw this out with my amazing redneck iPad…
But let’s say you have your list of five or 10 things, okay?
Let’s say this is on your blog…
I know nobody talks about blogs anymore…
But then you could take each one of those items and turn it into a mini blog post…
A mini social media post…
And then create a little mini post out of each one…
And then each one of those points to the blog post…
So all of a sudden, you create 10 things that are magnets over to your blog post or wherever you have the thing done…
And that’s one of the things that I like to do with list articles, and it’s really easy…
I mean, you can get a good week’s worth of content out of a single article when you do it this way…
Because you can also…
…just like what Stew says…
One might be a meme…
One might be text…
When might be a video…
One might be a… what do you call those graphics and explainer things?
Stew Smith: Infographics.
Jim Edwards: Infographic. You can even do an explainer video type of thing…
And so it’s not the same thing.
It’s not like you just take that text and paste it and say,
“If you want the rest of the story, go here.”
You could make a meme and then say,
“Hey, for the top 10, you do a text version of one of them.”
So you have all these different things that you could do that you’re turning this list into…
And it makes it a lot easier for you to leverage that, especially if you’re time is really constrained…
It’s a great way to really leverage that thing and get a lot of mileage out of it super, super fast…
And then the other cool thing that you can do is as you create a collection of these listicles,
…Not testicles because nobody wants to take a list of tests…
So what… seriously though, what a list of tests via testicles…
I’m just curious an article about we had testicles just curious…
Stew Smith: Well, you know what? I could do that… Yeah…
I could write about all the different fitness tests that the military uses…
Jim Edwards: Yeah…Read this testicle,
Stew Smith: I could call it a testicle…
Jim Edwards: Yeah… And if you start coughing during one of these tests and it’s an indication of your physical fitness,
Dude, this is amazing! This brainstorming!
So, the big thing though is each one of those things leads to the article…
And then the thing to remember is that that article and I didn’t draw it very, but that article always leads to some sort of a call to action that makes you some money…
People can sign up for something, they can buy something, they can click through to something…
Absolutely, you want to do that…
And something…
…and this is a lot more Ninja, but this is something else you can do…
We haven’t talked about retargeting, but we will in the future…
If you had a pixel on this page, all these people who click through to this to this article…
You can then retarget them with ads related to your call to action.
Because you know, somebody who’s interested in this listicle is probably interested in your thing…
But you’re giving value, value, content, content, content, content…
And then all of a sudden they see an ad, and you know, they’re interested in that.
You can get a lot higher response rate.
So here, let me not be rude.
Sorry about that.
I thought I had it on “Do not disturb” and I did…
But those damn Robocalls for whatever reason, we can make it…
You’re not the only one…
Robot calls can make it past do not disturb…
So I mean that’s the biggest thing…
If you were going to sit down and write a listical Stew,
What would you do?
And we’ll just kind of end with that.
Mechanically, how would you do it and how long do you think it would take you?
Stew Smith: Well, I would come up with just a general idea.
Like I was really thinking about doing this one today.
I was going to do today is,
“What are five foods aid in recovery.”
Jim Edwards: Okay…
Stew Smith: And then I was just gonna go on, on social media, on my Facebook page…
Or maybe even ask on my Instagram live today and just say,
“Hey, what kind of food do you do? Here’s what I do for recovery. What are you guys doing?
So, I give them a little information on what I’m doing, and then I take what they’re doing and continue my list…
And just come up with five good sources of food maybe even a little bit of information on how to prepare it and then try that and see how I feel.
Jim Edwards: How do you decide what makes the cut for the list.
Stew Smith: Ah, good question…
I would probably with its food I would probably only post the types of food that I eat personally…
Or like…
I’m not going to tell somebody to eat something that I don’t like to eat because I don’t have enough knowledge on that food that I would feel like I could write about it…
Stew Smith: So I tend to write about things I use…
Jim Edwards: Okay…
Stew Smith: People know that when they read my stuff…
So I will either use it, I will eat it, I will sell it, whatever that is.
If I’m talking about it, I have used it.
Jim Edwards: Okay…
Stew Smith: Yeah…
Jim Edwards: Yeah… My, I liked that a lot…
I’ve used that…
The funny thing is once you kind of get in the habit of having a conversation with your social media friends or your subscribers in email and things like that…
It’s actually really easy to get them to share information with you…
And then you actually get a certain level of ownership where people contribute…
Or they see others contributing, and then they want to see the ultimate article.
So it’s a good one, two punch of getting that involvement and then saying,
“Hey, I took this and wrote this article. I hope you guys like it. What do you think?”
That’s a way, again, to get more mileage without having to create more content, if that makes sense.
Because you have multiple interactions.
You have the interaction with the first post of,
“Hey, this is what I do.”
“What’s your favorite thing?”
You can respond to people inside of the comments and stuff,
Even if it’s just little bits, but you’re having that ping with people…
And then you come out with a new article, and then you can link the article in the comments of the other one…
And then start a whole new thread of conversation there too, and then share it on your blog and stuff…
And I think that everybody kind of gets in this mindset of we have to create…
New content, new content, new content…
And they don’t maximize the existing content very well at all.
And so I think there are some people that take that to major extreme that they maximize a single article so much people were like,
“Okay, we kind of get, get the message.”
Stew Smith: Yeah, that’s a good point.
Jim Edwards: But most of us don’t do that.
I don’t. With this thing that I drew out here is perfectly fine…
If you create a bunch of these, and then they work really well, compile them into a book,
Stew Smith: That’s exactly what I did…
I did the same thing with,
“Hey, I’m doing a motivation article. What motivates you to train?”
Asked that question and I put my answer. I said,
“Here’s why I train every day.”
And so I got so much!
I was able to write a top 10 list, but then it kept growing and kept growing…
And I actually wrote a book on the top 100 reasons to train.
It’s a fun little Ebook!
Jim Edwards: Sure! And it actually makes money…People still buy…
Here’s an example of a book that my sister wrote.
It’s called APP Mavens’ favorite productivity tools.
And they’re basically… it’s lists of apps for iPhone but also with alternatives for whatever other thing is that people do.
And this is a book that she sells a crap ton of, and she sells these by like by the box.
She’s not selling them individually…
Companies buy these by the box, and it’s, I mean, you see it’s fricking, it’s done like old playboy magazine man.
And had the staples in the middle, perfect bound and she kills it with this thing…
Stew Smith: Oh, nice…
Jim Edwards: Just a book of lists of Apps…
But they are apps for a specific purpose.
That’s the biggest thing.
You got to have a tight, popular, important theme with your listicles…
Stew Smith: Absolutely…
Jim Edwards: Just have random listicles.
Then you’re going to get random results.
Nobody wants a random listicle…
Sounds painful…
Stew Smith: Yes.
Jim Edwards: So anyway, I think that’s cool.
I would just encourage everybody if you’re not a member of the Sales Copywriting And Content Marketing Hacks Facebook Group, you need to be…
And you can join that by going to TheJimEdwardsMethod.com/group
Click on the link “Request membership.”
And we will probably let you in unless you’re holding like a butcher knife and a severed head…
And then again, we may let you in…
Stew Smith: Yeah. You know what?
In fact, I’m going to challenge you guys if you’re listening to this still…
I want you to write a list article and share it in our Facebook page…
Jim Edwards: There you go…
You are allowed to do that…
So, yeah, paste the whole article
Don’t send the link and
“Oh, go check out my article.”
Post your whole article in the Facebook group.
Stew Smith: Yup…
Jim Edwards: Awesome…
All right, cool.
Well, everybody have a great day…
We’ll talk to you soon…
Go write that listical…
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