Seriously — how do they do it?
How do some bloggers create posts that get shared hundreds or even thousands of times?
And attract dozens of quality links that get them ranked highly by Google.
You know the people we’re talking about — everything they publish goes viral.
And you can’t help thinking:
Why can’t that be me?
But you know what? It can.
And you don’t need an insanely popular blog, a huge email list, a Rolodex crammed with influential friends or a heap of time to make it work.
If you know exactly the right type of post to create and the right way to do it, you can dramatically increase your chances of a viral hit without spending days and days.
In fact, the method you’re about to learn will bring you hundreds of shares and thousands of new visitors to your blog in just a few hours.
So, are you ready to learn how to have maximum impact in minimum time?
Why People Love Long List Posts
It’s no secret that the Internet loves list posts — and the longer, the better.
Headlines that lead with an impressively large number imply long content, and people naturally associate longer posts with more effort and higher quality. In fact, statistics show that long content gets shared more.
But here’s the thing about so-called “monster” lists posts.
They’re a ton of work to create.
Want to write an original post called “101 Ways to Do X” or “237 Ideas for Y”? Great! But expect to spend at least 20 hours researching and writing it.
However, one type of list post looks epic but takes much less effort to create. And it has other benefits that make it even more likely to go viral than the original lists described above.
Introducing… the Curated List Post
Original lists take a long time to create because you’re creating all the content from scratch. You’ll need to spend many hours conducting original research or brainstorming ideas to build your list.
Sometimes, that’s worth the effort, for instance, if you’re creating the “pillar” content that will support your blog for years to come. But you can’t do that every week — you’d be exhausted.
And that’s where the curated list post comes in.
A curated list post is a collection of links to content that already exists — content you didn’t have to spend the time to create.
In fact, content like the following:
- 126 Must-Read Traffic Generation Case Studies
- The 100 Blogs You Need In Your Life
- 101+ Infographic Tools & Resources to Help Your Team
The first one received hundreds of shares and thousands of visits, and it only took me a few hours to write and promote.
Textually, these posts are unique — we’re not talking about anything that will get you penalized by Google — but other people have already done most of the hard work.
But hang on, won’t you still need a lot of time to research the 100+ links included in your curated post?
Actually, no. Not if you use one of the sneaky shortcuts you’ll learn in this post.
And not only do these list posts take less time to create than you might think, but mixing in a hefty helping of powerful bloggers (the authors behind the links on your list) also has another benefit — abundant shares.
Why Curated List Posts Almost Always Get Shared by Big Names
When you write a curated post, you’re not only creating new content for your blog, but you’re promoting the work of others — the people who created the linked content and even from your affiliates.
And here’s the happy side-effect:
People love to share articles that feature them.
Just ask any blogger and you’ll find it’s true. I’m no different — if you feature me or one of my articles in your post and ask me to share it, you’re almost guaranteed that I will. It’s netiquette — the common rules of the road etiquette for today’s blogger.
If I don’t share, I might not get featured again.
Inevitably, many of the people who wrote the articles you’ve featured will be influencers with good-sized social followings, which leads to another beneficial effect:
People share content that people they trust share.
If someone who I think is credible vouches for something, I also feel safe vouching for it — this is essentially how social proof works.
If I can get the ball rolling to gain a few shares, more people will join the party. So if you can get a bunch of influencers to share your post, their audiences will likely follow suit.
Of course, you need to choose the right topic.
How to Come Up with the Perfect Idea for Your Curated Post
In general, curated list posts fall into one of the following three buckets:
- Lists of articles. These are lists that showcase high-quality articles that cover the same topics (e.g. conversion rate optimization).
- Lists of websites. These are lists that show off the best blogs/websites in a particular category (e.g. the best Internet marketers).
- Lists of tools. These are lists that feature best-of-breed tools of a certain type (e.g. content marketing tools).
In fact, the post examples I gave earlier fall into one of these categories and received hundreds of shares without having a huge audience built-in.
But for the rest of this post, let’s assume we’re writing the first type — a curated post featuring a list of articles. Regardless, the principles you’ll learn apply to all three types.
Let’s see how to do it.
Step 1: Choose The Unifying Principle For Your List
Imagine if you visited a museum and objects from different eras and places were all jumbled together in the same room. It would be confusing and kind of pointless, right?
Likewise, if the articles on your list don’t have something in common your post will just feel like a random collection of links.
So you need to ask yourself:
What unites these articles to make them all belong on the same list?
Usually, it comes down to article type and topic.
For example, 64 Of The Best Channel Marketing Case Studies is a list of 64 articles with the type case study and the topic channel marketing.
As another example, 100+ Of The Best Internet Marketing Ultimate Guides is a list of 100 articles with the type ultimate guide, and the topic Internet marketing.
This way of thinking not only helps your curated list post feel meaningful but also guides your strategy for finding the articles via search engines, which we’ll discuss below.
Ultimately, what type and topic you choose is up to you, but think about relevance and breadth.
Relevance, of course, means that the finished post will be interesting to your target audience. It’s common sense but important to keep in mind.
But what do we mean by breadth?
Considering the post itself is likely to have 100+ articles (or tools, or websites), you need a topic with enough scope to cover in many different ways without it becoming boring or repetitious.
So, for instance, a topic like “grammar mistakes” is too narrow because a list of 100+ links will probably contain a huge amount of overlap.
Step 2: Research The Competition (and Beat Them At Their Own Game)
Here’s the thing about any epic content — it’s usually judged against what already exists on the same subject.
So you’d be smart to research the competition — other long list posts on your topic.
Normally, you’d want to pay close attention to the following:
- How long is the list? (i.e. how big is the number in the headline?)
- How attractive is the overall design?
- How comprehensively do they cover the topic? (i.e. are all the relevant sub-topics covered?)
- How up-to-date is the information?
Aiming to beat the current best posts on your topic on every front is essentially the strategy recommended by Brian Dean in his Skyscraper technique, and if you do, the results can be impressive.
However, it’s time-consuming — perhaps as time-consuming as creating an epic post from scratch.
So here we’re focusing on a more quick and dirty solution — featuring more quality links than the reigning champion.
And here’s why: many people share posts on the strength of the headline alone, without even visiting the post. So the size of the post is the most important factor.
Finding the best content currently out there on your topic is as simple as running a Google search. Most curated resource articles have similar titles:
- Top 100 Articles On [Topic]
- 100 Of The Best [Topic] Posts
- 100 [Topic] Resources
For example, the following results are from a search for Conversion Rate Optimization articles:
Once you feel comfortable you’ve found the best, say, ten posts covering the same topic as your proposed post, skim them to make sure you have a good appreciation for what you have to beat.
How to Curate Your Epic List Like a Ninja
By this point, you might be scratching your head as to how you’ll produce a list post of this magnitude without going insane.
Where, for instance, did I find 126 traffic generation case studies for my post? Did I just read about traffic generation all day?
(Actually, yes, but that’s because I’m a traffic junkie. But it’s not how I created the post.)
You have two sure-fire ways to quickly and painlessly collect articles for your curated list post. One is pretty obvious, but the other is downright devious.
Method 1: Source Your Own Articles From Google
If you’re collecting tools, articles, or websites, your natural inclination will be to use Google.
And I can see you now: typing some relevant search terms into Google, clicking “Search,” opening up each article one by one and then adding the URL to a spreadsheet if it seems like a good fit. And repeating it for page after page after page of search results.
That’s going to get dull pretty quickly, right?
Well, here’s how you do it like a ninja.
First, click on “Settings” in the bottom right of the Google homepage. When it opens, click “Search Settings”:
On the next page, change Google instant predictions to “Never show Instant results,” and move the “Results per page” to 100. Then click “Save.”
Now, when you run a Google search, you’ll get 100 results per page. I bet you didn’t know you could do that!
Next, download this free tool from Moz for Chrome or Firefox, which (amongst other things) makes it super easy to gather links to content found via Google Search.
With the MozBar installed, run a search for the type of article that will be a part of your list. Some searches to start with include:
- The best articles on [Topic]
- Tricks and tips for [Topic]
- How to do [Topic]
- [Topic] case studies
- The ultimate guide to [Topic]
- Advanced [Topic]
- [Topic] for beginners
- Why you need [Topic]
If the results contain too many irrelevant links, you can use Google search operators to narrow your search.
For example, if I were looking for ultimate guides about Internet marketing, I could run the following search:
This forces each result to include “ultimate-guide” in the URL (as well as being related to Internet marketing), which should help make them super relevant.
Note: Google search operators are not absolutely necessary but may improve search relevancy. Remember, you’re looking at 100 results at a time.
Once you have a page of mostly high-quality results, you can use the MozBar to export these to a CSV file, which you can open in Excel or almost any other spreadsheet tool.
Here’s how to do it in Chrome:
When you open the file, it’ll have a ton of columns, but in this case we’re only interested in the first two, which contain the URL and the title:
Quick tip: Sometimes the MozBar truncates the title if it’s too long. Luckily, you can use a free tool like SEO Chat’s Title Generator to get the title and meta description for up to 100 links at a time and download as CSV. (The meta description is useful because you can use it as the basis for a brief description of the post in your curated list.)
Method 2: Source Articles from Other List Posts
The second method is even simpler, and it’s a little sneaky too.
Instead of relying on Google to help you find articles one-by-one, you source your articles from other list posts on your topic — exactly the same posts you’re trying to beat for epicness.
In other words, you’re combining the work of other bloggers to create a super-post of greater size and scope.
For example, if I wanted to write a post about the best content marketing tools, I could draw from these existing posts:
To make things easy, I can head to any of those pages and extract all of their links using an HTML extractor tool. For example, when I extract the links from the 50 content marketing tools post, I get the following:
Again, I can put these links into SEO Chat’s tool to get the titles and meta descriptions and download as CSV.
Do this a few times and you’ve just swallowed everyone else’s list and made your own monster list.
Yes, it feels a bit sneaky, but the truth is that those authors probably did something similar to come up with their list, just on a smaller scale.
Making Sure Your Post Only Includes High-Quality Links
So you’ve just built a spreadsheet containing a few hundred links to articles on your topic.
But how do you know if they’re any good? And what about duplicates (which can easily appear with Method 2 above)?
The only way to be sure an article meets your standards is to go through it yourself, but of course it’s time-consuming.
That said, you may have noticed I like to lean on free tools and formulas to make life easier, and quality control is no exception.
Firstly, I use a simple Excel (or Google Sheets) function to remove any duplicate URLs.
Assuming that your links are in column A, just enter the following formula at the top of the next empty column:
This formula filters the list of links to include unique values only, thus removing any duplicates.
Once you’ve removed duplicate articles, you’ll want a quick way to identify and remove poor articles.
For this, you can leverage a bulk social share counter, which allows you to add multiple URLs and get the share counts, which can then be downloaded into a CSV.
The above tool doesn’t require registration but restricts URLs to ten at a time. SharedCount allows many more links but requires registration (it’s free though!)
If an article has at least a few dozen shares, it’s likely a quality article from a quality site. If it has few shares, more often than not it is a lower-quality article.
This technique allows you to weed out the poorer articles quickly, and if you choose to go through the articles manually afterwards, it won’t consume as much of your time.
How to Assemble Your List into the Curated Post
How you format and style the post is really up to you, but you need to make a few decisions.
Will you simply list the linked article titles, or will you write descriptions for each?
Listing the titles is a lot less work (and can mostly be generated from your spreadsheet data), but it also puts less unique content on the page, which may affect the perceived value.
But while adding commentary to each link will boost the perceived value, over the course of 100+ links, it might become tedious for the reader, detracting value from the overall goal to highlight the articles themselves.
(If you do decide to add descriptions, remember the earlier point about using the meta descriptions from the individual articles as the starting point for your own.)
Will you break the list into different categories or chapters?
Again, simply listing the links is easier, but organizing them into helpful categories or chapters will create a better user experience.
Usually, it’s worth organizing the links in some way because the longer the list, the more overwhelming a single list of links will seem. Categories also help the reader find the links that are of the most interest to them.
Will you enhance the design of the post with images?
Personally, I think adding images to each chapter is a quick and easy way to improve the visual appeal and break up what would otherwise be a long article filled purely with links.
It’s also a way to differentiate your post from other epic lists on the same topic.
Luckily, you won’t struggle to find free images to include in your post. In fact, Smart Blogger has a resource listing the best sites for high-quality, royalty-free stock photos.
Will you use chapter descriptions or just headings?
As we’ve established, explaining each article can take significant time. So if you choose to exclude descriptions, I highly recommend writing an introduction, thus ensuring you have unique content on the page explaining what the post is about and why you selected these particular articles.
If you’ve divided the links into categories or chapters, an introduction for each will also help the reader put what follows into context and increase the perceived value.
Will you build a table of contents?
If you decide to split your links into different chapters and have more than 50 links or so, you should seriously consider having a table of contents. It enhances usability and just adds to the wow factor, which is why all the best guides seem to do it. Fortunately, it’s not hard to do.
Example
To put the five questions above into context, for our guide on 126 Traffic Generation Case Studies, we made the following decisions:
- We included the titles and links in the list but didn’t write a description for each one.
- We broke the list into different categories relating to traffic generation, like social media, eCommerce, etc.
- We added a small icon image and an introductory paragraph to each chapter.
- We built a table of contents.
Here’s what a typical chapter looked like:
How to Format Your Post in WordPress
You may have noticed a lot of your work is in spreadsheets — how does this become an actual blog post?
In practice, it’s a combination of using some clever spreadsheet tricks to generate the basic HTML, and then tidying things up in the WordPress visual editor.
If you’re using separate categories, one helpful tip is first to copy all of the links for a particular category into a separate spreadsheet (or sheet within the same overall spreadsheet document.)
To create the links that form the backbone of your post, I like to bust out a few formulas that will make it easy to go from your spreadsheet to the text editor in WordPress.
While I can’t give you a one-size-fits-all solution for creating the HTML that will work for every different style of list post, I can give you a time-saving tactic you can easily adapt. It uses some basic Excel/Google Sheets functions that automatically produce the desired HTML for a list element based on the titles and links you already have in your spreadsheets.
Let’s say in column A you have the article’s URL and in column B you have its title (no header row).
Here’s a formula that will produce a single list element with the title, hyperlinked:
Paste this formula into a cell in the first empty column in the first row. Then drag the small box in the lower right-hand corner of the cell down the page to apply the same formula to the rest of your links.
Once you have generated the HTML, you can copy it into the WordPress editor. Assuming you’ve already created a new post, switch to the Text editor, and then paste the whole column of generated HTML.
Once you’ve done that, you can switch to Visual mode for additional formatting.
Note: If you like this approach, here’s a pre-built Google Sheet, which includes a more advanced formula to account for descriptions and some basic paragraph styling for your list items. (To use it, go to “File > Download As” and download as an Excel document, or log into your Google account then go to “File > Make a copy” to create an editable copy in your personal Google Drive.)
Creating a Handy Table of Contents
Let’s also discuss the HTML for the Table of Contents (TOC).
What makes a TOC particularly useful is hyperlinking your chapter headings to the relevant parts of the page itself.
To do so you need to create an internal link that references an “anchor” later in the document.
Here’s the HTML for a simple chapter heading within the TOC:
The “#chapter1” tells the browser this is an internal link to an anchor called “chapter1.”
That internal link refers to a spot on the page that is marked up like this:
So now, when someone clicks on Chapter 1 in the TOC, they will go directly to that spot.
Again, you can shuttle between the Text and Visual post editors to make sure the HTML and the formatting are correct.
How to Promote Your Post to Get Maximum Exposure
Alright, you’re at mile 25 — so don’t give up yet.
Once the post is assembled and published, you still need to promote it. That might seem like a lot of work, but it’s easier than you think.
Besides, if you didn’t intend to go all the way, there was no point in writing the post in the first place.
Content promotion has been covered in detail on this blog, and the truth is, all the usual rules still apply to your post. But you must do a couple of specific things — and they both relate to getting your influencers on board.
You may have noticed we haven’t said an awful lot about the influencers yet. But even though you haven’t targeted specific influencers upfront, you’ve effectively already done so by including their work in your post.
In other words, you’ve already baited the trap.
Now you just need to let them know they’ve been featured, through email and social media.
Once you do that, your post is going to fly.
So let’s look at what you need to do.
1) Email the Influencers You Featured in Your Post
You need to email everyone you featured in the article, which starts with finding everyone’s email address.
Finding email addresses of bloggers is not hard — in fact I can name 30 different ways. Here are just a handful of places to look:
- Contact form or About page — sometimes bloggers include emails on these pages.
- Page footer — look for a contact link in the footer as you can often find a “mailto:” address.
- Blog newsletter — opt into the blog’s email list and look at the “Reply to” email address of any email they send because this is often an address the blogger checks regularly.
Once you have addresses for your influencers, here’s an email template to send when you’re ready:
Just wanted to pop in and say that we’ve included you in our roundup of top content marketing tools (it’s a broad list of over 200).
Check it out!
http://ninjaoutreach.com/best-content-marketing-tools/
Thanks for providing a valuable service, and if you feel inclined to share the post with your audience, we’d appreciate the exposure.
Here’s a simple tweet you can send out 🙂
Cheers!
Dave
The key features are:
- You address them personally and thank them for providing a valuable resource.
- You quickly direct them to the article (i.e. you don’t include a lot of preamble).
- You give them an easy way to share the post in the email itself (In the template above, I used Click to Tweet.)
A typical message to include in your Click to Tweet text is something like:
2) Tag Everyone On Twitter & Google+
Email is usually the best way to alert influencers of your post. But in reality, not everyone responds to email. Sometimes it goes to an assistant, and sometimes you just can’t find a valid address in the first place.
Using Twitter or Google+ is an alternate approach to email because it’s so dang simple for the influencer to share it once they see it.
In fact, this is the same approach that Brian Lang recommended in his Smart Blogger post on creating an expert roundup (which is another way to get thousands of shares by featuring dozens of influencers).
Once you have everyone’s Twitter handles and G+ profiles, send out a group tweet and include a few people in it at once. People like being associated with other influencers, and as one person shares it, it tags everyone else again, giving the post additional reach.
Due to Twitter’s length restrictions, you can typically only include around 3 — 6 influencers per tweet, which could require you to send out 1 — 2 dozen similar looking tweets from your account.
If you’re not comfortable with that, you can space them out, perhaps sending one per hour, interspersed with unrelated tweets. Or use a tool like Hootsuite, which allows you to bulk schedule tweets.
You can use the same approach for G+ as well, with the added benefit of no length restrictions; I typically just include everyone together.
Want to Get Shared? Get Sneaky!
Epic lists posts are one of the most reliable ways to get hundreds of shares and thousands of new views for your content.
But they’re also one of the most time-consuming.
That’s why you need to be sneaky and focus on the one type you can create with considerably less effort — curated list posts.
You’ll be surprised just how much you can automate through the use of free tools and sneaky Excel formulas, making the whole process relatively quick and easy.
Whether you just started a blog, you’re the busiest (or even, laziest) blogger, follow these guidelines, and you have a shot at creating a list post that goes viral.
Not just that, you also get to build relationships with influencers that could lead to all sorts of future opportunities like making money from blogging.
So, what are you waiting for? Pick a topic and get started!
Hey David, some great tools there I didn’t even know about! Love that Moz-bar tool and the spreadsheet tricks! Brilliant.
Thanks for sharing. I’m working on one of these types of post right now so your article is very timely.
Thanks mate.
Larry
Hey Larry
Glad you liked it.
It’s always good when a piece of content comes out just when you’re working on something related.
Good luck with your post.
Hi David,
Welcome to Boost Blog Traffic! Even though this is your first time writing here, I imagine you’re no stranger to big audiences. 🙂
People tend to do “list posts” to death these days, but in-depth, content-rich ones like you talk about here will never go out of style! They’re effective, memorable, and sharable.
Love the tips you shared with us, and I particularly like all the helpful screenshots. I kept hoping to see my blog in one of the images, but alas… 😉
I’ll be tweeting this shortly, David, as well as sharing it on my resurrected Facebook page! Excellent work, my friend. Hope you have a great day!
-Kevin
Hey Kevin
Your right there are a ton of list posts out there and like you said making sure they are content rich and visually pleasing makes you stand out from the rest.
You need to balance out how many you do in your overall content schedule.
Glad you liked the tips and thanks for commenting.
Hey David,
That Moz tool is going to come in pretty handy – thanks for that!
At the end of the day though, in order to create an awesome epic/pillar post, you’re going to have to put in some significant work – even just collecting the contact info/email addresses for the people featured can take up to an hour, and that’s not mentioning searching and collating the content.
If you put in extraordinary effort for a post you’ll tend to get extraordinary results!
Insanely useful content, Dave! Right now, I’m busy with guest posting, but it’s bookmarked and when the time comes, it will be my step-by-step guide.
The little technical tricks and tools come in very handy for somebody who is not that technically inclined (like me…). At first glance, one thinks “OMG, more technical stuff to learn,” but when you actually just do it, it’s usually very easy.
Hey Alex
Glad you found the content useful.
Your right about the technical stuff just follow the instructions and you’ll find it super easy.
Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment.
Hey Daryl
Glad you liked the moz tool it’s pretty slick.
I agree you do need to put significant work in but like you said that work creates you extraordinary results (tons of shares lots of engagement and traffic, even leads and sales for your business) so I guess it’s relative to the outcome.
Thanks for commenting
Thank you so much, David! I’ve started a blog earlier this year and been updating it weekly until about last month when I just plain ran out of content. After reading your post, I now realize I’m sitting on a goldmine of articles I’ve saved over the years in Evernote that’s related to my niche. No more feeling guilty or making excuses week after week of not posting any blog updates!
Hey JJ
That’s so cool I’m happy that my post has filled you with inspiration and ideas for new content for your blog.
Thanks for sharing
Dave,
This is great info I especially appreciate the info on formatting for WordPress. That will come in handy for me since every time I go to transfer into WordPress my formatting gets messed up.
I agree there are list posts everywhere. The three you cited at the beginning of the article all have two things in common. Great headlines and info that is useful to the reader. If you can manage to do that and incorporate your ideas then it’s a home run.
Hey Bob
Thanks for your input
I’m glad the info on formatting for WordPress will be of help to you moving forward.
I think pretty much every style of post has been overdone, the key is taking it to the next level visually and with your own unique spin on the content so you stand out from the crowd.
Good luck with all your endeavours
This is an awesome resource, Dave! I am going to bookmark it so I can come back and go over it again.
I have experienced that list posts work really well and as a reader, it definitely makes my life easier as well. I really like this short and straight to the point email to influences as well, very helpful!
Hey Reelika
Thanks for the kind words.
And it’s true the results speak for themselves people just love list post data backed research has shown time and time again that list post are at the top with some of the most shared and engaged types of posts
Glad the outreach emails to the influencers was useful as well
Take care and thanks for commenting.
Great ideas, Dave! I had no idea you could search for duplicates using a formula or convert to html in Excel. One idea you might add is that whenever I have an idea for a potential curated post, I just bookmark the link in Evernote (or you could use Delicious or Diigo). With tags, I have the seeds of a curated post for later on.
Hey Tom
I also thought it was cool when I found out you could search for duplicates using a formula and convert to html in Excel glad you found that useful.
Plus thanks for sharing your ideas also.
Hey Dave,
Thanks for everything you included in this post and its priceless.You Just solved my problem as my domain Basicsof.org is worthless and now with this guide I gonna make it to that level of enough valuable to community.
Thanks again
Hey Lovepreet
Glad you liked it and was inspired
Good luck with everything
Guys, you are so amazing, collection of skilled writers.
Best Regards,
Yazeed.
Hi Yazeed
I agree the boost blog traffic team, writers and all those that contrubute are amazing.
David, I loved what you said about creating original monster list posts.
This year, I’ve just done a couple of them and they’re a killer to create. After you’ve written one, you either decline into a serious episode of chronic fatigue syndrome or lay off blogging for a few months.
As Kevin Duncan says, people are doing resource lists to death these days. Though I don’t generally read them, I still find them useful. If ever I’m stuck for something decent to read and share I know I can go to a curated post in my RSS feed.
Also liked the shortcuts and organisation tips to add value.
Hey Kevin
Thanks for sharing your thoughts
Glad you liked the shortcuts and organisation tips.
BRILLIANT ARTICLE:)) Thank you so much. The MOZ tool is amazing, and the step by step way to approach this technique is amazingly helpful. THANK you for helping me come up with a great curation idea!
Hey Katie
I love the fact that this post has inspired you to come up with a new post idea.
Hope that post does super well and you go on to get a ton of traffic, shares, engagement, leads and sales.
Good luck with all your future endeavours.
Hey Dave
Great post.
List posts are a powerful thing and especially when they’re gigantic lists like 200 ways to _______ or 77 ways to ______. Although list posts are great and proven to get shared it’s not something you can do on a consistent basis … Don’t you think?
Brilliant post otherwise. Great job.
– Andrew
Hey Andrew
Thanks for sharing your thoughts
Your right you have to balance them out throughout your overall content schedule.
Wow! Absolutely brilliant article. I knew list posts are popular, but this article forced me to rethink their scope and potential. I especially liked the discussion of the tools you used to create the list posts and make the process as easy as possible . Thanks for sharing this unique information.
Hey Faizan
I’m glad you got some actionable tips from the post that you can use.
I just love when a piece of content forces me to rethink my position on a topic, I’m happy you had the same experience and hope it serves you well.
Thanks for commenting.
Hi Dave,
Working on my first epic post now – with quotes from different people – and it really is a pain in the patootie. Time-consuming and hard to keep track of who’s doing what.
I was starting to make notes for a curation post and this article is really helpful. Besides getting attention, you learn a lot from collecting the articles and almost become an expert yourself.
I really appreciate the tips on how to do this efficiently. Will follow step-by-step with the next project.
Cathy
Hey Cathy
Good luck with your up and coming post.
Your so right when you do a expert roundup you learn so much from the responses your panelists give.
It’s always good to hear that you got value from the tips and can use them in your up and coming projects
Thanks for commenting and good luck with all your future plans
This is friggin unbelievable. The amount of content and info and ideas and tools, WOW. I am blown away and staring today to use some of them. Thanks a mil. Lori Robinson
Hey Lori
You’ve got the right attitude getting started right away.
Taking immediate action is the quickest way to see the results I talk about in this post.
I wish you luck with your post and I hope it goes viral.
Thanks for leaving a comment it’s much appreciated.
Holy crap! This was GREAT!
Thanks Enrique.
The effort you put into developing what you’ve presented here is not only appreciated, it’s inspiring. There is so much to learn when just getting started that a detailed “how to” such as this one provides an incredible jump start.
I believe it worth emphasizing that initial attention to the quality of the list helps to avoid it going bad too soon with broken links.
Thank you ever so much.
Hey Charles
Thanks for your kind words
I definitely put a lot of time and effort in to creating this post, plus going back and forth with Glen to make sure it was on point.
And when I get comments like yours it makes it all worth it.
Hi David
Thanks for sharing this with us.
I’ve often wondered how the BIG BLOGGERS of the world hacked their list posts, especially curated lists. I couldn’t imagine a whole army of monkeys pounding out google searches on their keyboards to produce such epic curated lists, so this helps clear the mystery.
I also really enjoy playing with the tools you included, and really enjoyed your tool – Ninjaoutreach! It’s simple and easy to use, which for me is key!
I had thought about included them on my blog in the past, but it always seemed like a task that only Sisyphus would take on – so this really helps us get a better grasp of how to compile the list effectively.
Thanks again for breaking down the mystery of how to curate epic lists in an efficient, “sneaky” way for us.
Hey David
You are welcome
Glad you enjoyed the tips, tools and instructions and it helped to demystify the topic for you.
Wow ! What a great amount of information on how to find content and so much more. Thanks a lot. Oh – also appreciate the tips from commenters.
Hey Virginia
Thanks for your positive feedback and glad you enjoyed the content
Hello Dave,
At first, thought this is another “how to write list blog posts” type of content but when I started reading, I discovered that its actually one of a kind.
My God, I’ve really learnt a lot of new strategies here and I’m very happy to have checked my email this evening if not, I would have missed this monster post.
I’ve been trying to create a similar post for awhile now but the major challenge I’ve been having is how to gather all the data I needed for the post so, this post of yours is very timely indeed.
Few days back, I read a post about top200 internet marketing blogs and was wondering how many years I took the writer to produce such post but now, I’ve seen a good way to do it.
I really enjoyed this post Dave. really awesome.
Thanks for sharing.
Hey Theodore
Don’t you just love it when a piece of content lands in your lap just when you need it.
Glad you enjoyed it and hope your post goes well.
Hey Dave
Awesome post.
List posts are truly powerful and I can imagine the impact when they’re
gigantic lists like 130 ways to … or 100 ways to …
Can one sustain consistency posting list posts? What are your thoughts?
I enjoyed reading you post.
– Michael
Hi Michael
Glad you enjoyed the post and can see the power in this traffic hack.
In regards to can one sustain consistency posting list posts the key is to balance them out throughout your overall content schedule.
Thanks for your comments
Dave,
I learned something new — didn’t know about Google Search’s “Never show Instant results.” Great tip!
Hey Laura
Glad you got something out of it that’s always a plus.
Thanks for commenting
This is an amazing post! I guess long list posts have more viral capabilities than any other. You are absolutely right about writing list on websites, tools and articles. I will going to implement these tip on my personal blog.
Thank You
Best Regards
Hey Saqib
That’s what I like to hear implementation always let’s to results good luck with your future plans
Hey, Dave, thank you so much for those super-detailed instructions!
It’s confirmed and so true that long lists are the most successful posts! For example, my post 66 Quotes That Turned Me Into a Positive Person, on my blog is doing 10 times bette than any other post I have written.
I was planning to have another long list post and I was researching for topics when I saw the email with this article and I am so glad I clicked!
Next post from me will be a curated list that’s for sure! You rock 🙂
Hey Antoniya
What do people say the numbers don’t lie. To echo what I’ve said in previous comments it’s all about balance.
Glad you enjoyed thanks for commenting
Thanks for a great article Dave.
I tried twice to a curated list it was cheesy and fun but l did a lot of things wrong. So now after looking at your article l am ready to go back.Now l know what l did wrong.
Hi Theo
Glad you got some value from the article.
And good luck with your next post
wow! this is an incredible post ,this will help to learn a lot about internet marketing blogging and online business. Thank you for putting all these at one place for easy reference.
Thank You
Best Regards
Hey Solanki
Happy you got some insight you can use.
Good luck with your plans
Thanks for commenting
Hey Dave,
Great content Dave. Really list posts will get more share and links. And thanks for mentioning tools i don’t know.
Hey Venkatesh
Glad you liked it, now go out and put it into action
Is the answer writing a blog post about how to make blog posts go viral?
Hey David, awesome post!
All you said is true! I’ve just published a blog post this way and worked insanely awesome. It’s racking up a lot of comments, shares and backlinks.
I just want to give an extra tip. If you’re creating a list of “top sites”. Try to design a badge, so winners can show their readers that they won. Also, you get a backlink. 🙂
Hope this helps.
Cheers!
Hey Josue
That’s a great idea, I actually did that on one of my posts a few weeks ago.
Thanks for your comment and insight
Hi Dave,
What a fab post! Google search ‘never show instant results’ and the Moz tool are new to me and great resources on their own – but added to the Wordpress formatting tip. This is gold. Have put it in my ‘Pocket’ and will be using these tips to create a few monster list posts of my own. Thank you – sharing!
Hey Heather
That was my aim to give you the tips and the tools to do it yourself.
And the fact that your saying you’re going to use this info when you create this type of post in the future.
Makes all the hard work putting this together worth it
Thanks for commenting
The idea of featuring someone influential is just great. There is not even need to receive results from all of them. Only 2 – 3 good bloggers are enough to do the job. The only partially unpleasant part is that the authors who don’t assist you will get all the benefits as well. As I red somewhere else “we should be generous”. Thanks a lot!
Hey Sinan
Glad you enjoyed
Another stellar, actionable post! I love BBT for helping me get unstuck! Thanks Dave!
Hey Angela
It’s always good when a piece of content unblocks your understanding of a topic that you was having trouble with.
Happy it helped
Oh my… your amazing post just arrived at the right time.
Hey GV
Glad this was a timely piece for you
Good luck with your future plans
You were right. Coming up with this kind of post isn’t a day’s job. Requires a lot of research but it’s something that will really pay off. Thanks for sharing
Hey James
I can attest to the fact that the payoff is worth it.
Thanks for commenting
Hi David
Thank you so much for your frickin’ awesome post!
This is so badass and ninja, I love it! I’m presently in the middle of Jon’s Guest Posting class, so I’m going to put this in my tool box for after I build my MVA.
But I cannot thank you enough for so clearly laying out this netiquette strategy and for linking to some awesome tools to make life easier. I will certainly be pointing to you in the near future.
take care and wishing you all the best,
Chuck
Hey Chuck
Thanks for your compliments.
Glad you like the tools and the tips.
Hope you go on to use this info and get some great results.
Wow, these are some great tips! Glad I found this, I’m currently helping a small business with online advertising. This will be incredibly helpful!
Hey Paige
It’s always good when you find a instructional piece of content that allows you to add additional value to your clients.
Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for commenting.
Hey Dave,
great post here! Ive always loved your posts and this one really good. Helpful tips. Thanks for sharing! 🙂
Hi Dave,
Thanks for sharing this great piece of content! I have found this to be incredibly helpful and will definitely be utilizing this information for future content creation.
Hey Jeramey
Glad you enjoyed this and I’m glad you found it useful.
Implementation is key.
Good luck with all your future endeavours.
Hi David
Thanks for highly useful tips. What a great post!
I was planning to write curated list posts. Your guide shall be of great help to me. Now I will revisit my bookmarks for some great links.
Hi Raj
Glad you enjoyed the post and thought the content was useful.
Hope your post goes well
Dear Dave, while I’m reading this valuable, I stopped on “Type” & “Topic”. I emphatically wanted to know more!
Honestly, as a blogger, I didn’t think that this might be important – to specify the type and the topic of your post.
Respectfully, can you take me to an article that talks about type and topic, how to use and meaning of each type as well.
Best,
Yazeed.
thank you so much! I have been searching for some time now, and this is the best i have found as a new blogger! I will be sure to share this content with my readers!
Hey Paul
Your welcome
Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for your kind words.
Hope you can use the information to grow your blog
Hey David,
Great post and a bit of a clever way to gain a lot of shares with minimum effort. I started doing curated posts about 3 or 4 months ago and I have gained a lot more shares than I usually get. So yes, it makes a big difference and it’s much easier than stressing yourself out to write a really long post all the time. Working hard is good but working smarter is even better!
Thanks for the share David! Have a great week!
Hey Sherman
It’s a great strategy just as long as it not over done.
Glad you enjoyed
Hi,
Just wanted to say thanks. I am interested in trying that tool that will help find relevant links. I was interestd in writing a post about this topic mysel soon. Maybe I can link to you!
Thanks!
Janice
Hey Janice
Your welcome and feel free to mention this, that’s the ultimate kudos
Glad you enjoyed it
Hi Dave,
I do agree with your statements people do love and link lengthy informative articles, you have the right path to follow to get high social shares and links like professional bloggers.
I will try to implement these methods in my future articles, thank you very much for sharing such an informative post, see you soon
Hey Siddaiah
Glad you agree and see the value in the strategy thanks for commenting
Hi David, this is one of the best blogs on how to I have read in awhile. What is even more interesting is according to my editorial calendar it is nearing time for me to post a ultimate guide and this information will definitely help!
Enjoy your day.
Jireh
Hey Jireh
Thanks for the kind words
All this great support and love for my content definitely make the hard work worth it
Glad you enjoyed this post
Thanks for commenting
Wow. This post is awesome! Thanks for taking the time to put it together. I’ll be bookmarking this for future reference.
Hey Matt
Glad you enjoyed this post and feel you can make use of it.
Thanks for commenting
Absolutely Dave! We’re having a conversation as a team about how we can use this strategy and stay on brand. Got some cool ideas!
Wow, what a great idea and set of resources. I’ll have to research this and see how it works for me.
You talk a lot about saving time, however getting in touch with each site owner you mention sounds like quite a time killer. Worth it in the end if it pays off though 🙂
Hey The Guy
You hit the nail on the head the payoff is worth every minute of work.
Just do some research in Google and look at the amounts of shares and engagements these types of posts get.
If you follow these steps the results will speak for themselves I’ve left nothing out.
Thanks for commenting
I’m blown away with the knowledge you have and expertise in your field which I know is wide, I’m referring to blogging particularly.
Thank you for the value you give away free.
I’ve saved this link to return and indulge later on.
I’m simply getting started on blogging so above is some advanced methods.
I love the tools and automation.
YOU ROCK!
Hey David
Your welcome
Glad you enjoyed it.
Now all you have to do is take action to reap the rewards
Good luck and thanks for commenting
YAWN …. TOO much, Started off well and went on and on and on….. I disagree… LONG content loses people… people SCAN long content online, they DON’T read – and TOO many words just makes people zoom through to the end to get the fix: Keep it short and sweet – that’s what people want – and F&%k Google!
Hey Steve
Thanks for your feedback.
I have to admit that I laughed when I read your comment.
No matter what we think individually the audience that consumes the content dictates what good and what’s bad by the way they respond as a whole.
The evidence speaks for it self no matter what we think individually.
It’s just how it is.
Good luck in all your future endeavours.
This is best post i see uptil now. All points is perfectly explained. Thanks for the information and keep posting.
Thanks for the compliments
Glad you enjoyed
Thanks for commenting
Hi David! I just want to say I think you’re doing a great job with your blog. I just started blogging and still trying to figure things out. My post is paintinggodslight.com. If you have any advice, feedback, input or tips I would really appreciate it. I have Multiple Sclerosis and use art as therapy. Endless thanks for your time! Teri
Hey Teri
Glad you got value from the article.
I would be happy to chat with you shoot me over a message on our contact page at ninja outreach
Thanks for commenting
Okay so maybe I’m not as tech savvy as your other readers, but I’ve downloaded the Moz bar in Mozilla but can’t seem to figure out how to export the links to an excel file?
Hi Yvette
Not sure what that issue is maybe contact moz support or try it on chrome.
You’re absolutely right! I’ve got the concept down, but my results weren’t on the same scale as yours. I’m not giving up! Thanks for the encouragement. Glad to have found you here and on Twitter, and your own sites, of course 🙂
Hey Joyce
Keep at it go bigger be more epic than everyone else and you will win.
Thanks for commenting
OMG, such a deep written blog on the topic that is the biggest search term on internet world. You are amazing. I am also going to share this on my twitter. Thanks for you blog.
Hey Mandeep
Glad you like the post, take action on the info and get results
Thanks for commenting
I also really enjoy playing with the tools you included, and really enjoyed your tool – Ninjaoutreach! It’s simple and easy to use, which for me is key!
I had thought about included them on my blog in the past, but it always seemed like a task that only Sisyphus would take on – so this really helps us get a better grasp of how to compile the list effectively.
Thanks again for breaking down the mystery of how to curate epic lists in an efficient, “sneaky” way for us.
Hey Mahesh
Happy the article has given you the inspiration to take on putting a post like this together.
Good luck with your future post and let me know how it’s goes
Thanks for commenting
Dave, it’s a bit late in the month to be commenting on this, but I have to say Kudos to you for contributing a great post to this site!
The only criticism I could find is that the “page jumps” you mentioned weren’t specifically referred to as such, and are a bit hard for others to create. (I know this firsthand, as I created a few in-depth guides where I used them, and found them to be confusing at first.)
I guess that’s why I wrote a guest post on this subject! LOL
You can find it at http://www.dearblogger.org/create-page-jumps-with-anchor-tags
Other than that, though, GREAT POST!
Hey Lorraine
Very good point and great resource you added.
Glad you enjoyed the post
Thanks for commenting
I learnt something new from google search,I really appreciate the time it take you to put this together.I wish you good luck in your effort and more courage to move on.
Thanks Steve
Glad you like the post make sure you take action and use the information to benefit you business.
As always thanks for commenting
Thank you a lot for this detailed awesome guide!
I am really looking forward to try it as soon as possible.
I will let you know about the results if they are good 😉
Thanks for this EPIC post! I am using this a go-to guide for my next list post!