Paul Graham has some not-especially-kind things to say about the list of n things. Read his essay, and the next time you encounter a top-n list, you’ll have a bad taste in your mouth.
But it’s been a few days since that article came out, and if you read it then, you’ve noticed by now—for a “degenerate case of essay,” they’re pretty popular among readers and writers.
They’re popular because they work. And here’s how to make them work best.
Why a List? Why Numbered?
A list is easy to write. But direct-response copywriting (which writers more thought per word than any genre of writing except haiku) is full of bullet points and numbered lists. If they were any less effective than complete paragraphs, they’d be bred out of existence pretty fast.
Lists give you:
- A way to enumerate features.
- A way to address objections one by one.
- A trick for establishing rhythm.
- A visual cue to readers that you’re not going to bombard them with text.
- A section of your pitch that a reader can skim until—whether by chance or by design—they pause to read a single point in more detail.
- A way to embed a “table of contents” into a document (see below for more on this! (Not really, but you get the idea.))
- A way to shoehorn in some details that you know help your case, but that don’t necessarily fit in anywhere else.
- And much, much more!
You lose readers with every unnecessary word. You win converts with every useful word. Bullet points strip out useless transitions and long exposition, and leave behind the facts.
How Large Should N Be?
“Ten” tells your reader you decided on N in advance. They don’t know if you came up with fifty and cut the bottom 80%, or stretched to find the last few points.
Large round numbers have the same issue.
“Suspiciously prime” numbers tell geeks that you stretched to find a random-seeming number. 34 Ruby Tutorials has 17 as a factor—35 or 32 are more believable.
Any alliteration is also suspicious. Eight Easy Steps? A dozen difficult Diophantine dilemmas? That doesn’t fool anyone.
Small numbers are also risky. They sound artificially official. There may only be three reasons you must write a press release, but it sounds like you’re inventing a Holy Trinity of reasons when you say so. Unless you’re the Pope of your particular business, don’t try it.
The best numbers for an N-list are six through nine. Don’t ask me why, but they show up in ads, sales letters, and other kinds of successful copy. You can do a few tricks (“The Seven Deadly Sins of…“), but you don’t have to. Six, seven, eight, and nine are numbers that people won’t think too hard about, which leaves more mental bandwidth for what you’re actually saying.
Show Me
- David Ogilvy’s How to Create Advertising That Sells (featuring 38 numbered paragraphs).
- Paul Graham’s The 10 Secrets of Selling Online.
- Every Mashable post.
These tend to break the rules I cited above. In Ogilvy’s case, he didn’t have to worry about nerds. In Graham’s and Mashable’s case, I suspect that they’re comparing numbered to not-numbered, not testing different numbers.
You should subscribe to my feed or follow me on Twitter.
I do SEO Copywriting for a web design company.
