How to Write a List Post that goes Viral

Now I think its time to show how to write a list post that goes viral. Firstly I would like to mention the three steps in writing a list post and I will also show an example of writing a simple list post. But don’t forget to see the results as the list post I made will be loved by many of you.

How to write a list post that converts?

1.    Collect the Data:

First and foremost thing for writing a list post is to collect the data of the list you are going to make. This is a time taking process and you need to spend lot of time on research because you need to give accurate results. Take the help of various sources in getting your data and see that you get all true statistics rather than made up data. If you want to write on top 5 most visited social bookmarking websites of the world then you need to search for their Alexa ranking, Compete ranking, Quantcast ranks etc. In general Alexa ranking is most preferred way. If you are making list of most useful WordPress Plugins then go to WordPress Plugins site and search for most downloaded plugins and collect the data. This is the most important step in writing a list post so do spend some time in collecting the facts. Don’t worry your hard work will be definitely paid at the end.

2.    Organize the Data:

After you collect the required data now you need to organize them. You need to rank the data either in ascending or descending order. If they are just facts no need of ranking but if it is a top 10 list then based on the ranking criteria you collected arrange them in the form of a list. If they are list of blogs or websites then you need to give a backlink. If the outgoing link is trustworthy it’s ok but if you are unaware of the site don’t forget to add rel=no follow to the links. Read the below articles for better understanding. For internal links of your blog there is no need to add no follow links.

• How to add Nofollow to a Link
• Understand DoFollow & Nofollow Link: SEO Basics

3.    Give a Proper title and build the article:

After preparing the list give a proper eye catchy title, this is what makes the user or the search engine to land in your page. Now you need to build the article by giving some introduction why you made the list and what are the ranking factors you have used to determine the list followed by the list you prepared. After the list write few words about the items used in your list. If your list is about WordPress Plugins and if the list contains Yoast Plugin, then you can simply write Yoast Plugin is created by Joost de Valk so and so forth. After finishing writing the body of the article now write a conclusion with few words. We can also conclude by stating a call of action like subscribe or like or share the list. You can also ask them if the list requires any further additions or modifications. That’s it your list post is all ready to go viral.

The four elements required for list post should be as follows:

1. Introduction
2. Properly organized List
3. Body
4. Conclusion

Example of a List Post:

Now I want to show an example on writing a list post. I want to write a list post on List of top 10 contributors for SML Read below on how I follow the three steps mentioned above and made a list post.

1.    I would collect the data of various authors from SML in a random fashion like Blogger gamer-1203 articles, Whiztechy – 85 articles, Rajesh Patel – 10 articles, Srivathsan G.K – 12 articles, Siddie – 45 articles, Mukund – 35 articles, Vinayak Nagri – 17 articles, Rajat Kumar – 22 articles, Himanshu – 25 articles, Shoaib Hussain – 10 articles, Baby Brownfox – 9 articles, Yousuf Khan – 9 articles. I surfed the SML blog and used custom search box to gather this data.

2.    I would organize the above collected data in the form of a list by arranging the names in the descending order of their post counts. Since I am making a list of top 10, I would omit those names which come after the first 10 names. I would not delete the extra data I collected but I would use it in the third step. I would also give a hyperlink of their author page so that people would visit the link and know that I have given the correct data.

Rank	Contributor/Guest	Post Count
1	Blogger Gamer	1203
2	Whiztechy	85
3	Siddie	45
4	Mukund S	35
5	Himanshu	25
6	Rajat Kumar	22
7	Vinayak Nagri	17
8.	Srivathsan G.K	12
9.	Rajesh Patel	10
10.	Shoaib Hussain	10

3.    Third step is to give the article a proper title and build the article with necessary elements.

Conclusion: So I think now you got an idea of who are the top contributors of SML. If you are a guest author for SML I guess you would contribute more meaningful and quality articles to climb the leader board. Yousuf and Baby would have made the top 10 list if they would have written 1 article each so hopefully we believe we can see them next time when we make the list.

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