The List-Based Blog Post Template

The introduction to The List-Based Blog Post Template is brought to you by Zerys. Zerys enables marketers to regularly and
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The list post – one of the most popular and easy-to-read blog formats – is the bread and butter
of blogging. Readers love lists because they’re scannable, so they can easily find the
information they are looking for. Lists are also handy at keeping posts succinct. It’s more difficult
to meander off track when you’ve got a formatted list to write.

For a list post to be successful, it should be logically organized. Organize chronologically, from
most to least popular, alphabetically (if you’re writing a list of resources or a glossary, for
example), or step-by-step.

Additionally, you should always aim for consistency. Whatever order you choose for your list
post, make sure it flows and that each entry is roughly the same length and tone. Format your
list using bullet points or paragraphs with the first sentence bolded, but make sure to use them
consistently. A good rule of thumb is to go with bullet points for lists with little text per item (see
Copyblogger’s 8 Ways to Write Bullet Points That Work) and to use regular, numbered
paragraphs for more wordy lists.

Lastly, remember to always use a numbered list if there is a number in the title, i.e. “5 of the
Most Successful Content Marketing Methods That Can Generate Leads.”

Ready to write an eye-catching, informative list post?

The template below can help get you started.

Plan Your List-Based Blog Post

Take several minutes to plan out what you want to write about so that you can stay on topic and
keep your readers engaged.

Step 1: Identify Your Audience

Which buyer persona are you writing this blog post for?

Click in each text box to start adding your thoughts …

Step 2: Identify Your Key Takeaway

What do you want your audience to learn after reading your blog post?

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Step 3: Brainstorm a Few Possible Titles
You don’t have to pick the perfect title before your blog post is done, but it definitely helps to jot
down a few ideas to help keep you focused during the writing process.

At HubSpot, we typically choose a working title – a title that you can "work" off of that guides
your post, and helps you resist the urge to ramble off into a million different directions. Once the
post is complete, we usually fine tune to ensure the title accurately reflects the post content,
grabs potential readers’ attention, and is optimized for search.

For example, before finalizing the title for a blog post and downloadable presentation we put
together for Halloween 2013, we brainstormed several titles before choosing a working title, and
then revised further to come up with the final title:

1. 13 Stats to Spook Your Boss Away From Traditional Advertising

2. 13 Stats That Will Spook Your Boss into Adopting Inbound Marketing
3. 13 Spooky Stats to Scare Your Boss Away From Ineffective Marketing Tactics (working
title)
4. 13 Spooky Stats to Scare Your Boss Into Better Marketing (published title)

Use the space below to craft a few possible blog post titles, and then choose one as your
working title. Don’t worry about finalizing your title until you’re done writing.

Step 4: Create an Outline

The typical list-based blog post consists of:

 An introduction: Sets the stage for what you plan to address in list form.
 A body: Explains every bullet, list item, step, and example – each with an explanation.
 A conclusion: Wraps up your post with a brief statement that's reflective of what your
readers just learned.

What are all the bullet points you need to cover to introduce your topic, explain each point, and
remind the reader what they just learned?

Use these questions to help you create your outline below.

Fill in the List-Based Blog Post Template

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Step 5: Write the Introduction
When writing your introduction, you want to keep one question top of mind: How can I establish
credibility and empathize with my audience to introduce my topic?

Feel free to leave the introduction for last, too. Sometimes it’s easier to introduce your post after
you’ve written the real meat of it.

When you do write your intro, here’s how we recommend going about it, using a blog post on 10
Hilarious Blogs That'll Make You Feel Better About Your Job as an example.

Steps to Writing Your Example With Underlined And Italicized Orange Text that Can Be
Introduction Swapped Out For Your Copy
1) Write a compelling There's something cathartic about commiserating in awful shared
opening to draw experiences -- especially if you can find humor in them.
the reader into
finding out more.
2) Give the reader a Like that one time you were working on four hours of sleep and
more information included a typo in a blog post title. The typo got included in a
or examples of notification to all of your email and RSS subscribers, and they all
what you mean to made fun of you in the comments for being a terrible, horrible, no
draw them further good blogger. Horrifying at the time (seriously, you will never make
into the post. that mistake again!!), but when you describe the situation later to a
fellow blogger, it's funny and makes everyone feel a little better about
that same situation happening to them.

3) Transition into the That is the precise reason why I love funny marketing blogs -- they
body where you’ll somehow manage to identify all of the awful, frustrating, and down-
describe each right hilarious things that happen in our jobs. And the following 10 are
element in your ones that really take the cake. So if you've had a rough week or just
list. need a few minutes to hear about someone who has, check them out.
Be warned: Some of these blogs include profane language.

Now it’s your turn! Start crafting an introduction in the box provided below.

Step 6: Write the Body

Remember, the body follows through on what you promised in the introduction. Your body can
be written in paragraphs, with bullets, numbered lists, multiple headings, or a mix of all of these.
You can make use of whichever format is easiest for you.

Just be cognizant of this question: What are all the steps I need to explain in order to avoid
confusion, and can I add any visuals that will make learning any easier for my readers?

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Steps to Writing Your Example With Underlined And Italicized Orange Text that Can Be
Body Swapped Out For Your Copy
1) Use a header or 1) Clients From Hell
bold text to draw
attention to your Whether you work in an agency or just across teams within your
first listed item company, you will love this website. While it's created from the
followed by a viewpoint of a designer, we've all worked with people who have nearly
description, impossible standards to meet and questions up the wazoo. So step
image, or other into client hell -- and maybe even submit a story of your own.
form of
multimedia. [screenshot of ClientsfromHell.net]

2) Continue from one …

step or list item to
the other. (Unlike 10) Crap Brapps
explaining step-
by-step Last, but certainly not least, is a blog all about apps from brands that
instructions in are unfortunately ... crap. While a branded app could be a smart
how-to posts, list move in certain campaigns, you'll often wonder who thought of the
items don’t app ideas featured on this blog. My favorite? T.G.I. Friday's YOLO
require app ... for all of your YOLO moments with friends and family. Be
transitional warned: This one probably has the filthiest language of all.
phrases).
3) Transition into the (no example)
conclusion. (This
particular example
jumps right to the
concluding
question
discussed in Step
7).

Ready to start crafting the body? Fill in the box provided below.

Step 7: Write the Conclusion

Your conclusion is where you’ll paraphrase the key takeaway you outlined earlier in the planning
stages and/or prompt your reader with a question.

Steps to Writing Your Example With Underlined And Italicized Orange Text that Can Be
Conclusion Swapped Out For Your Copy
1) Summarize what (no example)
the reader learned
or how they
benefitted from
reading your post.

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 (In this case, the
post is so
straightforward
and list-oriented
that a summary
isn’t necessary).
2) Ask a question to These are just a few of the marketing-, advertising-, or business-
encourage the related blogs that make us laugh. Do you have any others to add? Let
reader to leave a us know in the comments.
comment or react.

What’s your conclusion? Write it in the text box below.

Step 8: Link to Additional Resources within Your Post

Sometimes it’s hard to say everything you want to say about a single topic in one post, which is
why it’s helpful to your readers to identify additional resources you can link to for additional
detail or credibility.

Hyperlinking to other blog posts or pages on your site can result in increased visibility in search
engines, page views, and time on site. Hyperlinking to third party content can round out your
perspective and help you appear more trustworthy to your readers.

What resources can you reference to strengthen your post? Place those links in this text box.

When you place your blog post copy into your blogging platform, create hyperlinks for these
resources where they fit best.

Step 9: Finalize Your Title

Revisit your working title and see if you can make it more accurate, specific, sexy, concise,
and SEO-optimized.

Need help? Check out this post on writing kick-ass titles.

Step 10: Pick a Call-to-Action

Do you want your readers to sign up for your newsletter? Request more information? Tweet
something? Download something? Buy something?

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What do you want readers to do after they’ve read your blog post?

Once you know what your desired call-to-action is, use one of these 50 free and pre-designed
templates to create a custom CTA button to include at the end of your post.

Step 11: Copy and Paste Your Blog Post Copy into Your Blogging
Platform
Now that you’ve gone through the exercise of outlining and writing your blog post, you want to
prepare it for publishing.

A simple way to do this is to select and copy your finalized title and all your blog post body copy,
and paste it into Microsoft Notepad (or TextEdit on a Mac). Pasting into one of these programs
strips your copy of all formatting so that when you copy and paste it from the text editor into your
blogging platform of choice, the formatting you apply within your blogging platform will render
correctly.

Now’s the time to make your blog post scannable by using headers, bold text for key points,
hyperlinks, and images where applicable.

Step 12: Edit, Edit, Edit!

Everyone can use a second set of eyes to look over their post before putting it out into the
world, so have a friend or colleague look it over. Another thing that will help? The Ultimate
Editing Checklist.

Step 13: Choose an Image

Every blog post should have an image. At HubSpot, we include at least one photo or image in
every post we write so that when the blog post is shared to social media channels, it’s
accompanied by a thumbnail image to entice a clickthrough.

Take a look at our three, free bundles of downloadable stock photos (general, business, and
holiday) to see if any of these royalty-free images will do the trick for you.

Step 14: Optimize Your Post for Search

If you’ve spent all this time writing a great list post, you’ll want to make sure it can be easily
discovered in search engines. Check out our post on Blog SEO for the Modern Marketer: How
to Optimize Your Posts for tips on how to do just that.

Step 15: And Finally, Hit Publish!

Publish your post and start tracking its performance!

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Additional Tips and Recommendations
Great list posts are comprehensive and allow all readers for which the post is written to find at
least one thing that's helpful. For instance, if you're writing about the best email copy you've
ever read, you should try to provide examples for all business types – B2B, B2C, ecommerce,
nonprofit, etc. If, however, you're writing about the poorest functioning shopping carts on the
internet, you wouldn't be expected to incorporate content geared toward each of those business
types, as it's clear from the title for whom the post is intended.

Here are some hallmarks of high quality list posts:

Be Comprehensive
Your post shouldn't leave the reader with an opportunity to say, "Hey, you forgot about X."
Instead of approaching your post with a working title like "7 Terrible Reasons to Redesign Your
Website," approach it with "X Terrible Reasons to Redesign Your Website." Why? Because you
might find there are actually 9 reasons you should talk about. Or, you might find there are only
5. Solve for comprehensiveness, not an arbitrary number.

 Here's an example of a post that does this well.

Be Detailed in the Right Places

Every list item should have some explanation or a visual or both, but you can use the length of
your list as a guide for how much explanation you should provide. If your post is a long list, you
don't need to explain things so thoroughly. If your list is short (a good benchmark is anything
under 5) your explanations should be meatier. For instance, check out this list post with 25
items – the explanations aren't that long. Contrast that with this list post with only 3 list items –
the explanations are much more detailed.

Then there are the posts that fall somewhere in the middle. Check out this list post with 10
items. The explanations are more than just a sentence or two, but aren't multiple paragraphs,
either. Readers' expectations of how in-depth you'll go change depending on the length of a list.
If you provided a list of 25 items with multiple paragraphs per item, it would be perceived as
information overload, just as a 3-point list with one to two sentence explanations would be too
light to be helpful.

Provide Examples
Support the items in your list with examples – whether visuals, or anecdotes. For instance, in
this post, "11 CTA Tricks Real Brands Use to Grow Their List," the author doesn't just talk about
the tricks – she finds examples of them in action, and writes specifically to the visuals she
inserts in the post.

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Provide examples of the things you're talking so the reader can see how it would work in the
real world.

 Here's another post that does this well.

 And another one that demonstrates examples from a variety of sources.

List-Based Blog Post Examples for

Inspiration
 The Top 10 Qualities of High-Quality List Posts
 The Ultimate Guide to Mastering Pinterest for Marketing
 How to Get Past the 10 Most Debilitating Sources of Writer's Block
 15 Pearls of Wisdom From the Legendary David Ogilvy
 8 Real-Life Examples of Engaging Pinterest Contests
 Inspirational Quotes From the Late, Great Steve Jobs
 How and Why Your Content Plan Should Include Numbered Lists: 4 Ideas
 7 Reasons Why List Posts Will Always Work
 It's All in Your Head: 9 Reasons You Can't Resist a List
 12 Quick Tips To Search Google Like An Expert

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