Photo by Freeparking.

Posts based on the Number + Adjective + Contents headline formula are probably the most popular form of web content we’ve ever seen. For every one person who loathes them there are one-hundred people who are enchanted by them. For reasons that others have previously explored, this kind of content pushes all the right psychological buttons.

The formula isn’t a secret weapon known only to an elite set of maverick writers. Anyone who reads blogs or uses social media gets it: that the formula is very much in fashion. Blogs that have never used it before are now tapping into spikes of social media traffic with its help. Writers who can stick to the formula are highly sought-after and increasingly well-paid. Blogs that use the formula well are growing at a rapid rate (and so are some that don’t, but I’ll get to that later). The formula works.

But for how long? Trends reach a saturation point and then begin a decline. If the formula hasn’t reached saturation point yet, it must be heading towards it. In this post, I want to talk about what comes after the death of this trend.

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Photo by Paul Worthington

I thought I’d take a little time out from our regular content flow to write some follow-up thoughts on the post ‘Why Great Writing Doesn’t Matter Online‘. It’s something that many of you had mixed feelings about and I seem not to have made myself as clear as I would have liked. When an argument is read in a dozen different ways by a dozen different people — intelligent people, too — that’s usually the writer’s fault, and I take responsibility for that.

For many, it was as if I had written a post titled ‘Why Writing Doesn’t Matter Online’. The word ‘Great’ didn’t figure in to it. I was at various points seen to be railing against grammar, spelling, and basic expression, advocating impenetrable, careless, or very poor writing, and devaluing anyone who takes pride in their writing work. These things are the opposite of what I hoped to communicate, and it shows that I myself have a long way to go when it comes to writing with clarity.

If this much isn’t known, writing is what sustains me, writing makes me proud, writing causes my life to bloom. If I couldn’t write, my world would be gray. To be seen as anti-writer and anti-writing (even by some) is never what I intended.

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Photo by Helico

I want to share a post idea anyone can use. It’s almost guaranteed to produce one of the best blog posts you’ve ever written.

It’s an idea with limited uses, so I’d suggest that you use it wisely. It will also take some time to do it justice.

The perfect scenario would be one where you have ample time to write but a lack of inspiration. We’ve all had those days, and I hope this will be your Get Out of Jail Free card in dealing with them.

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When I studied journalism last year I learned that your ability to write is largely irrelevant when it comes to producing hard news stories (e.g. a young male driver was killed last night when he collided with a passenger bus… those kinds of stories). The words you use are just a vehicle for what’s really important: facts, which ones you include, which ones you leave out and how you present them. In many ways, the words you choose are expected to convey the facts of the matter without getting in their way.

A painting can’t exist without a canvas, but the viewer should, ideally, forget the canvas exists.

I want to suggest that writing on the web is much the same. The fast pace of web browsing and the vast amounts of writing available have created a medium unlike any other.

People don’t read online. Nor do they scan. They extract ideas, resonating with some and disregarding others. They do so at breakneck speed, only slowing down when a particular idea truly warrants it.

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Photo by Libertinus

As I write this, it’s a Friday, and I don’t expect anyone to see this post until roughly six days from now. I have another post to write after this one, but if I don’t finish it tonight, I have plenty of time to do so. I can take as much time as I need to say exactly what I want to say.

It took months for me to develop the habit of writing posts in advance, but it’s now something I would recommend to anyone for all non-news and non-time sensitive content. If you’ve been meaning to develop the habit but haven’t yet been able to do so, resolve to start from now. It is the single best thing you can do to improve the quality of the content you create. Perhaps more importantly, it will take a big chunk of stress out of your content creation routine.

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