Five Top Tips for Top Tips List Makers

Posted On June 5, 2014

Get your tips in the right order. Having your ‘Beginner’ tips coming in at Number 5 is an amateur mistake/ Ease your reader in with some baby tips then graduate to tougher stuff and finish with some tips for Advanced Tip Types. Alternatively, keep your good stuff until last to build up suspense. It can’t hurt.
Aim for relevance. Advice on cleaning camera lenses isn’t helpful if you’re offering suggestions for harpoon maintenance.
Avoid smugness. I know it’s hard when you’re the one with all the knowledge and you’re dispensing it, god-like, to the mortals gathering at your feet waiting to become better human beings thanks to you, but do try, all right?
Specificity is good. ‘Five Tips for …’ is good. ‘Five Top Tips for …’ is even better. ‘Lots of Tips …’ or ‘A Few Tips …’ lacks the necessary punchiness that tip browsers have come to expect. Nail your colours to the mast! Five! Eight! Fifteen! Numbers are good! Numbers count!
Have the courage of your convictions. Tips should never start with ‘It might be good to …’. Be definite, be bold, be confident. ‘Always glue a coin underneath your front door mat to repel anteaters’. ‘Never forget to sprinkle talcum powder in your letterbox to avoid ‘stale mail’ smell’. Or similar.