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Powerful element of a listicle headline #5: 3-Word Phrases
3-Word phrases (trigrams) provided more helpful information than phrases of other lengths.
'Character are you', a frequent phrase in quizzes, is what leads to the most virality. These performs 3-4 times better than the best listicles on average.
'Things you probably don't know', 'things you never did', 'things you don't' - these phrases seems redundant but they refer to a bigger theme.
There is a frequent appeal on 'you', the reader, with 'you'/'your'/'you’re' appearing in about half of the top phrases.
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Powerful element of a listicle #3: The types of listicles
Listicle using [X] things does indeed perform slightly better than the [X] on average. Emotional words which you would never find in a more serious journalistic publication such as 'insanely', 'awesome', and 'probably' are some of the key driv...
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Powerful element of a listicle #4: Key keywords
BuzzFeed tends to write more frequently towards then-current events. For example, there were many articles about 2012 election during 2012, while April 2013 consisted of many articles about the Boston Marathon bombings.
There is more uncertainty in the accuracy of t...
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"Listicle" is not the core idea of a story, it's a vehicle to tell a story.
"Creating a listicle" does not guarantee clickbait. If we want to create a headline that drives shares, we need to understand which are the powerful elements from a listicle we can utilize further.
Thankfully Max Woolf has t...
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![Powerful element of a listicle #1: Numeral or [X]](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fd3t70bohx4vuj7.cloudfront.net%2FOIX-Gh4RbVawnAVDd3c4aQGdFZgkxZV8zyGnt2pbTfA%2Fresize%3Afill%3A900%3A0%2Fgravity%3Asm%2Fquality%3A90%2FaHR0cHM6Ly9taW5pbWF4aXIuY29tLzIwMTUvMDEvbGlua2JhaXQvYnV6emZlZWQtbGlzdGljbGUtaGlzdG9ncmFtX2h1ZWVmNjM5ZTI1ODA0YTZhNGJmMjllM2ZjMjY5MjhmYjhfNjYzMjFfMTIwMHgxMjAwX2ZpdF9nYXVzc2lhbl8zLnBuZw&w=3840&q=75)
Powerful element of a listicle #1: Numeral or [X]
The headline usually begins with [X] as a numeral element. Including [X] reasons, [X] books, [X] movies, etc, where [X] is any 1 or 2-digit numeral. The size of [X] c...
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![Powerful element of a listicle #2: The phrase that goes with [X]](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fd1dfxfqogsjixt.cloudfront.net%2F249413-1657866255.png&w=3840&q=75)
Powerful element of a listicle #2: The phrase that goes with [X]
BuzzFeed go-to listicle phrases has changed over the year.
In 2012, BuzzFeed most used listicle began with the [X], while in 2014, they began with [X] things. The "the" is technically redundant. The intention mig...
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A deeper understanding of what makes listicle a powerful to help articles share-ability.
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