In the introduction to the Ruud Questions I wrote:
A bit like the value created by the single best link building post of 2008 (more on my reason to use the words “single” and “best” in one sentence in a later post).
Today Tadeusz Szewczyk aka onreact wrote in Top 10 Most Awesomely Amazing Creative & Funny Reasons Why Blogging for Social Media Sucks:
Top 10 this, Top 10 that. There are already top blogs that offer only top 10 lists. While numbers in posts work, 7 is my favorite, thinking in lists makes your posts shallow and just an overview without deep insight. Sometimes it’s better to focus on one issue in depth instead. Your subscribers will honor that.
But numbered lists work (quick question: for what? what do they really bring you?) and so at any given time a popular social media site can read something like this (partially blurred to protect the innocent):
If you considered for a moment that terrorists use child porn to hide secret messages in, imagine the numerical cryptographic possibilities of the above!
Reading an onslaught of numbers like this, on a social site or in my feed reader, feels like I'm back in the days of the Cold War and its number stations: "18 ... 76 .... 14 ... 319 ... 42..."
Cripes.
And things only got worse, right? Smashing Magazine came with monster lists like 80 Beautiful Typefaces For Professional Design or 100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes.
Like -- seriously?
Who's On Top
Listen, I come from sitting in my room, finger poised on the pause button of a cassette recorder in order to tape those Top 40 songs if only the freaking DJ would stop talking through the intro just to please whatever the then equivalent of the RIAA was.
We had lists, we had charts and -- get this -- it's all about being Number One.
It's not the "2 Football Teams That Made It Big!", it's the Super Bowl man and #1 is the winner.
They're the Single Best One.
They're on top.
Step Up To The Plate Already
by bunchofpants
That "awesome list of 10 keyword tools that do 10 things" is nothing in the end -- unless maybe when you say "but this one is the best".
Without that what are you giving people? Think they couldn't figure 10 best/funniest/whateverest things using Google as their best friend?
The money is in the expertise, the value is in you calling a spade a spade; be an the Expert and call the Single Best One.
You want to know how?
WordPress is the Single Best blogging platform. If you don't like the backend, the Single Best way to post to it is with Windows Live Writer.
A lot has been said about note taking and electronic note takers but the Single Best article on electronic note takers is The Design and Long-Term Use of a Personal Electronic Notebook: A Reflective Analysis" by Thomas Erickson.
The Single Best electronic note taker is of course Evernote.
The Single Best entry about the psychology of "being" online is The Online Disinhibition Effect.
The Single Best keyword research tool are a couple of friends or family members.
And this -- this is the Single Best One on a list of one.
