7. Lists Attract More Attention

Listicles and other unconventional techniques (including sidebars and timelines) get 15 percent more attention than the average piece.

8. Lists Improve Understanding

Readers are better at understanding lists than traditional articles.

9. Readers Feel Good about Lists

A fascinating study on fluency has shown that shorter, easier-to-pronounce words perform better than longer, harder-to-pronounce. Difficult words may even be considered more dangerous.

You can now add items to the list. Because lists are easier than paragraphs to process, lists feel more natural than other types of writing.

10. Lists Get Shared

According to BuzzSumo research, lists rank second among the most shareable content types. BuzzSumo, a provider of content marketing analytics, looked at the social shares of over 100 million articles. One result: Lists are shared 70% more than the average article.

After infographics, lists are the most popular type of article.

According to an analysis of over 200,000 articles from Fractl and Buzzstream, the most shared blog posts were lists.

11. Lists Engage Readers

Richard Nixon spent the weekend at Camp David, compiling his favorite baseball players list at Cliff Evans' request. There were many responses to the list, but nearly everyone was interested when it came out.

This is the power of lists: They seriously engage readers.

Next, about perennial lists.