Are listicles bad?

Low quality content doesn't belong to any category. The reader decides the quality of any piece based on how much value it provides. It is your job as a creator to attract the right kind of readers, set their expectations, and provide value.

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Are listicles bad?
Not really.

So why do people dunk on them?
Because often the listicles violate the reader's expectations

What does that mean?
Let's see...

What is low quality content?

POV of a beginner frontend dev

• You clicked on What are React Hooks? trying to learn more about hooks. You found a list of all the hooks inside and the description was copied from the docs. You've already gone through the official docs. This wasted your time and you learnt nothing.
• You see it has hundreds of likes and comments appreciating the post. You're confused about what to make of this

There's technically nothing wrong with this post. The headline signaled them that it'll tell them about the various react hooks and it did.

The problem is there are all kinds of programmers at different points of their career opening this article. Not everyone opens it with the same intent.

So while new devs might appreciate this post, the more experienced ones might dunk on it calling it low quality content.

Low quality content is anything that sets the wrong expectations for the readers or doesn't deliver on them.

As a new creator, this is not entirely your fault

How do I avoid creating low quality content?

Think of who will read this

• Who will benefit the most from this?
• What kind of help would they be looking for?
• What pre-requisite knowledge is required to understand this?

These questions are hard to answer if you don't know the reader's persona. Once you start thinking about who your potential reader would be, you'll start making more sense to them.

Example: You write a tutorial on an intermediate/advanced topic but half of your article talks about setting up CRA. They might already be experienced React devs who know how to do basic setup. They would flag your content as low quality

Target the right audience

Targeting the right kind of audience is hard. Quite often new creators aren't even aware of this problem.

A few ways to do this:

• If you're not targeting beginners, don't spend too much time explaining jargons and concepts, Link them to a place that explains them in more detail. This way the readers who don't need details won't be bothered.
• Concise headline that signals what exactly they'll be learning about. You have no control over who consumes your content but your headline acts as an audience filter for you. It only lets in people who are interested in what you have to say. Easy to learn hard to master.
• Choose the right platform for your content. For example sharing long code snippets on Instagram or sharing links on Twitter, both are a subpar experience.

Engagement baiting bad
This is one of the types of low quality content that doesn't depend on the reader. It is malicious, provides no value and only exists to increase engagement and "hack the algorithm"

• Reddit/Twitter promote engagement (comments, retweets etc.) and what better way to increase engagement than making people argue over their opinions.
• The more people argue, the more the algorithm spreads it. More eyes mean more comments. They feed on this engagement cycle.
• Tweets like JS or Python?, posts like PHP is dead which attract reactions from people

These posts provide you lots of eyeballs hence high growth. But people are smart, they understand the game too. You'd be prone to lose your credibility.

So, should you write listicles?

Absolutely. Write whatever you feel like writing about. The more you write the better you will get. All I ask is set the right expectations for your reader.