3 Keys to Writing 4 Articles About 5 Ways to Succeed

I have spent time lately browsing around to see what kind of business writing tips are available on the web. Pretty flat landscape... IMHO. Blogs are full of clever little articles that follow the hackneyed format of providing X number of tips, tricks, and trivia (8 Ways to Build Your Blog Traffic, 10 Things That Make Great Headlines, 15 Ways to Make Your Team More Team-Like, 297 Ways to Run a Better Meeting).

I've read the studies that say this format generates more traffic. But in my experience after you read five or ten of these, you've pretty much had your fill. I mean, can everything really be reduced to a handful of crisp bullet points?

I was talking to a friend who tweets. I was telling her that it seems like 90% of the tweets I get are much the same--nothing more than armchair philosophizing: "To serve the meal of success one must first taste failure"; "It is only by talking that we truly communicate" and so on... You could sit around all day and make these things up. But she said the sends out a lot of that stuff because people love it. I don't get it.

I'm not saying that blogs or tweets needs to be masterworks of literature. I just think it would be refeshing if people blogged about things they cared about, rather than trying to come up quick and easy ways to "fill a page." It just seems like so many people have blogs because... because they want to be bloggers, I guess.

I'm a writer, and I think it is great when people are moved to put words down on the page. I just think it would be better for all if there was some connection, some emotion in what is being written. Otherwise, we reduce or our common body of thought to a vortex of numbered lists about numbered lists.