It’s not hard to find lists they’re everywhere. On the web, on TV, in the newspaper, and in conversation but how do you navigate this unbelievable sea of lists?
We’ve already looked at what factors make a useful list, now we turn to the best places to find them.
In a previous article, we discussed trust and the role it plays for lists. Trust also guides our options when it comes to list sources. If we don’t have faith in our source it will impact our faith in (and usefulness of) any list we find.
Friends seem like the obvious first place to look then, and the vast majority of people start their search by asking a friend. Think about the last time you took a trip to somewhere a friend had already been. You probably asked that friend for a list of places to visit based on their experience and likely ended up having an awesome trip following their suggestions. But maybe none of your friends have ever been to where you’re going or can’t provide a list.
What can you do?
You have plenty of options: forums, niche blogs, and major publications. We’ll take a look at each of these and how to find great lists with them.
Online communities are a great place to go for lists. Forums are usually packed with helpful tips and suggestions you can use to build your own list, and community members are often willing to share their own lists or ones they’ve found, tested, and liked. Forum communities are all about peer to peer interaction, sharing is commonplace and trust is vital. The high need for honesty and trust to maintain the longevity of a community means lots of vigilance against outside influence and manipulation of its members. This means that a tremendous amount of work and moderating takes places to identify and remove outsiders that value their own gain over the interests of the community. For a travel company trying to sell their tours on a popular related forum this is bad news, but for an honest visitor looking for suggestions and lists they can trust it’s reassuring. You know that the feedback you get is as honest as you would expect from a friend or family member.
While many forum posters are happy to share their insights it’s a good idea to follow proper forum etiquette. Don’t post all over the place looking for help, don’t post the same questions, pick the right place to post, and if possible try and contribute where you can. You’ll find that there’s a forum related to pretty much anything you could want to make a list for, and you’ll see that online communities are the next best thing to asking a friend.
Blogs are another great resource for lists. Especially those operated by local writers. Just as forum communities have a pool of knowledgeable contributors, blogs are the domain of one or a few passionate experts around a particular subject or set of subjects. The more niche a blog the more likely the expertise of the contributor around that subject, and the smaller the blog the more likely you’ll be able to get feedback tailored to you.
The best place to find these blogs is either on forums where members will link to them (or the author if they are an active member) or through larger blogs focused on whatever subject you’re interested in. Often larger blogs will treat smaller niche or local blogs as a farm for content to feature on their site, so when you find interesting content on a large blog click around and see if one of the article links takes you to a smaller blog you might be able to use. Larger blogs also tend to rank higher in search engines (though good articles on smaller ones do stand out) so it’s often easier to find the good smaller blogs by going through them. Even friends or your network can be a good place to find blog suggestions.
Be mindful of large blogs, though, the bigger the blog the more attention they get from corporate sponsors and advertisers. This is great for the blog but can be costly to the readers. Always be skeptical of what you read on a major blog site, much of the content is quite good and useful but more due diligence is required to make sure the list you’re reading isn’t a subtle advertisement.
That said, niche blogs can have the kind of specialized information and suggestions you won’t find anywhere else. Local blogs give you the perspective from people that can pass along tips only the natives know, and small blogs give you the best chance of striking up a conversation with the writer in the comments section. Blogs are constantly churning out content and much of the time in the form of a great list. When friends and forums fail, blogs are a great place to go.
While major publications such as magazines, newspapers, books, and high-traffic websites can suffer from the same conflict of interests as large blogs that’s no reason to completely write them off. For all of these publications, the goal is to provide information and entertainment in exchange for money, either from advertisers or the reader (sometimes both). In any case, trust is still vital to their success and helps to ensure much of what you read and the lists you find will be truly useful to you.
Unlike smaller blogs major publications tend to rely more on experts than locals. This means information and lists tend to be more general or applicable to a larger audience since the depth of knowledge an expert in travel may have around San Francisco may be less than that of a local San Franciscan. However, the expert may be able to provide advice packaged with relevant travel knowledge (best hotels, times of year to visit, etc.) that a local wouldn’t even think to include when writing about their city.
This can make lists found in major publications much more useful than the ones found on smaller blogs. Lists are great pieces of content for these publishers and they’re experts at making them, you just need to remember that some of that advice may be influenced by outside money. For example, you might see a list of great cities to visit but the hotel suggestions might come from a deal between the publication and a travel site trying to increase their referral revenues. All things considered, major publications are a useful source for lists or list ideas, just be careful who you trust.
Apps can also be a great source for lists, but we’ll delve deeper into that subject in future articles.
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