How to write persuasive lists to engage your audience

How to write persuasive lists

Lists are the key to writing attention-grabbing content, and knowing how to write persuasive lists is an essential skill in your online sales repertoire.

In this age of nonstop stimulation and instant gratification, capturing and holding your audience’s attention is a key goal if you want to sell more.

Capturing and holding your audience’s attention can make or break your ability to promote your brand.

In this sense, lists are a form of summary content that offers the readers the brevity they want, without sacrificing value. To achieve this, your lists must be high-impact statements about your content.

In this article, I’ll share with you ways you can create lists to make your content more attractive to readers, while keeping their attention.

IMPORTANT: I ​​will also show you at the end of the article an invaluable tool to help you write persuasive lists easily.

Numbered lists versus bulleted lists

Generally, there are two ways to write lists: numbered lists and bulleted lists. Here are some writing tips for using each option.

 

When should you use numbered lists?

A numbered list implies the association of each item with a numeric value; a number. These lists are best used when the order of the items in the list is relevant, that is, the order in which you complete the steps is crucial.

Numbered lists can be used for any of the following reasons:

• Make a top 10 list
• Write a step-by-step guide
• List of hypotheses

Here’s how a numbered list would work in a step-by-step guide. For example, this guide teaches a user how to wash a car:

1. Prepare two buckets of water with a cleaning solution and a replacement cloth.
2. Park your car in an open space where you can reach all sides.
3. Rinse the car with clean water to remove loose dirt or mud.
4. Dip the cloth in the cleaning solution and use it to clean the car, from top to bottom.
5. Rinse the car again with clean water to remove all the cleaning solution.
6. Wax your car to add shine and luxury.

When Should You Use Bulleted Lists?

We use bulleted lists instead of a numbered list if the order of the points does not matter. These lists begin with a special symbol that commonly resembles dots, which can be a small black circle or a small outlined circle.

Bulleted lists are also more versatile than numbered lists.

Some benefits of using bulleted lists are as follows:

• Share content efficiently: Simplifying content at its core makes your message understood faster.
• Improves readability: Readers enjoy content more (and stay longer) when it’s easier to read.
• Draw attention to the most important information: readers grasp valuable information faster.

How to write bulleted lists

Writing bulleted lists doesn’t have to be aerospace science. Here’s what you need to know to write bulleted lists that will keep readers interested in your blog articles:

 

1. Keep the bullets symmetrical

It’s critical that all the items on your bulleted list are roughly the same length. Eye-tracking research by the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services shows that symmetrical content holds readers’ attention longer. Consistency is key to readability.

This is an example of what you SHOULD do:

• Keep bullets symmetrical
• Make sure they are easy to read

This is an example of what you SHOULD NOT do:

• Keep bullets symmetrical
• When writing bullet points, make sure they are simple and easy to read; but make sure not to extend so much in the text… In this case, I have been writing and lengthening this point more than normal, compared to the previous point. Therefore, the symmetry was lost, and the vignettes became more difficult to read.

It is more difficult for the readers’ eyes to follow the second bullet in the previous example because it stretches much further than the first.

2. Simplify your idea

Persuasive vignettes get to the point without any additional words or ideas. You can do this by removing the extra words and including only the most important ideas and phrases.

This is an example of what you SHOULD do:

• Eat oranges to get more vitamin C

This is an example of what you SHOULD NOT do:

• You can eat oranges to increase the amount of vitamin C in your body.

3. Start with verbs or action words

Think of your bulleted lists as if they were a list of headlines. You must first put the most relevant information and then add the details. Preferably, you should incorporate keywords or verbs in your first sentence to add strength to the vignette.

This is an example of what you SHOULD do:

• Access powerful words instantly

This is an example of what you SHOULD NOT do:

• Get access to the best words to use right away

Let Jasper write persuasive bulleted lists for you

Writing persuasive bulleted lists can be an effortless task using Jasper’s Persuasive Bullet Points template.

The process is straightforward, and in the example below it took me only 20 seconds to get 12 persuasive vignettes of various sizes, where I explain (as if I were Joe Rogan) the importance of subscribing to Learn Inbound Marketing:

With Jasper, you can take the name of your product or company, the description of what you want to achieve, the tone with which you would like to address your audience and turn all of that into a magnificent list of persuasive bullets that you can generate in one click.

Jasper knows how to recognize valuable words and patterns in the instruction that you write to him, and thanks to Artificial Intelligence, Jasper generates short sentences in a few seconds that will be key to conveying your ideas to your audience.

Jasper’s artificial intelligence engine distills voluminous text into compelling, high-impact bullets for landing pages, product descriptions, and blog articles.

Persuasive bulleted lists aren’t the only thing Jasper does, though. Plus, Jasper can help you with all your content writing needs through over 52 different templates to transform your scruffy copywriting into brilliantly optimized sales text.

Get more out of Jasper by enrolling on this exclusive FREE TRIAL with 10,000 words that ends in 5 days, available only to my readers through the button below:

 

FREE JASPER TRIAL WITH 10,000 WORDS

 

You no longer need to pay an executive writer. Create your own content now by signing up for one of the Jasper packages and experience the power of AI-powered writing today.

Remember to subscribe for the live sessions that I am giving free of cost to my readers every week, in which I demonstrate with practical examples how to make the best use of these kinds of tools.