In more blunt terms, how do you reject people’s suggestions without feeling bad and without offending anyone?

Sometimes people will post spammy, self-promoting content, so you have to reject it

Some people will submit multiple suggestions that you just don’t like. That’s Ok.

So how do you deal with this?

The simple answer to the question lies in expectations. Be upfront. Be clear. Keep it simple.

There are several options in Listly that help with this too.

eg Switch on the moderation queue

eg Consider going premium (and make the moderation queue hidden).

Most of all you should set expectations

Tell people you will reject spammy items, self-promoting content and off topic suggestions.

Tell people if you want original content or if you are looking for links and abstracts.

Tell people if you want the original authors to submit their own content (ie no submitting for on other people’s behalf).

If you have any doubt, give examples.

You should tell people what you are looking for and how you will evaluate content.

I’ve been in that situation many times and wondered if I should delete someone’s suggestion. You always feel bad.

It’s much easier to delete or reject content if you have been clear up front. This is a harsh lesson I’ve learned over multiple experiments and projects.

Being upfront gets easier with practice. You will become more exhaustive in detailing your expectations.

Lack of upfront clarify always results in deferring heartache. You simply can’t offend someone if you were upfront. If we weren’t clear, then offending them is almost inevitable.

In our experience its always best to ask. Be clear what you want and generally ask for one thing.

Generally there are three things you can ask for:

• Create – ie original content
• Curate – ie suggestions for existing content
• Feedback – focusing on aggregating opinion  and ranking the available options.

I cover these three options in a prior post

In our experience it’s best to ask for one. People who are curious will figure they can do other things too. People can always vote (unless you turn it off), they can always embed your list.

If your goal is to have people embed your list, then ask and tell them why.

You always need to think and express your ideas so that people can relate to “What’s in it for them”.

Perhaps you only want one suggestion per person

Perhaps you will let people submit multiple items, but only pick the best.

If you want people to suggest from other than their own site, that’s valid too

It’s your list and you set the rules

So be clear.

Tell people all they need to know and you will avoid any subsequent anxiety (for you and them).

Great Examples

1. Crowdsourcing speakers

I love this example by Chris Dancy. They initially made a video to explain how this process was going to work. they also went out of their way to explain Listly.

With any new technology you need to explain the concept and the expectations.

I’ve seen this approach on many blogs. You need to be consistent and in adopting any technology you need to communicate what you expect from your audience.

They subsequently went on to add the video to the list and tag that item as a featured item, so it always appears at the top of the list

 

2. Crowdsourcing Top Movies

I also love this example by SmartBear.com in which they tell people what to do, then give them an option if they choose not to participate in Listly.

Adoption of software is a funny old process. Some people will try stuff early (your classic early adopter) and some won’t. You need to declare your intentions and then other people follow suit if they are ready to do so.

 

3. Top Design Blogs

In this example Modenus simply told people when the voting process is closed and switched of the option to add to the list (via premium Listly). It was all about setting expecations.

I think just about anything works if you tell people up front.

Marie is relatively new to the Listly community, but has made lots of lists. Best of all she’s been a tireless promoter of her work, and her fellow participants, contributors and collaborators.

Many people make lists and simply expect them to grow and be shared. Not Marie!

Some truly famous people can manage that, but most of us have to work hard to make our lists grow.

Congrats Marie! Great to see your being so active in the Listly Community.

Embedding Items & Nesting Filtering

This week we also added two new features.

We believe they demonstrate yet more power in the way in which Listly can be used as a publishing / social curation platform.

They are both steps in the direction of making Listly more granular and more accessible.  We’re giving you more control over how you interact and embed lists on your blog.

Embedding Items

We’ve long been focused on embedding whole lists, but we’ve had a stream of requests from people who want to embed just an item from a list.

Often, this is when people are involved in a contest or crowdsourcing event.

Now they can embed their item and shine a light just on their item on a list.

It’s previously been possible to share just an item (which defaults to showing the selected items and the items before and after the item in question).

eg

When an item is shared, the item in question is highlighted, thereby carrying context from the person who shared the item. This is itself a pretty cool feature, as it also works on embedded lists – ie if you embed a list and share an item, the item on the embedded list is still highlighted – even inside your blog.

Now there is an additional “embed” icon for each item on a list.

Now you can select “Item embed” and you’ll see a window just like this:

Grab this code and paste it into your post (in Text/HTML Mode) and you’ll see your item embedding in your post just like this

See full list on Listly 

This is the 10th item off this list (a collection of all our prior email newsletters), featuring last week’s newsletter.

Voting, commenting and sharing work in exactly the same way as normal.

Getting the Most from Your Newsletters

I just wanted to shout out to Mark Jones of Collaboris and Sharepoint Community Partners who first shared his idea to create a list of your prior email campaigns or newsletters as a Listly list.

We thought that was a very practical and simple use of Listly that just about everyone could implement. We also made such a list and embedded it on a special page on our blog.

Nested Filtering

We’ve also added the ability to combine filter tags.

Previously you could filter for Tag = “A” and then choose to view Tag = “B”. You can now choose “A” and “B”. You can simply hit the “x” next to each selected filter item to remove that element of the filter.

It’s super simple, but also very powerful.

Mary’s list of Doctors on Twitter has lots of tags and as such, is a great example.

To access all the filter options simply click on the blue filter icon.

• Custom Profiles – Setup a profile list you can use on Listly or elsewhere
• Quick Add Items – Add multiple items to a list quickly

Custom Profiles

Custom profiles is built using Listly lists. Your custom profile is simply a custom list of links to your social profiles and your owned media. Using Listly just made sense because you already know how to make and edit lists and pick your own images.

Create a list called “/profile/” and add links to all your social profiles. Here’s a full explanation of how to set up a custom profile in case you need any tips. Many of you have already jumped in and made your custom profile lists.

The big benefit of using a list to log  your social profiles is you can obviously embed your list on your blog. As a list, your collection of links also becomes much more shareable.

If you want to embed your profile list, paste this custom CSS modification into your post or page and you’ll notice the header is hidden, so when you embed it, all you see is the list content.

Quick Add 

You’ll notice the “Quick Add Items” section is now visible on any list you own. The items are processed live, so don’t leave the page until your latest batch has been processed.

You can provide any of the following format, one per line.

• URLs / Links  - ie something that begins with http:// or https:// or www.
• Twitter Handles > these must begin with an @ symbol followed by a twitter handle e.g. @listly
• Text Items ie items on a list that don’t link to anywhere

Here’s an example

Once this batch is processed you’ll

Here’s a link to this list of “Best Pema Chödrön content”

I also made this list of Top Spiritual Leaders to show you could create just text only list items.

Need Some List Ideas?

Perhaps you need some list ideas to put Quick Add to the test.  Here’s some examples we’ve featured in previous posts.

• Managing & Sharing Your Guess Blog Posts
• Recommended people, books, videos and events
• Contributor Lists (for your blog)
• Customer Lists / Guest / Attendee  Lists
• Channel Partners & Collaborators
• Collaborative Blogrolls of your favourite web resources
• Crowdsourced Speaker Lists
• Lists of Tools or Apps
• Lists of Local Resources (eg Nasheville , Indianapolis, Route66 or Adelaide)

If you need more ideas, take time to explore our growing list of “101 ways to use Listly” or just explore the trending lists to see what other people are making. Lists are simply resources.  Lists are Collaborative, Embeddable and Shareable.

Happy list making. Don’t forget to embed and share your lists from your blog.

Here at Listly, we clearly love lists, including simple HTML lists. But we feel that Listly lists trump HTML lists in the following three ways:

Go ahead and try clicking on the “Add To List” button, Embed, and Share icons to experience the three ways you can engage your readers with your lists using Listly.

One more thing…we’ve been experimenting with layouts. Did you notice the usual Listly header is missing in the list above? No accident. We’ve been experimenting with some layout options based on feedback from Listly users. We believe switching the header off improves the flow in the post and improves readability.

If you want to try this, paste the code below in one of your posts with an embedded Listly list, and tell us what you think.

What other layouts would you like to see? Tell us in the comments!

Image Credit: josemanuelerre via Flickr.com and Creative Commons

As part of a minor update since the release of Listly V3 we updated the embed preview screen.  We think it’s much simpler. We hope you like it.

Notice on the the embed preview page there’s really only one decision with 4 layout options:

• Full – Small image, fully readable item copy.
• Gallery – Great for summaries and media playlists, short form item copy.
• Short – Great for link lists – no item copy.
• Header Only - Great for embedding just the list metrics

We streamlined the process to make it easier to know what code you need to grab whether you are using WordPress or some other blogging platform, so now both are fully visible and selectable.

Simply choose the layout and either grab your WordPress shortcode or the Javascript code.

The only exception is if you pick the header and in this case you only have the option of an iframe.

Here’s what the preview pages look like:

Here’s examples of lists, using each of the four layouts

Full Layout : Margaret Thatcher Coverage

Gallery Layout : Google Advertising 3:0 Media Playlist

Short Layout : List of Visio Alternatives for Mac

Header Only

Were actively considering adding more layouts.  What would you like to see? We would love to hear. Can you share examples of list posts you think we should use as inspiration.

Google Author Rank

We added G+ logins several months ago, but have now added in Google Author Rank integration.

To make this work for your lists, all you have to do is connect your G+ account to your existing listly profile. Make sure you login first and then visit your home page and click on “Your Networks” and choose to connect your G+ accounts.

It literally takes a few seconds. Then, when someone finds you list via Google, they will see your smiling face.

There’s is one final step, you have to add that your are a contributor to http://list.ly/ on your Google+ About page.

You can see both Shyam and I have already done that. Thanks to @steinhoefel1 for the comment to remind us.

BookMarklet Update

We also updated the Bookmarklet based on many feedback we received. You don’t need to remember what your lists are called, you simply pick from your lists.

If you want to add to someone else’s list using the bookmarklet, simply follow their list on Listly and it would be available in your bookmarklet pick list.

Our location defines us in so many ways and connects us to our friends, family and our community.

Local issues are emotional because they impact us directly.  Local issues stir people to act. We’ve seen this many times on Listly [1] [2]

Sourcing and aggregating opinion on fish and ship shops in Lincoln is a great example from this week.

Creating and curating local lists is a great way to show thought leadership, and to engage and give back to your local community. Wherever we live, we’re surrounded by local experts and local lists that mention people and local businesses help connect them. More eyeballs means your list is been seen and cared for by more people.

As with many curated content, information gets out of date fast and is often incomplete. Shifting to let people contribute gives you an advantage because your content evolves and you become a trusted source of curated information.

Why should you tap into your local community?

By starting a local content initiative on Listly you allow people to contribute at the time and place when they need the information. Experience has shown local experts contribute most when people can see the content is genuinely sourced by the community, so make sure you don’t do all the work yourself. Leave gaps for people to contribute and thank them when they do. Lists on Listly naturally evolve over time as people discover them.

Crowdsourcing local content works for the following reasons:

• Finding good local stuff is hard and dispersed. It’s often ripe for curating into a single location.
• Tapping into the wisdom of the crowd is a great way to source and rank insights into local life.
• Collaboratively sourcing content helps you find local experts.
• Connecting with experts and people who share passions is a great way to spread ideas.
• Great local content helps you get found and helps you matter more in your local community.

What kind of local content can you create?

Here are five areas you might consider for your local content initiatives.

So what local lists will you create?

Image Credit:  mawari

It’s the difference between singing a solo and singing in a choir. If you collaborate enough it’s like having a stadium of people singing the same song. In today social participation age, collaboration is:

• How we tell stories
• How we build communities
• How we get found

When people act together, communities form. Your collective action gets you all noticed.

Blogrolls are about as old as the web, but what we’ve seen is adding a collaborative spin serves to freshen up and old and effective idea. Crowdsourced blogrolls are a relatively new idea. Make a collaborative blogroll so other people can extend, share and embed it.

For example:

• A business intelligence company you could make a blogroll of top analyst blogs, or top BI consultant blogs.
• A hotel could crowdsource local events and venues

Here are 9 examples of Collaborative Blogrolls.

Collaboration works when the focus of the list is not on you.

• Tonner Doll crowdsourced a list of Doll Blogs, in so doing the began an ongoing activity to focus on blogger outreach. This list has been viewed over 100k times – that’s 100x over the views on Tonner’s blog alone.
• Modenus’s Interior Design Blog list features many old friends but also helped identify new and emerging blogs in their domain.

Collaborative blogrolls help put your community to work for the good of the community. Everyone wins. People love to be included and if they get involved in the list they will often help shape it, embed and share it with their community. The emotional involvement is what drives collaboration.

Collaborative blogrolls let more people validate and aggregate opinion, which makes lot easier for everyone to get found. There’s safety in numbers. This is a use case for Listly that has emerged time and time again.

So what collaborative blogroll could you help create? Who can you help? Who can help you?

Image Credit: gilad_rom via Flickr.com and Creative Commons

Listly makes it easy to curate a video playlist from multiple sources such as YouTube, Vimeo etc. A Listly playlist has the following advantages:

• Include video from anywhere (eg YouTube, Vimeo, Hulu, Justin.tv, ustream etc)
• Allow your friends/audience to build the playlist with you. They can add too!
• Automatically build a ranked playlist as your audience votes on videos
• Your playlist is portable. Embed in your blog. Your friends (or even strangers) can embed the same playlist on their site as well!
• Your playlist evolves as your audience contributes.

To get started, here are eight examples of playlists from the Listly community:

What’s your favorite? How would you use video playlists on your site?

Today, Listly takes a big step forward with a new release. The new Listly has fresh new styling, has better performance, and the website is responsive across desktop, smartphones and tablets. Along with a new website, we also have new WordPress and Javascript plugins that brings the benefits of the new Listly to embedded Listly lists everywhere.

At Listly, our vision continues to be the same as it’s always been. We believe HTML-based lists are still from the pre-social Web. Our mission is to power lists for the social Web – make them interactive, engaging and social right WITHIN your blog post or website. We are taking a big step forward today towards this vision.

If you are a blogger, publisher or a brand, Listly helps you build a participative, engaged community around your content. Content that evolves over time. Content that’s more shareable by your community and more findable by search engines. That’s our promise.

If you want to read everything about the new Listly, visit this page. If you can’t wait, just jump over to the new Listly and tell us what you think!

Nick Kellet & Shyam Subramanyan
Founders

PS. Have you updated the Listly plugin on your WordPress blog yet?

This post is my answer to both those questions. Making a truly engaging and useful list is in many ways counter intuitive, but the art of making them can be learned.

Great lists on Listly are a combination of many skills. It’s not just about being a comprehensive list maker, it’s also about being a gracious host and an active community manager. That’s the counter intuitive piece – the act of balancing editorial contribution vs community contribution.

Great lists get people emotionally involved in your content. They are also about persistence. Don’t expect people to see your first list and jump in and participate. Think about how and why your audience would want to participate. We are all busy and we’re all looking for social proof.

Great lists are about giving your audience a good reason to participate.

Listly acts are a multiplier and an amplifier, so if you already have an engaged audience we can help you amplify and multiply that engagement, but if you don’t, Listly can still be a tool you can use to build an engaged audience around your lists over time.

So I’ve boiled down my acquired knowledge into a ten point list. Check yourself off against the list. How do you fare? Feel free to comment on the list and let me know if you think I’m missing something.

Ten Top Tips to Cultivate Great Lists

Listly by Nick Kellet

Ten Top Tips to Cultivate Great Lists

261 Views

• crowd rank
• curated
• alpha
• newest
• queue

1. 

   Make it Useful

   It sounds obvious, but it still needs saying. Your list needs to bring people value. Give value, in return for their attention. A great list needs to be useful to the reader.

   Great lists also often represent a spread of opinion. They are very rarely solely about you and become more interesting the less they focus on you.

   Great lists solve problems and are worth coming back to. So think about utility before you create each list.

   Great lists also often represent a spread of opinion. They are very rarely solely about you and probably they become more interesting the less they focus on you.

   Great lists solve problems. Great lists are worth coming back to. So think about utility before you create each list.

   1 0

   0
2. 

   Encourage Social Participation

   To make a great list you really need multiple people to participate. You can make a list by yourself, but in the age of participation, if you involve other people, then more people will want to get involved.

   Don't make a list then expect people to participate. Involve people in the making of the list. This list is not a good example of that, but that's because this list is about sharing my accumulated learning.

   Getting the first 5-10 people to participate is the hardest. Often you have to reach out and ask in person, but once a list is clearly sourced from multiple people, then more people become willing to follow, vote and contribute.

   The people who follow and who help curate a list are also a big part of the value of a list.

   Communities form around shared interests. Only people who love the list topic will find it interesting. People share what they care about, and in so doing, tip search engines as to its significance. Sharing makes stuff more findable, so you want to make a list that is worth sharing.

   0 0

   0
3. 

   Make it Spreadable

   Ask yourself, will someone else want to embed my list on their blog? Sharing is great, but embedding has a much longer term impact on findability.

   Not all lists need to be embed-worthy, but if you want your list to spread and generate brand/cause awareness for you, you need to make sure other people want to play a role and can see the utility in embedding your list in their blog. They need to feel their community will benefit.

   Leave them room. Give them credit. Let them help.

   When people do embed a list it's usually because they can add their own perspective on the content of the list. They are also more likely to want to embed the list if they are included on the list. They obviously think the list is valuable and worth sharing, but being able to add their own opinion in their blog post is essential.

   Make lists that are worth commenting on. Create a list that takes a stance or that expresses an opinion. Polarizing your audience is valuable.

   People who connect emotionally to your ideas will want to help, share and spread your lists by embedding them.

   0 0

   0
4. 

   Choose Evergreen & Ever Changing Topics

   A great list will always be current and relevant, but also always be changing. Those changes don't need to be happening daily, just as needed. Some lists are directories of links, some lists contain tips and advice, just like this one.

   Great lists are worth bookmarking, worth following, worth coming back to.

   When people contribute they connect emotionally to the list and that makes them want to come back to see what's new. Letting a list stagnate is a sure way of losing future participation.

   A great list pops into your head when you discover some new gem and you think to yourself, I should add that to that great list.

   Good lists become great lists if they evolve over time.

   0 0

   0
5. 

   Not About You

   This is hard for many people to grasp, but don't make your lists about you. Great lists solve problems for the people who you serve.
   Don't think about what you do, think about what people do with what you do.
   How can you make that process simpler? How can you add value? How can you share your experience and learning?

   0 0

   0
6. 

   Fun & Emotional

   Sometimes we just forget that a good list is just fun. Can you make people smile? We all need moments of joy, we all need moments to reflect. Lists are a great way to deliver this experience.

   Skimable content lets people find the fun they need.

   Sometimes you just need to collect a list of fun quotes, cat photos, silly videos or some emotionally uplifting Ted talks.

   Great lists connect with your audience, so how can you find the humour and the emotional angle.
   Sometimes you just should run a caption contest. Let other people bring the humour.

   Sometimes you just need to leave people room to express their thoughts and feelings.

   Great lists should also contain surprises. Don't just include all the obvious ideas. Be willing to package some surprise content in your list. Surprise is utility.

   0 0

   0
7. 

   Set Expectations

   Great lists tell people what to expect. Great lists lay down expectation of that you want from your audience.

   Do you want votes, comments or contributions. Often it's wisest to focus on one.

   You can be clear on your list, but you can also be specific in your blog post and give people the rules of engagement. Don't be afraid to be specific. People like simple specific asks. Then people can ask them a simple question - can I help. Not everyone will and you shouldn't want everyone.

   You need to focus on the early adopter. Focus on the first people to contribute. IF they join its much more likely others will follow. Keep it simple. Be obvious.

   If you want people do embed your list ask and give them instructions. Don't assume people know what Listly is. Don't assume people know that they can contribute.

   0 0

   0
8. 

   Be Welcoming / Be Findable

   The name of your list matters. The name of your blog post matters. Make sure your including all the information that will help people find your list.

   A headline image is a great way to make your list welcoming, it also helps your get found via image searches.

   Lists with great headline images stand out. Keep them simple, visual and welcoming. Ask yourself would I embed this list, make sure your headline image is not off-putting. Make sure it looks professional.

   Headline images and cover pages are simply the norm today. Setting a visual stage is important with setting initial expectations.

   0 0

   0
9. 

   Embedded

   There are many reasons why embedding enhances your list.

   First is demonstrates that lists can be embedded, so if you embed your lists, others may do so too.

   Embedding your list in your blog also gives you the chance to provide context and set expectations. You can always do that better in a blog post. Embedding a list puts the content in front or your blog audience, which will be a different audience than the people who discover your list via Listly.

   Embedding your list also means your list gets seen more. Embedded lists get featured on Listly's home page every time your list is viewed, so if it's well named you can get more list views.

   0 0

   0
10. 

    Leave Gaps

    This is the hardest trick to master. As a writer you want to complete your list and be useful. At the same time you want to ask for help. Those two goals conflict.

    If you complete your list, you leave people no room to contribute. If you ask for suggestions to a rich and complete list, the number of people who know your topic well and who can contribute is dramatically reduced.

    Leave off some obvious stuff, purely to entice and tease out participation.

    So leave gaps. Those gaps will get filled over time, but by that point you have a list with multiple contributors and people feel more willing to participate when they see content that has been sourced from many people.

    Social proof is a powerful tool. When you begin a list with no social proof and no contributors, the best tip is to leave gaps.

    0 0

    0

View more lists from Nick Kellet

For me the big one is the notion that great lists are cultivated over time. Content creation is not so much a one moment in time task. That’s certainly the mindshift change you need to embrace. The notion of publish being a single moment is dated today. Crowdsourcing to socially curate your content and keep it alive makes so much more sense, but I guess I’m a little biased.

One parting thought is what’s the difference between a great list and a great list post? I’ll save that for another time.

So do these tips make sense? Any a-ha moments in there for you?

Image Credit: pedrosz via Flickr.com and Creative commons