A few days ago I published an article called The 15 Best WordPress Plugins for 2010. That article quickly became very popular. It received hundreds of retweets. It secured hundreds of delicious bookmarks.  It had over 100 comments on it by the morning after it was published and it’s still receiving new comments each day.  It even spiked my visitor count by the thousands. It brought a lot of attention to Site Sketch 101.

In my mind the article was a success. It was a huge success and I’m incredibly happy with it. But although I’m happy with what happened, I’m not happy to just sit back and enjoy a one-time achievement. I want more. I want to experience this again and again.

So I sat back and I began to break the article apart. I began to think about the qualities that may have contributed to it’s momentum and strength.

• It was bold. The title itself claims that these are the absolute best plugins available for the WordPress content management system. These are the premiere plugins. I didn’t claim that they were great. I went beyond that. I shouted from the housetops that these plugins are the best available…and I believe that they are.
• It appealed to a large number of people. That article was essentially written for every WordPress user on the planet. Beginners, intermediates users, and advanced users can find a new plugin to explore. Any one of the millions of WordPress users can engage with the content with the hope of improving themselves and their blogs.
• Its call-to-action was simple and clear. Although you may not have even noticed the call-to-action as you read the post, it was there and many readers took action. The take-home challenge was to install and try some of those plugins and it worked. Comments and emails came pouring in that people were installing amazing plugins that they were so thankful to have now found. Asking people to do something complicated will always minimize the outreach and effectiveness of an article.
• Its content was rock solid. If you saw the title and came into it looking for The 15 Best WP Plugins for 2010 then you would have found exactly what you were looking for. I didn’t choose nasty plugins that nobody uses. I chose the ones that are highly rated, highly useful and highly needed. The quality of the content supported the bold title and the calls-to-action.
• It added value to those who read it. The core concept of the article was to provide people with incredibly easy-to-use ways to enhance their online experience. I was providing ways for people to grow their blogs and add new features to their websites. The value of each plugin was far more than the price: free.

Group Reflection

If you don’t want to create wildly popular content then something might just be wrong with you. I can’t imagine that there are many people who wake up in the morning who want to be failures. I know that I don’t.

So let’s think it out. Let’s pay attention to our successes and our failures and learn from them. What other attributes do you think may have helped that post become so popular so fast? How can we apply these lessons to new articles at our websites?