Best-Of Lists and Platform-Building

By Bob Hughes - Nov 14 , 2011

You may not make the top-10 list, but you’ve got a chance to be heard nonetheless.

We’re at that time of year when “best of” articles and lists begin to appear. People whose job it is to look at movies, listen to music, read books and weigh in on such matters give us their opinions of what they consider the most noteworthy in class since the last such list.

You may feel competitive by looking at such lists. Your own tastes might not match the taste of the critics. You may dismiss them since you haven’t heard of any of these works. You may have compiled your own list for your friends (you might be the kind of person people look to for recommendations). Or you might be the kind of person who regards such lists as ridiculous, since rankings based on personal opinion bear only the weight of that opinion and nothing else. (You’ve got a point.)

Then again, you might be afraid to read any “best of” lists, knowing you haven’t had time, and won’t have time, to read these books, see these movies or hear this music. Not to worry – this is what critics do. They get paid to watch, read, listen. Most people read a book or two a year, go to the movies a few times and catch up on music thanks to playlists their friends create for them. You’re not in the business of knowing everything. You know your subject. And you write about it.

But what about your own efforts at writing? And your audience? Surely if you can’t get around to cracking the covers or starting the first electronic line of a book that’s been touted as one of the best of the year, who’s going to read what you’ve written?

Plenty of people. As long as you’ve been building an audience, and introducing your thoughts and your writing to your readers, through your blog, your newsletter your Twitter feeds, your articles, your comments on other articles, you’re being read. You’re building a book online.

You may not be one of those whose works make it onto year-end lists. But so what? How many people actually go through those lists eager to check off every title so that they’re current with received opinion. Do you know anyone like that? Probably not.

Information is everywhere, and we take it in through various methods, often little by little, and often online. In this digital age, online may be the way to go, through the steady flow of a little information at a time to a dedicated (and growing) audience, rather than a flood of it once a year. Who can cope with that?

Better to build slowly. Start with a blog, and keep at it (nothing worse than seeing a current blog post that dates from a year earlier). Then know that while you might not have made it to the top-10 list, you’ve nevertheless had an impact on the people who read you.