AI is going to kill the listicle, and i couldn't be more excited :') here's the thing: listicles form a core part of pretty much every content marketing strategy—but they have never delivered on their promise, never actually solved problems the way we pretend they do classic example: company X publishes "the 20 best CRMs for small businesses" in the months that follow keyword rankings tick up, traffic ticks up, the content and search teams generally pat themselves on the back despite the fact that we all KNOW that those pageviews and rankings are completely hollow, serving to - at best - introduce our brand to a few new faces, in a cursory, incidental kind of way all because: ~ the selection criteria in every listicle is basically nonexistent ("my keyword research tool told me to include these brands") ~ they are rife with shameless bias ("oh, you included your company in here? how surprising!") ~ there is zero firsthand experience on offer; all the information is rehashed from the existing search results, which are themselves rehashing the existing search results... it's crappy listicles all the way down and most damning of all: ~ nobody ever wants or needs 20 options. we want someone to share a strong opinion, a synthesis of the available options in response to our unique needs as a result: no reader *actually* trusts your listicle—we just use them as ugly access points into a topic, primitive databases laden with bias and misinformation that serve the limited purpose of adding an extra brand or two to our mental map of the space now for the good news: generative AI renders listicles obsolete a "perfect" listicle would be different for every reader, changing in response to their unique circumstances and needs. a static blog post can't deliver that... but a conversation with a generative AI model absolutely can feed your queries, questions and needs into a conversational model, trained on the existing search results, maybe some G2 data, and you get back something vastly more useful than any "traditional" listicle could ever offer the listicle will be the first content format to die at gen AI's hand, because it is already the thinnest form of content, little more than spun content at the best of times and that is fine by me "here, we pulled some options into one place" is the weakest type of value-add. as marketers, we should be dedicating our energy towards difficult, problem-solving content - stuff that requires critical analysis, firsthand experience, judgement and taste... and not just rote data collection bye-bye listicles. you will not be missed