Every day I read Zite, Flipboard and Pulse on my iPad. Every day I review my Facebook page and Twitter feed. And every day I’m confronted with a new top 10 list. Some examples:

• The Top 10 Ways You Can Improve Your Social Media Presence
• The Top 10 WordPress Plugins to Help Your SEO
• 10 Questions to Evaluate a Social Media ‘Expert‘

The truth is, I’m so tired of seeing top 10 lists, I don’t read any of them anymore. There are so many top 10 lists that we have to be at about the top 10,000 reasons for any given category or problem. So why is this important? It’s the tail wagging the dog. One respected firm said that it was a great way to get more traffic or followers on your social media page or a must have to drive traffic to your blog. The firm that made that statement, has moved on to something else while all the other groups that read their feed are just now starting a trend that is destined to end very shortly from burnout. It’s the groups that aren’t innovating trying desperately to innovate and staying one step behind the leaders. So, in an effort to kill this trend, I bring you my one and only top 10 iist:

The Top 5 Reasons Why Communications Firms
Love Top 10 Lists

1. Because they read it in Ad Week and the buzz words “social media” and “increase traffic” were included in the article
2. Because Seth Godin tweeted a Top 10 list so every agency on earth will retweet it to their followers
3. Because on that Top 10 list of ways to increase traffic, number 5 was to create lists because, people are busy and love short lists
4. Because in a client meeting, the client suggested a Top 10 list as a way of increasing social media traffic and the agency’s only response is “Great Idea” without examining the real problem or other possible solutions (just doing what the client says means easy hours spent and easy billing).
5. Because agency “B” in town just put out a Top 10 list and agency “A”, not to be outdone, must put out one that cleverly addresses a similar topic but has one unique item that is their attempt to one up agency “B.”

In the end, it’s really all about lack of thinking, planning and vision and simply being safe because everyone else is doing it.