We have heard numerous times how people skim articles and posts online, rarely reading everything, looking only for bits of information and then fine tuning focus on what looks important to them. Did you read all that? Good your still with me.

Lets dig into the way we read online and learn how to potentially format content that keeps the readers attention longer.

Last time you were in a book store, shopping for the next book, how did you go about this search? Assuming you didn’t have a title/author in mind maybe you cruised the non-fiction section looking at covers. Then a book cover with a picture of the president elect caught your eye, THE AUDACITY OF HOPE. What happened next?

You turn the book over and read the back, the synopsis, and get a feel if this is of interest to you. “Maybe this self-portrait of the next prez will be intriguing… or maybe I will wait till he writes the next one.”

How many times have you picked up a magazine because of what is on the cover? How many other magazines did you see that didn’t catch your eye? Online we have even shorter attention spans these days (9 to 5 seconds is the new number) because our options are so vast we have no patience. Jakob Nielsen, Nielsen Norman Group, told BBC that “People want sites to get to the point. They have very little patience.”

Visitors to a website or a piece of social media content are heavily influenced by first impressions. How something is designed is not more important than content, but it certainly helps to keep the attention and interest.

Graphic design is visual information management with the main goal to display a strong visual hierarchy that can lead a viewers eye through a page. We scan pages when we first come to a site, looking for elements that capture our eye and then fine tune our vision to investigate deeper. Present the most important information first with the greatest emphasis.

At 10e20, we like to keep on top of things happening in the Internet world and we’ve been keenly watching Tipd.com since its beta launch a few weeks ago.  Today, they officially launch Tip’d 1.0.  Tip’d is a hot new social media site for financing, investing and business topics.  Given the current financial state of the world, we think that Tip’d will quickly become your number one choice for learning about all things financial.

To help ensure that Tip’d always features the latest and the best financial news and content, they’ve been building relationships with publishers in the niche.  These connections have help them get engaging, interesting and factual content.

Based on feedback from their beta launch from community members, they’ve been working feverishly to make changes and improvements.  Here are just a few of the major ones:

One of the easiest ways to raise the visibility of your site with video on YouTube is to use video “annotations”. Annotations are short textual notes that you can post in the video player and publish to your videos. And while annotations don’t yet allow you to link OUT of YouTube, they do allow you type in a URL in text form without linking, which is 1 step in the right direction to tying your great video content back to your site/brand name.

There are currently 3 useful types of annotations:

• notes
• speech bubbles
• spotlights

What do annotations and speech bubbles look like? This video has a brief example of both.

Why are annotations useful?

• Write in your domain name or
• Write in further information about your brand or products.
• Write in addresses, locations, names.

Social media success is built around momentum. This driving force can come in many different formats and can be harnessed (or created) in a variety of fashions. In my experience participating in social media, the momentum behind the stories is much more important than the “hook” or actual content of the story. But how can this “momentum” work for you? Here is a breakdown of the different types of momentum in social media today:

Uncontrollable Momentum

These types of momentum cannot be artificially created, only harnessed to make a story popular on social bookmarking sites.

1) Hot Topic Stories
Fresh stories that are relevant to a current hot topic naturally gain momentum by adding more information or knowledge on that topic. Since users are actively looking for information on this fresh topic, the subject itself will build momentum with no additional work required. This is the most natural form of momentum that a story can accrue as it will attract a variety of different users who are genuinely interested in the topic at hand. For even more on this topic, see our current events and social media post.

There are many reasons the Digg Community may perceive you negatively, or worse yet, consider you a filthy social media spammer. If you take part in the majority of these activities you probably aren’t seen as a positive social media maven as you may have hoped. Instead your actions depict you as a whiney and needy nuisance.

You might be a Digg Spammer If:

1. Your only shot at glory is to slightly rip of a top digger’s icon so you might get a few extra diggs

2. Your icon is a busty woman, but you are an out of shape male

3. You have over 400 “friends”

4. You only shout with one of these sayings: “shouting for a friend,” “sharing for a friend,” or “for a friend”

On Monday, I’ll be presenting at Search Engine Strategies San Jose on Igniting Viral Campaigns:

In a world dominated by behemoths like bud.tv, MySpace, and YouTube, how do mid-sized and smaller companies break through to generate online destinations that create buzz, encourage word of mouth and establish relationships with potential buyers? This session unveils the secrets of Web 2.0 techniques and technologies that enable companies to stand out and be talked about.

I’m going to focus on an overview of social media marketing and especially how you can leverage social media news & bookmarking sites to make your campaigns take off. The sessions is aimed at small to mid-sized business owners and is a must attend for anyone doing viral marketing. If you’re going to be at SES - I’d really suggest making it to this 11:15am session on Monday morning. I’ll also be joined by Jennifer Laycock, Justilien Gaspard, Fionn Downhill and it will all be moderated by Andrew Goodman.

Modern blog platforms, like Wordpress, make it easy for anyone to write content for a website without much knowledge of HTML or CSS. You can simply use a WYSIWYG (the Visual part to HTML/CSS code) editor. It is definitely a great way for non-technical people to write and format content. Here are a few tips that will help you stylize and format your content, so that your posts really draw attention:

Image Sizing and Positioning

It’s no secret that images are an essential part of making a post interesting and visually stimulating. Patrick Winfield wrote an extensive post about finding images online.

After finding your image, it is important to resize it to fit your post. Here is an example of a guy who has some technophobia:

Contests, especially user-generated ones, have the ability to drive significant traffic and links to a site. For example, there are many sites like Contest Hound and Contest Blogger, that share information about various available contests. Many participants connect with contest for the following reasons:

• Win a prize (monetary or material)
  
• Recognition
• Connect with the brand
  

In order for people to connect with a contest, the concept needs to be relevant to the target audience’s interests. Issue-based organizations have been extremely successful at drawing many participants and encouraging feedback, regardless of the prize. However, consumer goods struggle with contests, especially if the rewards are nominal.

Wells Fargo, the financial services company, is offering a contest that encourages users to submit a story of what they would accomplish if they had a certain amount of money. Some Day Stories is rewarding the winner with $100,000.

R U a Digg n00b that gets pwned by 1337 Digg Commenters? Well RTFM so teh next time ur comment won’t be an EPIC FAIL!

On Digg, having something to say is only half the battle, knowing how to say it is the other half. This guides you to dissect the jargon, people and memes used in comments on a daily basis. Each section is broken down in detail to help you boost your Digg cred the next time that you leave a comment.

3G - Third Generation of mobile phone standards and technology

AMD - Advanced Micro Devices (mainly a CPU competitor to Intel)

API - Application Programming Interface

APOD – Astronomy Picture of the Day (link)

BS – Bullsh*t

CCTV - Closed-circuit television (UK public surveillance)

CCFL - Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps (Modern light bulb that uses a fraction of the electricity of regular light bulb)