I spent a good part of the day today just reading posts as they came up on the dashboard. For about an hour, I read every post. I don't mean every featured post, but any post, by anyone that came up when I refreshed my browser. I stumbled on some great reading today, a lot of it by people who were brand new to ActiveRain - "newbies." Most of them were really great posts. I left comments and emailed a couple of them to offer some unsolicited advice. I hope it was received in the way I intended. Their posts all looked just like the top part of this post. It looks like a field of gray. One big long string of sentences with no paragraphs, no links, and no way for a reader to skim through to see if they want to take the time to read the entire post. Internet readers are skimmers. That's a fact. It's been a fact for years. "People rarely read Web pages word by word at the outset. Instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences." Reading on the Web (Alertbox) I know that's how I read blogs. I skim the basic points first, then quickly process whether or not the post has enough value to warrant the time to read it all. We have to do this, don't we? There's just too much to read. Julie Ferenzi did the very same thing with the first post she wrote here on ActiveRain and it was the perfect first lesson. She's never made the mistake again and her posts on Living In Plainfield are better for it. if you really want someone to read your posts, give them some air and highlight key points. You don't need to understand any html, just use the tools in the toolbar above. Graphics help as well, but I've seen some very well done posts that use no graphics, but a well placed highlight graphic gives a post some color. When done right, it illustrates the main point and helps to lead the reader to actually read. Air out your posts. Bold the points you want to highlight. Use graphics when warranted. Your posts will get read more often if you do.

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I spent a portion of the day reading posts as they came up on the dashboard.

For about an hour, I read every post. I don't mean every featured post, but any post, by anyone that came up when I refreshed my browser.  I stumbled on some great reading today, a lot of it by people who were brand new to ActiveRain - "newbies." Most of them were really great posts. I left comments and emailed a couple of them to offer some unsolicited advice. I hope it was received in the way I intended.

Their posts all looked just like the top part of this post. It looks like a field of gray. One big long string of sentences with no paragraphs, no links, and no way for a reader to skim through to see if they want to take the time to read the entire post.

Internet readers are skimmers. That's a fact. It's been a fact for years.

"People rarely read Web pages word by word at the outset. Instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences." Reading on the Web (Alertbox)

I know that's how I read blogs. I skim the basic points first, then quickly process whether or not the post has enough value to warrant the time to read it all. We have to do this, don't we? There's just too much to read.

Julie Ferenzi did the very same thing with the first post she wrote here on ActiveRain and it was the perfect first lesson. She's never made the mistake again and her posts on Living In Plainfield are better for it.

If you really want someone to read your posts, give them some air and highlight key points. You don't need to understand any html, just use the tools in the toolbar above. Graphics help as well, but I've seen some very well done posts that use no graphics, but a well placed highlight graphic gives a post some color. When done right, it illustrates the main point and helps to lead the reader to actually read.

• Air out your posts.
• Bold the points you want to highlight.
• Use graphics when warranted.

Your posts will get read more often if you do.  

UPDATE: I wanted to move the following information up into the post itself. It is buried in the comments, but is valuable enough to be here.

This is a very in depth heat map study of eye movement. 

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html 

Here is an excerpt that details the implications of the F pattern they discovered.

• Users won't read your text thoroughly in a word-by-word manner. Exhaustive reading is rare, especially when prospective customers are conducting their initial research to compile a shortlist of vendors. Yes, some people will read more, but most won't.
• The first two paragraphs must state the most important information. There's some hope that users will actually read this material, though they'll probably read more of the first paragraph than the second.
• Start subheads, paragraphs, and bullet points with information-carrying words that users will notice when scanning down the left side of your content in the final stem of their F-behavior. They'll read the third word on a line much less often than the first two words.