Put the information up front where readers can see it.

Online there isn’t time for the slow reveal or sexy info striptease.

Content is king and if the content is buried three paragraphs into a blog post or 30 seconds into a YouTube clip, the odds of visitors sticking with it are sorely reduced.

Social media, blogs, email, and instant messaging make it possible for people to come across dozens, if not hundreds, of interesting links a day.

In pre-internet days when people read magazines, newspapers, and books, they were limited to the content on hand, and writers could get away with padding their words. Now, the sum of human knowledge, experience, and general weirdness is just a click away, and the average clicker is looking for instant gratification from an all you can eat infotainment buffet stocked with enough content to make the Library of Alexandria look like the informational equivalent of a soggy spring roll.

Ironically, I suspect with the information up front, readers might hang around (possibly even to the end of the post) for the evidence, anecdotes, and general musings about the meaning of life.

When information travels at the speed of light, trying to keep up is a full-time job and most people are too busy to bother.