Topic: Content Design: Getting The Most From Your Content And Images

Speaker: Dawn Pedersen

Photo Credit: William Mead

The first presentation I attended at Wordcamp Sacramento was a primer on writing effective content for your WordPress website.

Keep in mind, I have been blogging since 2004. This was part of the beginner’s track. I remembered something I read in one of the email announcements I received in preparation for the event. It said, come with a willingness to learn. Pretend like you don’t already know everything. That was a great suggestion. You should always approach learning with an open mind. That way you are receptive to learning something in a new way.

I got some great insights from Dawn. She had a great presentation and I wrote several pages of notes.

Here are 3 great ideas I learned about content design:

1. People don’t read. They scan.

Most people won’t read your blog posts from top to bottom. They will jump around. Be sure to make your content easy and inviting to scan.

2. Break text into lists

Avoid creating the “dreaded wall of text”. Instead, use bulleted lists to share salient points with your audience.

3. Optimize image files

New options are coming in WordPress that will allow images to optimized automatically for different platforms (desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone).

In the meantime, shrink image files down to an appropriate size. Don’t upload a 3,000 x 4,000 pixel image for a 400 x 300 pixel spot on your blog post.

Dawn delivered a lot of information quickly to the audience. As someone who teaches a class about WordPress, it was good to see how someone else presents the material.

About the Speaker: Dawn Pedersen

Dawn Pedersen first learned a morsel of HTML in Y2K, and it was the sunrise of a beautiful love affair. Her passion for great user experience has led to a career as the webmaster (how’s that for a Throwback Thursday word?) for Sacramento City College, and as a web design teacher at Art Institute and other colleges. Her fondness for WordPress began with a little self-hosted blog in 2004, and she has been a WordCamp fanatic since 2011. She holds degrees in art and education, and loves science to boot. Dawn lives with her husband and their son in West Sacramento.

Twitter: @bluelobsterweb

Topic Description: Content Design: Getting The Most From Your Content And Images

This session takes you beyond the cut and paste addition of content to your WordPress site, and digs into the details of content formatting and image management to create beautiful pages and posts visitors actually want to read.

You’ll learn:

• Best practices to make your content feel easy, fast, and interesting to read
• Tips on working with images to attract attention and keep page load speed fast
• Visual considerations the best content designers take into account that give their site design and content presentation an edge

Presentation Slides

Click here for Dawn’s Presentation Slides

Read my Full Review of Wordcamp Sacramento

Click here to read my full review of Wordcamp Sacramento

Rick Cooper
Online Marketing and Social Media Trainer