the ultimate guide to writing, formatting, and social sharing for wordpress

CREATING WITH WORDPRESS

The Ultimate Guide to Writing, Formatting, and Social Sharing

ABOUT ME

Marketing/International Business background

Founded Don’t Panic Management in 2011

Has worked with WordPress since 2009

Loves purple, live music, wine, and cheese

YAY!

ABOUT YOU

Why are you here?

KEEP IN MIND

You don’t have to be a designer or developer to do cool shit with WordPress.

WordPress was designed with the user in mind (that’s you!).

It doesn’t always work the way you want it to.

Be patient. Don’t Panic! (get it?)

A WORD TO THE WISEI will teach you general writing and formatting best practices

I will also recommend several plugins you can use on your site

Be careful about installing plugins - they can weigh your site down

There is no magic number of plugins, but less is more

If you’re going to install plugins, make sure you keep them up to date

HERE WE GO...

Writing & Idea Generation

Editing & Formatting

Using Photo & Video

Search Engine Optimization

Social Media Sharing

Winning

WRITING & IDEA GENERATION

Put your ideas in drafts

Use a content management system

DivvyHQ - http://divvyhq.com

WordPress Editorial Calendar - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/editorial-calendar/

Excel - You know, the one Microsoft makes

IDEA GENERATION

Categories

Less is more

Consider your target audience

Tags

Unlimited

Consider your keywords

Both help with search and make your site more user-friendly

IDEA GENERATION

Use one category at a time to identify the topic of the post

Use as many tags as are relevant to identify keywords in your post

Be careful not to misspell or misuse tags

WRITING

Use WordPress full screen mode

Use a text editor

Use Word

Save

Don’t forget to save

ALWAYS FREAKIN’ CLICK SAVE!

WRITING

If you write your post in a text editor (like Word), be sure to paste using the correct editor in WordPress to maintain formatting

Click to paste from Word

Click to paste from plain text

FORMATTING

Use the “kitchen sink”

Bold, italics, underlines, strikethroughs are cool (just don’t go crazy)

Use these to emphasize important points

FORMATTING

Use H2 or H3 tags for headlines

<h3>Headline</h3>

FORMATTING

Use the Block Quote option to highlight quoted text

Enter Full Screen mode for uninterrupted writing

TL;DRWASHINGTON—Unable to rest their eyes on a colorful photograph or boldface heading that could be easily skimmed and forgotten about, Americans collectively recoiled Monday when confronted with a solid block of uninterrupted text. Dumbfounded citizens from Maine to California gazed helplessly at the frightening chunk of print, unsure of what to do next. Without an illustration, chart, or embedded YouTube video to ease them in, millions were frozen in place, terrified by the sight of one long, unbroken string of English words. "Why won't it just tell me what it's about?" said Boston resident Charlyne Thomson, who was bombarded with the overwhelming mass of black text late Monday afternoon. "There are no bullet points, no highlighted parts. I've looked everywhere—there's nothing here but words." "Ow," Thomson added after reading the first and last lines in an attempt to get the gist of whatever the article, review, or possibly recipe was about. At 3:16 p.m., a deafening sigh was heard across the country as the nation grappled with the daunting cascade of syllables, whose unfamiliar letter-upon-letter structure stretched on for an endless 500 words. Children wailed for the attention of their bewildered parents, businesses were shuttered, and local governments ground to a halt as Americans scanned the text in vain for a web link to click on. Sources also reported a 450 percent rise in temple rubbing and under-the-breath cursing around this time. "It demands so much of my time and concentration," said Chicago resident Dale Huza, who was confronted by the confusing mound of words early Monday afternoon. "This large block of text, it expects me to figure everything out on my own, and I hate it." "I've never seen anything like it," said Mark Shelton, a high school teacher from St. Paul, MN who stared blankly at the page in front of him for several minutes before finally holding it up to his ear. "What does it want from us?" As the public grows more desperate, scholars are working to randomly italicize different sections of the text, hoping the italics will land on the important parts and allow everyone to go on with their day. For now, though, millions of panicked and exhausted Americans continue to repetitively search the single column of print from top to bottom and right to left, looking for even the slightest semblance of meaning or perhaps a blurb. Some have speculated that the never-ending flood of sentences may be a news article, medical study, urgent product recall notice, letter, user agreement, or even a binding contract of some kind. But until the news does a segment in which they take sections of the text and read them aloud in a slow, calm voice while highlighting those same words on the screen, no one can say for sure. There are some, however, who remain

TL;DR

Don’t be that guy.

IMAGESWhere to find them:

Flickr - user submitted photos

iStockPhoto, BigStockPhoto, Shutterstock, etc.

SXC.HU - free stock photos

Photodropper - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/photo-dropper/

Screenshots - note the source

Always give credit where credit is due!

IMAGES

When in doubt, purchase images

Download and keep them on file for future use

IMAGES

Drag files or Select Files from your computerUse a URL of a file elsewhere on the WebChoose from your Media Library (images that you’ve already uploaded to WordPress)

IMAGES

Format your images from the Upload screen

Title (important for things like Pinterest)Alt text (for SEO)Caption (for image credit)Description (for internal use)Link URL (if you want to link elsewhere)Alignment (it is what it sounds like)Size (pre-fixed sizing)

IMAGES

IMAGES

Click “Edit Media” for more advanced editing

SLIDEDECKAn easy tool to create visually-appealing sliders

Embed sliders into your posts, pages, sidebars

Create sliders out of posts, RSS feed, images, videos, text, social content (like tweets, Facebook posts, Instagram, etc.), and much more

SLIDEDECK

Slidedeck 2 - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/slidedeck2/

VIDEOS

Add videos LAST

Add videos using the HTML embed code from your video service of choice

YouTube is the most popular video service and is now owned by Google (helps with SEO)

VIDEOS

Click the “Share” button below the video you want to embed

VIDEOS

Sharing options will be available

The highlighted code is what you want to embed in your blog post

VIDEOS

Use one of their pre-determined sizes (which usually work) or set your own size parameters

Copy the code from YouTube and paste it into the HTML editor of your blog post

Click “Preview” after adding the HTML to make sure it shows up right

DON’T PANIC if it looks like a black box

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

“Black hat” SEO doesn’t work anymore

Google’s new algorithm focuses on consistent quality content

Image via BlackHatSEO.com

SEO

Choose keywords based on which topics you want to cover

Focus on using at least one of those keywords in each post you write

Write keyword rich posts/pages that stay somewhere within your site (not necessarily promoted)

Use internal links

SEO

SEO Tools for WordPress

Your theme’s built-in SEO fields

WordPress SEO by Yoast - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-seo/

All In One SEO Pack http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

INBOUND WRITER

Helps you write optimized content in real time

Offers related keywords as well as ways to improve your content as you go

Inbound Writer - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/inboundwriter/

SOCIAL SHARING

Don’t bombard people with 9 million ways to share your content

Choose the networks that are important to you and make it easy for people to share that way

Sharing is caring - If you’re asking others to share your content, make sure you reciprocate!

SHARING IS CARING

SOCIAL SHARING

Digg Digg - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/digg-digg/

SOCIAL SHARING

Facebook Social Plugins - http://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/

SOCIAL SHARING

HelloBar - http://www.hellobar.com/

SOCIAL SHARING

Native buttons

Twitter - https://twitter.com/about/resources/buttons

Pinterest - http://pinterest.com/about/goodies/

SOCIAL COMMENTING

Livefyre - http://www.livefyre.com/

Disqus - http://disqus.com/

Disqus also has a related posts plugin

If you don’t use your commenting system’s related posts plugin, try:

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/yet-another-related-posts-plugin/

FINAL WORDS

1. Write good content based on keywords

2. Edit and format

3. Include images

4. Have good meta data

5. Give people a reason to want to share your content

6. Give people a way to easily share your content

7. Be nice

8. Measure results

THANK YOU!

Jess Ostroff@jessostroffjess@dontpanicmgmt.com http://jessostroff.com http://dontpanicmgmt.com

Image via TriggersandSparks.com