I spent the past four days at Lindenwood University teaching a web class at MediaNowSTL, a high-school journalism camp.
I co-taught the class with Jason Wallestad of School Newspapers Online. All of our students either had a WordPress site for their school or created one during the camp.
On the final day, we asked them to write reminders to themselves for when school starts up in the fall.
Here’s their list of things they want to be sure to remember.
- Web stories deserve just as much time and attention as print stories.
- The web has so many more elements than print. Use all of the additional story elements in WordPress to make a story look more visually appealing (i.e. pull quotes, polls, related stories, links, videos, photos, etc.).
- Don’t write bland headlines or stories. Write headlines that will make people want to read your stories.
- Horizontal photos work better on the web than vertical photos.
- Have a plan for your tags.
- Have a plan for how you will use social media to drive people to your website.
- Use Chrome’s Inspect Element feature to figure out how to make CSS changes to your site.
- You can edit photos directly in WordPress.
- To help create better content, use the concept of STEPPS (see jonahberger.com for more info on this and going viral).
- Delete your spam comments on WordPress. They can slow down your site.
- Link to all of your social media accounts.
- People prefer to look at images/listen to things/watch something, so chill with the wordiness.
- Make your staff page look great and have great info. It’s shouldn’t just be a first and last name.
- Be consistent with your content. Be strict with deadlines. The audience should be aware that there will be certain days in which they will be able to see new content.
- All photos need a caption.
- Make sure you have the right to publish your photos. Don’t steal photos.
- Videos should be kept short.