Balancing Work and Motherhood: Chat with Joy Cho

Mother's Day is just around the corner. Check out how our Alt for Everyone keynote speaker, Joy Cho of Oh Joy!, finds her work/life balance now that she's a mom.

Interview by Monica Lee for Alt.

How to Keep Readers on Your Site: Part 2

By: Melanie Burk. Artwork by: Claire Desjardins

We often focus only on creating original content. Over and over again we hear "content is king" and yes, this is true. But if you don't know how to display your content, how can you get viewers to actually stop and read it? As we discussed in our last post in this series, viewers skim, they don't read.

How can you help them to actually stop and read that amazing content you spent hours creating and writing? Here are a few tips to success: 

1. Keep your text a good, readable size

This is one of the most important usability tips. We were trained in school that 12 pts was the right size on Word, but remember this applies to printing out essays, not on your blog!

In fact, the recommended size by online usability experts is 16 px! That is much, much bigger than 12 px! (I personally recommend 15-16 px for my clients) This can be the simplest change you can make to your site, that can help people read your blog posts–just changing the pixel size and making it bigger can make it easy to read, and keep viewers on your site. 

2. Keep the background clean, and evaluate what you add to your site so it doesn't distract from the posts

Often as bloggers and creatives, we really want to pack in the art and beauty wherever we can. We want to add patterns to the background, images in each side of the column, and fill in every open space with instagram images, our followers, and everything you can think of. Unfortunately, this can really detract and pull away from your content. Remember, more on your site can actually hurt reader interaction–it easily confuses and distracts your viewers. 

Remember this– designing your site or blog is not the same as designing a room. You cannot "accessorize" every part of your site. Really evaluate every element you add in- is it worthwhile? Would I want my viewers to click on this? Is it too distracting from my content? Is there some way I could consolidate this information and make it easier to understand? Stripping down your information in side columns can really help people read your content, and can help them focus on what you want them too–your key blog posts, and those column widgets that you do feel are important. So keep it as simple as you can, and design well the things you need to add!

3. Break up lots of text with images or quotes

Writing online is different than writing a book. Try to keep your paragraphs to 2-3 sentences in length to help eyes focus on your text. When people read online, they need that white space to focus and continue reading, without getting impatient or bored. Also, break up every few paragraphs with a quote, or a text, to help keep viewers engaged and interested.

These few tips, when followed, will really help viewers focus on your good content. It can be strange getting used to keeping your paragraphs short, or writing in such a big pixel size, but once you get use to it and embrace it, watch how your viewers will start to really read and interact with your blog posts!

Announcing: Alt for Everyone Keynote Speaker

By: Melanie Blodgett Photography by: Bonnie Tsang via Oh Joy

It's May. And that means Alt For Everyone is just two short weeks away! Today we're pleased to announce that the amazing Joy Cho will be joining our stellar line-up as our keynote speaker. Joy is not only the founder and editor of the award-winning blog Oh Joy, she's also a successful textile, stationery, wallpaper and clothing designer and co-author of two books, Creative, Inc and Blog, Inc. If that's not enough to knock your socks off, she's also been heralded as the World's Most Influential Pinner. Her success as an entrepreneur is an inspiration to the entire Alt community and we're so happy she'll be sharing her expertise with us.

The keynote session is available at three different times so you won't miss it (yes, it's the exact same session each time). Make sure to check the updated and finalized schedule here.

May 3, 2013 1 Comment Share This

Alter Your World

By: Melanie Blodgett. Photography by: Rachel Denbow

During January's Alt Summit, we introduced Alter Your World. In case you need a refresher, simply put, the Alt community does good. A lot of good. Whether your actions are big or small, we're all contributing to making the world a better place and we want to celebrate that! To launch Alter Your World, we teamed up with FashionABLE and ONE.org for a project. A project that exceeded our expectations in every way.

Alt Summit community members were invited to design scarves that would be woven by the women of fashionABLE in Ethiopia. After sorting through tons of entries, the winning design was selected by Alt attendees and the gorgeous black and white design is now available for purchase. Yippee! Buy a scarf and save a life.

Now it's your turn. The next time you or your friend does something to better the world, we want to know about it. Did you volunteer at the women's shelter? Did your friend raise funds for a meaningful cause? Or maybe your friend brightened someone's day with an act of particular kindness. Again, we want to hear about it!

As a thank you for participating, everyone that let's us know about an #AlterYourWorld act of goodness by May 31st, will be automatically entered to win a free ticket to Alt NY or Alt SF (your choice)! To enter it takes three easy steps:

1. Write a post about the things you or someone you know are doing to improve the world. The act can be small or large.

2. Include the Alter Your World button, from the Alt site on your post.

3. Tweet the post link using the hashtag #AlterYourWorld by May 31st.

We will track the #AlterYourWorld hashtag and choose a random winner each week. That's right — there will be 4 winners! Now, tell us about the good you see. We can't wait to read your write-ups!

Alt For Everyone Ticket Winners

Thanks for helping us spread the word about Alt For Everyone! We may be bias but we think the Alt community is the absolute best. We've randomly selected five winners to receive free registration. Congrats Julia Rodney, Sarah Breunig, Ellie Jacobson, Amanda Saoud and Samantha Hall! We'll be in contact with the details and look forward to chatting during the conference.