Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Looking back on the theme landscape of 2014, a clear design trend emerged that highlights WordPress’ roots as a blogging platform. Minimalist, content-centric themes took center stage in the official WordPress Themes Directory, outpacing their more visually-bloated commercial counterparts.

This past year saw a major renaissance in themes for the personal blogger, particularly designs that showcase large, featured images. Many theme designers opted to hide navigation menus and sidebars behind a slideout menu, which also works well for mobile displays.

WordPress’ newest default theme, Twenty Fifteen, is the culmination of this trend towards simplicity. The vast majority of our top picks from 2014 were designed for personal blogs....

Here’s the key: When it comes right down to it, nobody is going to care if your videos are shot on a fancy-pants video camera or your trusty iPhone — if the information is valuable and useful to them.Action tip: Focus on creating valuable content in a variety of formats to create a content marketing plan that works for you....

It’s time to take your designs to the next level! Combine your text and images to create powerful compositions.From making use of copy space in your images, to adding shapes to your designs to help your text stand out – the value of this creative technique is not to be overlooked.

Try these five simple tips to create effective compositions that not only look beautiful, but read effectively....