A year of blogging, and my thoughts on it

I’ve been doing Second Life fashion blogging for a year now.  It can be a lot of work, but it’s also been incredibly fun.  I get messages from people saying it must be awesome to get all this free stuff.  Well, I do get a lot of review items, but it takes time and effort to keep up with deadlines, blogging reports and just keeping the stuff organized in my inventory.  I made an effort to have everything organized and all the tedious work to a minimum, so I would not feel bogged down by the details.  So far, it’s worked out great.  Sure, I have days when I just don’t feel like blogging anything.  And it works out fine, because I don’t wait until last minute to get things posted.  And if I have a deadline coming up, all the hard parts are done.  I just need to bust out some creativity and get a picture.

I’m not saying my way is the only way, or even the best way.  This is just how I do my blog, and maybe some of this information will be helpful!

Keep Organized

Inventory

If you plan to blog on a regular basis, then eventually take on sponsors, I can’t stress enough that it’s important to keep an organized inventory.  I found it very tedious trying to find things and it made me feel uninspired at times to blog.  I should have taken the time to completely organized my inventory before I started (I had never done such a thing in my entire time on SL, everything was just dumped into one folder and I had countless items in my ‘recieved’ folder)   I half organized things, and it was annoying me.  So, do a good inventory cleaning!  If you are already organized, I applaud you.  It was not an easy habit to get into.

There are lots of ways that people organize their inventory.  I see a lot of people do it by designer, but I buy from so many different designers, that I would never find what I was looking for.  I organize by type, then break it down into smaller sub-catergories.  I also rename the folders to exactly what I would type into my blog (minus the price) , so it becomes a very easy copy/paste to credit things.

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Deadlines

I personally keep a google doc of my monthly deadlines.  Some of my sponsors use Blogotex, and some use blogger groups.  I didn’t want anything to get lost in the shuffle so this keeps me on track.

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Designer’s Info

I try to tag the designer’s on all the social medias that I use where possible.  I use a lot of same designers on a regular basis, and I keep a list with all their social media contacts with the links for easy access, as well as their in world locations and marketplace stores.  It’s a huge time saver, because they don’t always include this information in their notecards when you buy things or when you get a blogger pack.  It can take a lot of time to go into each designer’s profile and try to find their social media links.

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Blog Layout

I keep a folder on my desktop for my blog photo layouts.  This helps me keep a uniform look (which is just something I personally like) and saves a lot of time.  I always do a front and back picture, and two close ups, usually the face and shoes.  I don’t edit my photos, so it’s mostly just snap a picture, click and drag, and I’m done.

If you don’t use photoshop or other editing software, that’s totally fine.  It’s not needed, and just something I used since I already had it.  You can see from the image below, to make the two close up shots, all I have to do is drag the layer and make a clipping mask, and it’s done.

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I also keep a blank blog post with the layout I use in a draft on my webpage, so I all I need to start a post is copy and paste it, then add the designer info.  I don’t have to retype all section titles.