Better blogging with YBBG

Media Kit for YBBG Download

The photo above is the media kit I created.  I knew nothing about media kits until I saw a tweet from @Blog_Trends.  Blog Trends, is a community of lifestyle, fashion, and beauty bloggers.  I joined Blog Trends after a Twitter Q/A they held a couple of weeks ago.  It was quite informative.  With all of the input from a number of sources, I decided to embark on better blogging with YBBG.

Better Blogging

• Learning the language of the blog world
• Editing my posts without editing my voice
• Overcoming being technologically challenged

LANGUAGE: "Lifestyle Blogging"

I had no idea what lifestyle blogging was until this week.  I heard about it in the blogging world, but never had a clear definition.  First off, I blogged as a hobby.  I write a column as a freelancer, professionally for Examiner.com.  YBBG was an outlet for me to say what ever came to mind, without being censored. 

Strangely enough, with YBBG containing so much of my life and personality, I unwittingly began lifestyle blogging.  "Lifestyle blogging" simply means putting forth personal, intimate and unique ideas through blogging that include individual touches of your life.  You are not beholden to a specific genre (beauty, natural hair, sports, etc.), but may touch on all of those subjects through your own voice. 

Words to know: SEO, Media Kit, PageRank, Alexa, Keywords, Niche, Backlinks, Indexing

EDITING: Keywords are important

I have a confession to make.  In high school, I was co editor of my school newspaper.  So it probably should be a surprise that I let all kinds of language and editing errors fly on YBBG.  When I started blogging, I wanted to buck the system.  Be a nonconformist.  Speak to you here, how I speak to people in public.  I will continue to do so, but I will inspect for keywords and streamline the language.

Keywords are important when blogging.  Google and other search engines pick up on particular words when determining where you will rank on the world wide web. 

TECHNOLOGY: Challenges

There are a million and one social media programs out there.   There are also a million and one ways to format documents, publish, and create images that make your blog pop. I happen to be technologically challenged...okay...more technologically lazy. 

Are you connected to all of these sites?

I lie when I say I'm technologically challenged. I worked as a technical writer before going to law school. So I used programs like PageMaker, and something similar to Visio, back in the day to create visual aids and technical manuscripts for an engineering plant. 

When making my media kit, I had to get creative. I do not have a lot of the technological capabilities through Blogger, that appear in TypePad or Wordpress.  However, where there is a will, there is a way.

I utilized Microsoft Word to create the media kit. With Printscreen on my Toshiba laptop and Microsoft Paint, I was able to capture and create images.  Afterwards, I used my HP printer's programs to create a pdf.  Skydrive.live.com, a Microsoft online program, helped me create a link from the original document.  All of this happened after much trial and error.  But now it is simple for me.  Technology, trial, and error are your friends! 

What have you learned to better your blogging? Share your tips in the comments.