Todd chats with Pam Mandel (@nerdseyeview), Seattle-based travel blogger at NerdsEyeView and Sheila Scarborough (@sheilas) blogger from Round Rock, Texas who pens the Family Travelogue about how they became travel bloggers and how travel, tourism, and blogging can be an essential components of marketing travel experiences.
Topics of Conversation:
- How writing and the evolution of the Web created travel blogging opportunities
- What’s the difference between travel writing and travel blogging
- How unique niche experiences provide great story ideas
- How quickly blog posts can impact travel and how blogged stories have a lasting impact
- Finding the right travel blogger to tell your story
- How pitches find their way to travel bloggers through PR agencies
- The relationship between bloggers and tourism businesses
- Why paid posts can compromise a bloggers objectivity
- Tourism businesses and bloggers need to have conversations about expectations and credibility
- Journalistic integrity and ethics is very important to top bloggers: While comping accommodations or travel may be appropriate for freelance journalists and bloggers, revealing such compensation in the story is important.
- Tourism regions or businesses can discover blogging by guest posting on existing travel blogs
Links:
- http://blogsearch.google.com - Google’s Blog Search Engine
- http://www.technorati.com
- Travel.AllTop.com - edited list of top travel bloggers
- Blogher - the Women’s Blogging Network
- Williamsburg, Virginia -Convention and Visitors Bureau
- Molokai, Hawaii - Visitors Bureau (@DavidHTA, @michaelni, @nathankam)
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Hi Todd,
Thanks very much for the opportunity to chat with you and Pam, and I hope our discussion provided some helpful insights for tourism professionals and CVBs.
That was really interesting to hear about Pam and Sheila’s interactions with the travel industry. I agree with them that one of the key advantages of blogs is that they are so immediate - you can have a travel experience and write about it the same day. Also that the power of the search engines means that you can write about some Niche topic and people will find what you wrote about it. I often find that I write about some obscure guest house that’s not in the guidebooks and people find my blog post about it. At the World Travel Market in London recently I received a lot of blank looks from people who could have seen talking to a blogger as a great PR opportunity. My advice to your readers in the tourism industry is, if a blogger approaches you, seize the opportnity for some free PR!
Hi Todd,
I enjoyed the podcast with Pam and Sheila. As a PR professional and a travel writer, blogger and Lodging Editor for Uptake.com/blog, I wear several hats. I’m always amazed when tourism folks blow off bloggers in favor of print publications. As both Pam and Sheila mentioned, bloggers provide immediate coverage of the tourism industry and our words remain on the internet a lot longer than magazines and newspapers.
I recommend everyone in the tourism industry check out http://twitter.com/home and follow the travel writers.
Follow me at: http://twitter.com/Nancydbrown
What a Trip blog, http://www.nancydbrown.com/
Aloha Todd,
Wonderful interview with Pam and Sheila and I’m flattered that Hawaii was mentioned during the discussion. Our firm handles the public relations for the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau (HVCB) and has been looking at ways to increase our new media presence in the marketplace. We’ve found great success working with bloggers over the past year and look forward to increasing our outreach to them.
Aloha,
Nathan
Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/nathankam
Great podcast with Pam and Sheila!
I wanted to compliment you and your guests about the quality of the interview and also the audio quality of your podcast. Your guests were very lively and really in to this interview. I\’ll tell you how I found your site. I have a Google alert set for video blogs. In my alert, I went to this web site, http://www.tipsfromthetlist.com/article4338.html.
This site had a link to your site. In case you were interested, that\’s how I found your site. Good work!
Thanks Steve. Appreciate sending along the link that got you here. Love talking with folk who are passionate about what they do. Thanks for listening.