Travel blogging thoughts from TBU

As with TBEX in Copenhagen, the highlight of Travel Bloggers Unite (TBU) for me was getting to hang out with a bunch of fun, travel-minded people. Manchester was a wonderful setting, too.

The TBU panels and presentations were interesting, and they gave me new things to think about regarding where I want to take this blog in the future. Below are my comments on some of the travel blogging topics that were discussed.

Working with PR. There were several representatives from PR firms in attendance at TBU, all of them interested in working together with bloggers to create publicity for their clients (tourism boards, hotel chains, and other travel-related things). Most clients and PR agencies are rather new to working with bloggers, so everyone’s still feeling each other out for how this is going to work. Bloggers at the conference voiced a variety of opinions about how they want to work together with PR, and how we should be treated differently from traditional travel writers. The conversation has continued online in various forums, such as on this post.

My own experiences working with PR have been entirely positive up to this point, helping me craft quality content by facilitating some interesting travel opportunities. I am happy to hear that more and more clients are opening up to the idea of working with bloggers, and I look forward to these future partnerships.

Monetization. It is supposedly quite hard to make a living off of a travel blog; I had heard this before, and what I learned at TBU seemed to confirm it. Some people are doing it, and a few are even doing it well, but the vast majority of heavily monetized travel blogs are a pile of suck, focusing more on income than they do on content. Some sites pay writers little or nothing for their contributions, and it shows in the low quality of their posts. Other blogs accept sponsored posts or paid guest posts, which is an equally big turn off for me as a reader. Who wants to read a blog full of advertorial or crappy writing?

Monetization doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing. From what I’ve seen, many of the independent bloggers who get it right use their blogs as platforms to show off their writing and photography talents, which in turn helps them attract money-making opportunities which may or may not be blog-based. It will be interesting to see how all this evolves over the coming years, as the online world of travel writing matures.

SEO. Internet people love to throw around the terms ‘SEO’ and ‘monetize’ the way that business people use ‘benchmarking’ and ‘value-add’; usually all these words are signals that I’m about to be bored. It’s a credit to the speakers at TBU that I wasn’t. I particularly enjoyed Mike‘s presentation about SEO (search engine optimization, to those who are lucky enough not to know), focusing on concrete steps one can take to improve a website as well as warning of the perils of trying to overdo it. As with monetization, it’s usually obvious when a blog focuses too much on SEO and too little on quality content; the end result is more crappy blogs in the big pile of useless travel websites out there on the web. Don’t throw your blog on that pile, too.

—-

As far as this blog goes, I can’t decide if I want to work to make it bigger and better, or if I’d rather run away screaming from the whole travel blogging industry. TBU managed to inspire both feelings simultaneously. Or maybe what it really taught me is that in a lot of ways I’m really happy with the way things are. I write this blog because I like writing, and I like connecting with other people. I enjoy recording our travels, our photographs, and our lives as expats. It’s interesting to dabble in ways to earn income off of a website, and if the right opportunities come along in the future I am open to them, but for now the primary benefits of this blog are not monetary, and I’m content with that.