Travel Blog Advice » Communication

A Review Of Networking Awesomely By Colin Wright

Anil P. — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 08:00:48 +0000

The ebook Networking Awesomely by Colin Wright is a well written and entertaining read, designed to teach you how to leverage one of the most powerful blogging tools at your disposal, networking. At around 250 pages, the ebook covers many of the major topics related to networking and how you can tweak your approach to make the most out of many social situations. Networking Awesomely isn’t an ebook about travel blogging specifically, but many of the lessons and advice are easily transferable.

Depth Of Networking

For $20, Networking Awesomely is unlikely to give most travel bloggers any completely new insights or aspects of networking, yet in the pages of its wide reach, the ebook’s strength is in its depth. Networking Awesomely strives to drive home the point that like any other aspect of blogging, it requires planning, setting goals, and maintenance. I was actually surprised at the level of planning Colin, and many of the contributing authors, take their networking methodology.

Networking Awesomely also includes some tips from several other bloggers (I add a few lines as well), writers, and entrepreneurs giving insight into just how connected the travel blogging community is with many other online industries. You might not be aware of how close you are to some of these people online and many are looking to make new contacts – an unadvertised, but yet another advantage of picking up a copy.

Mostly A Fun Ride

Networking Awesomely starts strong and then tends to meander from its focus in the final quarter. Despite the slow ending, Colin takes you on a fun ride of networking in person, making connections online, and his methodology on organizing all of your social contacts. For those of you looking to learn more about the art or breadth of networking, you’ll find Networking Awesomely by Colin Wright an enlightening read.

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How External Links Work And What They Do For Your Travel Blog

Anil P. — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 08:00:30 +0000

Links are what form the social map of your website for both your readers and for search engines. Internal links help search engines and your readers connect as many points from different parts of your travel blog as possible. It’s easy to increase the number of interlinks on each of your travel blog posts if you keep it in mind when you edit your posts and the same is true of external links as well.

How External Links Work

An external link is a link to your travel blog or one of your travel blog posts or pages from another website. External links are strong indicators for Google to whom has authority on the Internet and can greatly increase your search engine results. The basic external link components consist of the following:

Keyword: This is the actual text that is linked. For example Sewri Fort, Mumbai or overnight stay in Papeete, Tahiti. (You’ll notice that the second link isn’t the name of the specific post but my own text.)

In terms of external linking, it’s better SEO practice to use very descriptive keywords when linking out from your website. Keywords like, this is so cool, are much less effective. That’s because the keywords and URL of the linked text are associated with each other by search engines so when giving out link love, using descriptive keywords adds more “punch” or impact.

Follow vs. NoFollow - When linking (externally or internally), you can make the links either “follow” or “nofollow”. The difference is that search engines will ignore “nofollow” links. You can specify the HTML code like this: KEYWORD
HTML that doesn’t specify links as nofollow will by default be regarded as follow links. When linking to other travel blogs or articles you like, it’s standard to give follow links in most cases.

For those of you considering selling text links, Google doesn’t approve of text link ads that are “follow”. To find out why, here’s a post on how to manage text link ads on your travel blog.

Big Fish, Little Fish

One of the easiest ways to understand how search engines (and Google especially) use and evaluate external links in their algorithms is to look at it as a vouching system. While there are many factors, for the sake of simplicity, let’s look at Google Pagerank.

An external link from one site to another is like you vouching for a friend you recommend for a job to a prospective employer. External links work the same way – your link is saying, “hey this is the site to go to if you want to lead people to information on 10 train travel tips.” The higher that Pagerank, the more clout the “vouch” counts for (again, an oversimplification but the basic principle).

The more (follow) external links you have with a specific keyword pointing to your site from other authority sites, the higher your travel blog or post will come up in the search results. This is why people are willing to pay for text link ads and also why Google doesn’t like it.

Giving Is A Good Way To Get

External links to your travel blog or specific posts won’t come out of the blue at first. You’ll need to proactively go after them and one of the best places to start is on your own blog.

Get good links for your travel blog now.
Add your blog to the T-Bag Travel Directory.

It is also important to be generous. Keep in mind of, when typing a post, related posts on other travel blogs or websites you might have come across. If the link is relevant and natural, work a link back into your post. On most blogs (WordPress does it by default) a notification will be send to the site you linked to after the post has gone live. That person might come back to visit your site or even link back to a post of yours in the future.

Search engines also take notice of how much you link out as well as link in. A blog that links out frequently is much more engaged in the eyes of the search engines and can add to your site’s SEO clout.

While typing up a post, you can also leverage social media like Twitter to ask if anyone else might have a related post about the topic you’re writing about. You can use those links to add to your post and potentially make a new online buddy as well.

Be Natural And Useful

It’s not good to link to things for the sake of linking. Make sure that your external links are relevant and useful but also fit naturally into the text. It makes for a much smoother read than by writing: “here is a post about this. Here is a post about that. This is a post that’s similar.” Instead just work the keywords into your sentences or use another way to work them seamlessly into your content. Also, for both your readers and a good SEO, use descriptive keywords. Most people get annoyed with vague links, leading to less clicks from both new and regular readers.

Giving external links is good for your travel blog and the other sites you link to. There’s no need to go overboard or to “catch up” with posts full of links if you forget after a few days. Add a few minutes after editing each post and pull some of your favorites from memory, ask around online, or do a few simple Google searches to find useful external links for your readers.

[photos by: greyloch (little spider-girl), lammikrb (over here), urlgirl (goldfish), MarcinMoga/Lolek (red gift box), alles-schlumpf (linked paperclips)]

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How Republishing Your Articles On Other Sites Can Be Bad For You

Anil P. — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 08:00:01 +0000

Lately I’ve been asked several times by other bloggers if they could republish one or more of my posts or the other way around. They weren’t asking to be malicious and for no other reason than they liked what I had written or were hoping I’d re-post something of theirs. It was very flattering, still, I turned them down. Having your articles republished by other bloggers or websites can negatively impact you and it’s important to weigh the benefits against the disadvantages.

Relative Size And Rank

When you have two identical posts on two separate websites, in terms of search engines and SEO, the page with the higher ranking will take precedence. That means eventually the terms and phrases of a given post will be indexed so the higher ranked page may come up before the original in a given Google search. So if you’re offering one of your original (not guest) posts to another, bigger website, you’ll be at a disadvantage. You’ll end up competing with the site for the key terms in your post.

Potential Exposure

Now, if that other website or program (like Lonely Planet’s BlogSherpa) will greatly increase your exposure and you’re looking for direct traffic then you may gain a potential new reader base in return for what you give up in terms of SEO. It’s something you need to evaluate before joining many of the republishing programs – where do you think more of your traffic will come from in the long term?

Bigger To Smaller – The Power Of Guest Posts

It also doesn’t help your personal brand to have articles re-posted on other websites either. Duplicate content doesn’t benefit the bigger site since now there’s two copies of the same post floating out there; it devalues your travel blog’s brand as well. The smaller site on the other hand is unlikely to see any benefits either as they won’t be able to compete for ranking with the larger site.

A better alternative is for either side to consider guest posting.
Posting an excerpt and linking back to the original article is a better way to highlight posts from other sites you enjoy or find useful.

A guest post also shows off your writing skills to a new audience while giving some original (and search-able) content for the site you’re guesting on.

Content Is Gold

I don’t want to make it seem everything is about benefiting yourself – but when it comes to your content (your travel blog’s most valuable asset) it’s important to make the most out of your work. You don’t want to write an article on your own website, only to compete with it down the line. Create new content to show off your travel writing skills which will help you find new readers and give another site an SEO boost as well.

[photos by: jp.alvarez (looking in the mirror), CmdrFire (hello world)]

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Dealing With Mesofacts On Your Travel Blog

Anil P. — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 08:00:59 +0000

A travel blog is an excellent way to document your own travels and teach others about the places you’ve been. Ideally, if you’ve been good about keeping up on your travel blog, the facts and information you provide is very up to date. When and if there are drastic changes along the way (like Iceland’s bank crisis) you can post something about it which your readers may find useful…but how do you deal with the slow creep of information over time?

What Are Mesofacts?

One of my favorite writers, a computational biologist named Samuel Arbesman, warns us that our reality may be out of date.

Mesofacts are the facts that change neither too quickly nor too slowly, that lie in this difficult-to-comprehend middle, or meso-, scale…For example: What is Earth’s population? I remember learning 6 billion, and some of you might even have learned 5 billion. Well, it turns out it’s about 6.8 billion.

We deal with mesofacts all the time in our personal lives, but what about your travel blog?

Keeping Up With Subtle Change

Mostly travel blogs are terrible with the slow change of facts over time. They’re either records of RTW trips, or posts about New Zealand that aren’t touched upon again. When it comes to travel though, including languages, economies, and cultures, there is a gradual shift which can be of benefit to your blog. One of the most common problems travel bloggers have is coming up with material consistently over the long haul. It’s a good idea to review the material in your archives – going back a year or more – to update posts or revisit political changes.

Some examples of this on foXnoMad are:

The Best Places To Travel On A Weak Dollar (Oct. 2007) vs. The Former Best Places To Travel On A Weak Dollar (Oct. 2008)
The Warning Signs Of Losing That Cheap Destination (Nov. 2008)
foXnoMad’s Travel Predictions For 2009 and Look Back On Those 2009 Predictions, foXnoMad’s Travel Predictions for 2010

Revisiting The Past

One of the ways you can keep up with mesofacts aside from revisiting your archives once a month (March 2009 for example in March 2010) could be to do a series on mesofacts or once a month or predict how they’ll shift and revisit your guesses a year or so down the line. I really want to write about what a great deal Iceland still is, but that’s getting harder to justify as the economy is well on its path to recovery.

Updating your mesofacts can change how you think about the world. Do you know the percentage of people in the world who use mobile phones? In 1997, the answer was 4 percent. By 2007, it was nearly 50 percent. The fraction of people who are mobile phone users is the kind of fact you might read in a magazine and quote at a cocktail party. But years later the number you would be quoting would not just be inaccurate, it would be seriously wrong.

That same phenomena occurs anytime someone does a Google search and finds one of your older travel blog posts that needs updating. Typically when this happens the reader will leave to find more current information on other sites. You can keep your travel blog accurate and convince potential new readers to stick around by linking at the top of older posts to your newer, updated articles that are on top of the mesofacts. The longer your travel blog is around the more you’ll have to deal with this so best to shift and evolve for the 980 million…er, 1 billion people online.

Next week I’ll be writing more about mesofacts and travel on foXnoMad. If you want to learn more about the nitty-gritty of mesofacts, check out Mesofacts.org. Also, if you love math, science, and random data about the world around us I highly recommend Samuel’s Arbesman’s blog.

[photos by: ....Tim, p0psicle, kevindooley]

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A Few Good Tweets For Travelers To Learn About Twitter

Anil P. — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 08:00:05 +0000

Several of you have been asking about how to use Twitter in relation with your travel blogs. I’d like to point you to some resources to get you going if you’re new to Twitter and to reexamine your tweeting habits if you aren’t the most appropriate way possible – in a series of tweets of 140 characters or less.

Get a copy of @AlmostFearless ‘s eBook Twitter For Travelers. You can read @TravelBlissful ‘s review to learn more.
As @Heathercowper suggests, ask yourself – why should anyone follow you on Twitter?
Read these 25 Twitter tips from other travelers. Check out the comments section too, lots of great discussion there.
Be personal and tweet about travel, other bloggers, and a *bit*about yourself.
Time your tweets well – morning in the US Eastern time is good for links/blog posts.
Use bit.ly to track clicks. You’ll be better able to see what tweets are more popular and why.
Consider TweetDeck – I didn’t like it at first but find it very useful. Also integrates with bit.ly.
Get over your fears and learn about StumbleUpon. Start the easiest way, tweet occasionally from su.pr.
Use Twitter to jump start your travel blog and harness the power of the tweetup.
Don’t over-think following people. Follow people you like and start slowly, you don’t want to be following 800 and only have 10 followers.

I’d also suggest taking a look to see how others are tweeting, but it’s important to establish your own style and routine. Make your tweets useful, interesting, and efficient and you can easily build up a nice following.

[photo by: futurowoman]

Using Twitter To Jump Start Your Travel Blog

The Power Of The Tweetup

Anil P. — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 08:00:28 +0000

Travel bloggers are among a physically shifting community and most are adept at social networking online. Take those skills and apply them to a powerful way to connect with other travelers – a tweetup.

Embrace Twitter

Next week I’ll be posting a number of resources to get you started with Twitter but you don’t have to be a Twitter guru to do something in the virtual world you do in ‘real’ life all the time. Talk to people and get to know them – it’s as simple as that. Twitter is a powerful tool and has become almost essential if you’re a travel blogger.

What’s A Tweetup?

Sometimes we forget that all of those little icons we speak to everyday actually have real people behind them. A tweetup is when you use Twitter to meet a few other people on Twitter at a common location. Whether you’re traveling actively or have a home base, you can see if anyone is available for some coffee (or a beer) from time to time. You don’t need thousands of followers either to do it either. Make connections with the people who do follow you and never take the human element out of Twitter or anything else you do online. You can also search for other tweet ups that might be happening nearby or where you might be traveling.

Don’t prevent yourself from trying to organize a tweetup by worrying nobody will respond. Start in a small circle and work your way outwards.

Connections

I’ve been talking quite a bit about connections and the reason a tweet up is so powerful is because it’s the best way to connect with other people and learn more about them. In person. You see it happen all the time, in hostels, offices, and schools. When people meet face to face it creates a bond that can’t be accomplished online only. You’ll get to know people, hear their stories, and tell a little bit about yours as well. As a travel blogger you’re bound to find travelers coming to a city nearby where you are.

Don’t Be Shy

I’m a pretty introverted person and a bit shy in unfamiliar surroundings myself, but chances are that so are some of the other travelers you’ll be meeting. Travelers are typically a friendly group and they usually have plenty of interesting stories to tell you about. Tweetups in active places help too so there is enough going on around you to take off the edge or pressure. After the first few minutes though the anxiety will fade and you’ll be having fun.

Safety

People have asked me in the past whether I feel tweetups are safe. I do because I believe people are generally good and I’m not scared meeting people in public places. Also you’ll probably have an idea of who you’ll be meeting too based on their online personality.

Where To Start – Ask and Notice

Keep tabs on where people are tweeting from and if they may be headed your way. The tweeters who seem interesting or you’ve gotten to know online might be in town soon so ask if they’d like to meet up for a bit while they’re passing through. Don’t be shy and hop on in. Look for hash tags of the tweet up (i.e. #dcthh) and follow the conversation. Once you’re at a tweetup more are sure to follow and you can plan them on the spot.

That’s how I had the pleasure of meeting @RTWDave (GoBackpacking) and @20sTravel (Twenty-Something Travel) among several others recently in Washington DC.

A Few Resources

Still looking for more information on organizing a tweetup?

Mashable: How To Organize A Successful Tweetup
How Tweetups Work
How To Host A Tweetup

You might be a bit hesitant to join, organize, or look for tweetups but after the first one you’ll realize they’re fun and a great way to meet people. A critical part of developing a successful travel blog is by cultivating your persona – your blog is tied with you personally – and there is no better way to show off your personality than in person.

[photos by: jeremy.wilburn, netzkobold, tibchris, Squonk11]

A Few Good Tweets For Travelers To Learn About Twitter

Balancing Travel Blogging And Your Personal Relationships

Anil P. — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 08:00:23 +0000

No matter how efficient you are or great your writing is, maintaining a regular travel blog is very time consuming. Whether you travel full time or have a day job you will continually be balancing the time you spend on your blog and everyone else. Your spouse, significant others, and friends may have difficulty understanding the rigors of blogging, networking, and managing a travel blog.

A big part of that is because you don’t realize how much work a travel blog is until your site grows a bit, you’re spending hours everyday answering emails, exchanging links, and using social networks to expand your travel blog.

Realizing The Wave

At some point if you stick with your travel blog you may begin to feel the “wave”. That’s the moment when you find your travel blog is causing more stress not only on yourself but on your personal relationships. You want to go out for dinner with a friend, hang out with your husband, and do all sorts of things but…you can’t. That is when you get hit with the wave – and it comes in the form of stress.

Set Limits and A Schedule

The single most important thing I’ve done for any of my travel blogs is to set myself a blogging schedule. I treat all of my blogging like a business with defined times for writing, social networking, and everything else. By doing so I end up with more free time and enjoying my friends and family when I’m with them. It goes both ways though, when it’s time to blog it’s like sitting in front of a computer in any corporate office – time for business.

Separate your travel blog from yourself and create a schedule. That way you can focus 100% on the task at hand. By setting deadlines for yourself you’ll also force yourself to get more done in less time.

Ride The Wave

When you set your blogging schedule, try to keep in mind some of your personal commitments. Schedule around the things you want to do or have planned in your personal life so you’re not struggling to finish a post 5 minutes before your best friend’s wedding. Add variety to the length of your posts, take smart breaks, and use some of these quick post ideas.

In a company, the boss gives their employees time off. You’re the boss of your travel blog so it’s your responsibility to be good to your workers – in other words yourself.

Bring Them Along

Tell your family and friends some of your travel blogging goals and objects to help them quantify what it is you do sitting in front of a computer typing away so long. It might even work that someone you know wants to help contribute with written or photographic content, or behind the scenes with design or something as simple as signing up for your newsletter.

Some Things You Won’t Always Avoid, and That’s OK

Inevitably your travel blog is going to, from time to time, put a dent in your social life. You’ll just have to accept that unless you happen to be an exceptional planner that can do no wrong. Accept that there are some things you won’t be able to avoid.

Put boundaries on your blog so it doesn’t start consuming the other parts of what make you happy or prevent you from having fun with those around you.

[photos by: Mattong, Michael Dawes]

Selecting Smart Breaks From Travel Blogging

How To Generate More Discussion and Comments On Your Travel Blog

Anil P. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:00:55 +0000

Many new travel bloggers are often discouraged by the lack of comments and discussions on their posts. Yet there are a few ways ways you can foster discussions immediately on your travel blog and encourage reluctant readers to leave a comment from time to time.

Develop Your Persona

A point I made very clear in the basics of building a successful travel blog part 1 was how important it is to develop your persona on your travel blog. People would rather have discussions with a person, the author of a travel blog, rather than just an anonymous website. Adding your picture somewhere (like the sidebar or about page) will go a long way. Open yourself up a bit so your readers can get to know you.

Start Commenting Yourself

There are several places you can get a good list of the travel blogs out there (here, here, and here) and get links back to your site at the same time. Add the travel blogs you find interesting to your RSS reader and start following those sites. Whenever you see posts that interest you, are about places you’ve been, or you enjoy reading, let the author know by leaving a meaningful comment.

When deciding whether to comment or not to comment, avoid generics like “nice post” or “that’s great”. You’ll find that when you comment the favor is usually returned by fellow travel bloggers and you can make nice friendships this way. If you’re worried about coming up with comments don’t be shy, the more familiar you get with each author the easier is gets.

Highlight Comments

One of the best outlets you have is your travel blog. If you like comments devote some time each month to highlight a few of them. The last day of each month on my primary travel blog foXnoMad, I do a post featuring the best comments of the month. One thing you can do if you don’t have too many comments on your blog is to highlight those you’ve enjoyed on other travel blogs. It’s also a good opportunity to link out to both the commenter (if they have a blog) as well as the travel blog the comment is on.

You can also point out your most commented posts from time to time.

Use The Subscribe To Comments Plugin

Those of you on WordPress should install the subscribe to comments plugin. What this little plugin does is add a check box underneath each post that will email commenters anytime there is a new comment. It’s a good way to keep the discussion going since often people who comment never return or notice someone replied to their comment. I also find that it helps encourage you to comment on other blogs when you know you’ll be notified of a response.

Reply To Your Commenters

Taking the time to reply to the comments on your blog is one of the best ways to generate discussions on your travel blog. A discussion takes at least two right? Replying to the comments on your blog is a powerful way to connect with your readers, especially if you’re using the subscribe to comments plugin.

Destinations vs. General Travel Topics

There was a bit of discussion a few weeks back on Twitter on why posts about specific destinations don’t tend to generate as many comments as general ones. My guess is that writing about a specific place narrows your audience and therefore the number of people who might ultimately comment. I wouldn’t recommend not writing about destinations simply for the sake of comments but to vary your content from the general to more specific from time to time.

You can also make a destination post appeal to a wider audience by focusing on a particular aspect of a place rather than trying to talk about everything there is to know. (Breaking up your posts is also a good way to keep your travel blog going when you’re too busy traveling to write.)

Some Other Ways To Generate Discussion

Use Twitter to jump start your travel blog.
Title some posts in the form of a question.
Be controversial.

Keep in mind however that generating discussions on your blog will take time and some patience on your part. Eventually you’ll learn with the ebb and flow of each post what works for your particular travel blog. My first 1 year of travel blogging I wasn’t getting consistent comments on foXnoMad but I was also just waiting for comments to appear on my anonymous travel blog.

Don’t get discouraged and be an active part of the discussions on your site. Your regular readers visit your travel blog to connect with you so be available to them. Remember leaving comments on other sites is a good way to to build discussions on your own blog. So tell me, how do (or don’t) you encourage the comments on your travel blog?

[photos by: eye2eye, premasagar, Marco Bellucci]

Why People Leave Spam Comments On Your Travel Blog