Travel BlogCamp

We are getting towards the end of the Blogger Q&A interviews, and for travel companies it’s a good opportunity to understand about the experiences, the ups and downs that bloggers face. Okay, so some of us do it for the love of writing, some do it to earn revenue and some just want to rant. Here I interview Caitlin Fitzsimmons of Roaming Tales.

Please introduce yourself and your blog

I am originally from Sydney but I spent the past five years living in London and recently moved to San Francisco. The first time I lived abroad was as an exchange student in Germany when I was fifteen and I also spent time in Costa Rica and Guyana as a volunteer on community development projects in my early twenties. I am proud to be Australian but I also value my international perspective – I see myself as a citizen of the world.

In my professional life I am a journalist. I love to write and take photographs and I’m never short of an opinion or three so blogging is a perfect outlet for me. Roaming Tales combines two of my interests – travel and food.

I travel a lot for work and pleasure and I enjoy trying new food around the world, as well as cooking at home. I’m also greatly interested in some of the social and environmental issues connected with the travel industry and food production and my blog reflects that – hopefully not in a boring way!

The design of my site easily separates my food content (published under the banner ‘The Gooseberry Fool’) and my travel content (‘Roaming Tales’), though there is quite a bit of overlap between the two. I also republish my professional food and travel articles, and run occasional guest posts from other writers.

My aim for Roaming Tales is to inspire, entertain and inform.

What tips would you give someone wanting to start a blog for the first time

Get the basics right first – if possible, register your own domain and host it yourself as it’s easier to do this from the outset than port it later. Give some thought to what you are trying to achieve with the blog and work out a game plan for your first three months. If you want a personal blog with a limited audience you can write on anything and everything but if you want to build a following, then it pays to focus on a niche.

Don’t neglect the marketing side of blogging – it’s a myth that great content will automatically find an audience – but wait until there is some substance. I would wait until there is a bank of five posts before you start marketing it, through social media and your own networks, and by reaching out to other bloggers. Respond to commenters and try to cultivate community.

Don’t feel that you need to post every day but try to post consistently on a regular basis. I’ve found Problogger.net to be an excellent resource if you want to take blogging seriously.

What have been the biggest things you’ve had to learn about blogging

I started blogging partly to educate myself about it and it’s certainly been a tremendous learning experience. As a professional writer, I think this aspect was already fairly strong. My steepest learning curve was with the technical side – I self host using wordpress.org software and I have had to learn how to manipulate code, install widgets, even deal with a hacking incident. Also, it’s very gratifying seeing the traffic reports for my site and seeing how well different posts perform and why. I try to use that information when deciding what to write and how to promote it.

What are your experiences with Twitter; both positive and negative

Mostly positive. I am following a great bunch of people who give me great insights, links and feedback every day. As a blogger, I’ve found Twitter to be an essential tool for promoting my blog and networking with other bloggers. I have written extensively about how bloggers can use Twitter for the Media 140 blog (see part one and part two).

On the negative side, it can be addictive so I need to consciously monitor and curb my Twitter usage. Also, there have been some problems with spammers on Twitter, though this has not affected me too greatly.

Do you think ‘blogs’ will be called blogs in 5 years from now

They’ve been called ‘blogs’ for about a decade now so I’d say the name has stuck. Of course, I expect blogging to evolve as technology develops and people find new and interesting ways applications for it. The basic concept of people being able to publish their own material online is a long-term shift that is here to stay. However, I hope that journalism is able to reinvent itself and its business models too as a functioning Fourth Estate plays an essential role in democracy and blogging is not a direct replacement.