This is a guest post by By Sheila Scarborough who writes about Tourism and Social Media at Sheila’s Guide to the Good Stuff and Social Media Training for Tourism Professionals at Tourism Currents.
Let’s say you are a businessperson, or maybe involved in travel industry public relations or marketing. You’ve heard enough about social media and travel bloggers to think that perhaps you’d like to start connecting with a few of them. You know, out in “the wild” online. You do some careful, targeted searches for bloggers on Google Blog Search, you check out some of the members of the Travel Blog Exchange and you are agog at the in-depth list of all sorts of travel bloggers on the Alltop Travel Channel.
Once you have a short list of interesting candidates, how do you know which ones are of reasonable quality? Here are a few suggestions, keeping in mind how subjective it can be to judge someone’s personal writing in a blog.
Look for lively communities
Do a quick review of some of the most recent blog posts, then poke through the categories/archives a bit, to get a feel for writing style, breadth of topics covered, how he/she organizes their thoughts and most importantly, whether there’s good engagement with readers in the comments. A lively community around the blog, big or small, is important.
Use of multimedia
Look for good writing (grammar doesn’t have to be perfect, but excessively sloppy tells you something) plus positive interaction with readers. Use of multimedia like photos/video/audio is a plus, and frankly is becoming a must. Look for fairly consistent posting (can be 5X a week or once a week, just consistent.)
Look at web stats
The downloadable free Google toolbar will tell you a blog’s Google Page Rank, which is good to know but not necessarily an indicator of whether it’s a “quality blog,” especially if the blog is rather new and hasn’t had time to build up the longevity and inbound links that are critical to Page Rank. Try running the blog URL through HubSpot’s Website Grader for more stats.
Impact of the blogger off the blog
Here is what is important to remember: more and more, a blogger’s impact is also measured by his/her reputation and contributions OFF of the blog. Google author names to see what else they’re doing on the Web. Does he/she have photos on Flickr? Video on YouTube or another video channel? How do they interact on Twitter? Do they have a Facebook personal page? A Facebook Fan/Business Page? Do they have a professional LinkedIn profile? A Web site that showcases some of their other sites or interests? Web-wide impact is growing in importance, and is an indicator of a blogger’s overall influence.
Bottom line, though….do you love their style? Do you love their outlook? Get to know them, whether their “stats” measure up right away or not. Things happen fast online, and quality always counts.
Establish a human connection
The blessing of the Web is that you can pretty easily access a ton of info about writers/bloggers before you engage; that isn’t as easy in the print world and it’s a major advantage of reaching out to wired communicators. Leave comments on blog posts that particularly resonate with you. Become a reader of their work – don’t just pepper them with pitch emails and press releases.
Establish a real human relationship; it’s the smart thing to do, both online and off.
Well said. I’m not in the tourism or travel business, though I do pen observations about expat life.
I follow other bloggers too, and I find the ones that resonate for me through all kinds of channels, but not necessarily just the mainstream ones like Google. Twitter is especially useful, as I choose the people I follow, so their recommendations give me pre-qualified leads.
But all the other guidepoints you list are spot on. Thank you for crystallising these important points.
A good summary to read for bloggers as well. Must admit, I esp. like the bottom line (style before stats)
THAT is a great post, Sheila. I’ve heard that question come up several times now, and this piece really gets to the heart of the question with some good and actionable advice. Thanks!
Two other good resources for finding travel blogs is the Ivesp.com list of Top 150 Travel Blogs: http://www.invesp.com/blog-rank/General_Travel
and TravelBlogSites.com weekly list of Top 100 Travel Blogs.
Thanks very much for the feedback and comments, and to Darren for all of his work on the TravelBlogCamp.
You’ve covered the key points but I think an additional thing that should be considered is the amount and proportion of traffic a blog gets from search engines.
If a potential sponsor is a hotel, city or regional tourist board, it’s positive that people are finding useful destination information on the blog via the search engines and this may count for just as much if not more than a community and band of loyal readers.
So I would suggest that in this cicumstance you look at the proportion of search engine traffic v direct traffic and also look for evidence that the blogger is SEO savvy, is using key words and tags etc appropriately on their blog and other media sites
Sheila,
This is a great summary for PR people but I also appreciate you going over these basics as they are helpful for bloggers, too. As a long-term travel writer and dedicated travel blogger, I want PR folks to know that they are not venturing into “the wild” when they choose to work with bloggers, rather they are choosing to work with writers who are extremely passionate about their subject matter.
I’m looking forward to following your tips and links.
Thanks!
Melanie Renzulli