Following on from the great feedback on the first Travel Learning Camp I am organising another one on the 22 April at the Chambers in Leeds. This time, I’ll be hosting the camp with my good friend and fellow Travel Blogger, Karen Bryan from Europe a la Carte.

Between us we have 10 years of experience in blogging plus a few years using social media to promote our brands.

There are 10 places available, first come, first served.

The Learning Camp starts at 11 am and finishes at 3 pm. Giving you plenty to get to and from Leeds. The first Travel Learning camp had attendee’s from as far as London; so, don’t let it put you off that we are ooop north! It’s only a 2.5 hour train journey here, and if you get two single tickets, and book in advance, you can find some bargain deals.

Contact us here for more information

Post from: Travel BlogCamp 2009

This morning I wanted to share with you, how I have engaged with a new community for a project that I am busy working on. When I started using Twitter I never had to promote that I was using this network to promote Travel Rants; people were either attracted by the branding (ranting man! ) or knew me from the blog and followed me.

Interacting with people on Twitter

So, when I started working on My Life in Leeds, the challenge was to engage with people who were my targeted audience and get them following and interacting with me on Twitter.

I like my branding, but I do not think it is as striking as Travel Rants, so I had to sit down and think of a way to get people talking about the site.

Creating a fun way to promote a site

Then one day it came to me. I am promoting my home city, a city that I spend most of my life in, so, why not share what the city has to offer (and the bad bits too!) with people on Twitter.

So for the past two weeks I have used my mobile phone, Twitpic and Dabr (a mobile twitter client) to take photos and then ask the people following on Twitter, where am I? The response at first was small, but then more and more people started to join in.

Every day I post one or two new photos and ask them tell me where they think I am in the city, this got people interacting with me (and visiting the site) and I have found during this period that my Twitter followers has doubled.

Make Twitter fun

Local’s love that they can play the game and test their knowledge of the city and others love looking at photos of Leeds, especially, if they have followed me because they intend to visit.

It’s such a simple game, and idea. So, if you are marketing a destination, or have a blog on specific destinations, think about how you can use Twitter to make it more engaging, but more importantly, fun!

Using Twitter for discussing events

I find that I am using Co-Tweet more as an online Twitter client because I can track clicks to my site easier and also manage searches. For multiple accounts it makes life easier too.

It’s the searching and getting involved on Twitter that has helped raise some of the attention in recent weeks. As a destination many events are happening, so I write about them on my Daily Leeds Blog, and then, interact (without being pushy!) to tell them about my site. I have not yet to come across anyone who has ignored me or told me to go away!

Post from: Travel BlogCamp 2009

Last week I launched the first Travel Learning Camp, it was an interesting experience and the feedback has been fantastic. What I liked about the session was that everyone participated and shared their experiences with social media. As with every travel event that I have been to in the last 12 months, Twitter was discussed at length.

Other topics discussed included:

» Consumer interaction
» How to create an authority blog
» Social media strategies and ideas
» Boosting engagement among followers
» Social media measurement tools

Rather than just sharing my own experiences it was a great opportunity for travel companies to network and interact with each other and learn about their experiences with social media. Everyone who attended was happy to share and I cannot remember any time where we stopped talking, other than to eat.

Lessons learnt

As with all of new events they were lessons learnt. Next time I would like to make use of the large screen/Wi-Fi facilitates so that attendee’s can talk about their blogs and communities and allow others to critique. Most of the attendee’s thought it would be good to extend it to five hours.

Good mixture of people

The session had a good mixture of people, from Travel PR and law, adventure travel/TEFL and flight specialist. I shared my experiences but I learnt a lot more from everyone else. The four hours went very quickly and The Chambers, our venue for the day was excellent. Thanks to all of the staff who helped on the day.

Thanks to the attendee’s for their support.

Stuart – Around the World Flights
Susie – BGB
Honor – i-to-i
Clare – Pannone
Adrian – Umpf

Future Learning Camp’s

If you would like to know about other travel events that I am planning in the future please sign up to the Travel BlogCamp newsletter and you’ll be the first to know about them. If you would like to know more about the Learning Camp then please feel free to contact me.

Post from: Travel BlogCamp 2009

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.

Post from: Travel BlogCamp 2009

It’s Thursday already so that means it’s time for me to share with your useful blog posts, blogs, and video on blogging and social media. Every week I will be linking to great content for those of you wanting to learn new skills. Subscribe to my RSS feed to keep up-to-date.

Here’s my selection for this week’s Learning Thursday post.

A collection of internet marketing posts from 2009
Defeating Procrastination: Become a Finisher
The Year of the Social Business
Ideas to inspire your blog content
130 Marketing ideas for 2010
Super charge your blog in 2010

Social media revolution

Useful blogs

Hotel Marketing Strategies
Tourism Keys
Chris Garrett
Ittybiz

So there you have it; a collection of great content, a video, and a collection of useful blogs. Feel free to leave comments on good learning material and subscribe to my RSS feed so you can keep up with future posts like this published every Thursday.

Travel Learning Camp kicks-off

On the 25 February the Learning Camp will take place. It is an informal event in my home city of Leeds at a fantastic venue called the Chambers in the city centre. I have two places available so please contact me if you would like more information.

Post from: Travel BlogCamp 2009