I have been promoting the benefits of the good ship Blogging to travel companies for long enough now to anticipate the various obstacles which will sink the project before we even cast off from the dock.
The biggest objection is often time: staff don’t have time to blog, they don’t have time to gather the raw material together, they don’t have time to monitor the comments, they simply don’t have time to learn anything new.
And that’s fair enough when you are head-down every day, selling product and looking after your clients.
But everyone reading this will be familiar enough with the various arguments for a travel company blogging its brand or destination or product. There are just too many benefits in terms of conversational marketing, customer feedback, search engine presence, product promotion and travel pr to ignore.
That is why it must be worth persevering with the idea. And that is also why I have created The Travel Blog as one solution to this we-don’t-have-time argument.
The Travel Blog is an all-in-one blogging product which provides a travel company with a fully designed, hosted, researched, written, moderated and optimised blog, created and maintained by a writer/marketer who will live and breathe their brand.
The idea of an embedded blogger – your own pet travel writer, if you like – may not be perfect and yes, there could be questions as to authenticity and transparency here.
But I am not going to pretend to be anybody’s CEO, I will do it as honestly as I can and, besides, for some travel companies, this could offer the perfect entry into the new media landscape as well as a stratospheric boost to their Google rankings.
What do you think? Comments are very welcome. So are referrals.
{ 18 comments }
What a great idea. Good luck with it.
Are you going to be able to offer the same posts to multiple blogs and let potential customers choose / bid – or are you going to be 100% new content for each of your customers. (i.e. are you creating a travel blog post marketplace – or are you selling “time” to write and manage).
Because I wonder what happens when you have multiple blogs in the same destination – or doing the same activity…. it may be tough. Besides, more fun creating a marketplace than selling time (in my opinion!)
Would love to talk about this with you…. and give you a bit of coverage on my blog.
Thanks Alex
First of all, I would not take on competing clients. I could happily have an upmarket hotel, an airline, a tour operator and a destination without worry of conflict.
And I am definitely not creating generic posts for auction. I am selling my time and experience to research and write original blog posts for each client and which tie in with their particular blog strategy.
It is something I did last year for a couple of (non-travel) clients. We started out talking about them doing it themselves but in the end, it made much more sense for me to do it for them. Consultancy is fine: but sometimes it’s better just to roll your sleeves up and get on with the job.
Delighted to talk any time: I’ll ping you a mail.
What a great idea. Good luck with it.
Are you going to be able to offer the same posts to multiple blogs and let potential customers choose / bid – or are you going to be 100% new content for each of your customers. (i.e. are you creating a travel blog post marketplace – or are you selling “time” to write and manage).
Because I wonder what happens when you have multiple blogs in the same destination – or doing the same activity…. it may be tough. Besides, more fun creating a marketplace than selling time (in my opinion!)
Would love to talk about this with you…. and give you a bit of coverage on my blog.
Thanks Alex
First of all, I would not take on competing clients. I could happily have an upmarket hotel, an airline, a tour operator and a destination without worry of conflict.
And I am definitely not creating generic posts for auction. I am selling my time and experience to research and write original blog posts for each client and which tie in with their particular blog strategy.
It is something I did last year for a couple of (non-travel) clients. We started out talking about them doing it themselves but in the end, it made much more sense for me to do it for them. Consultancy is fine: but sometimes it’s better just to roll your sleeves up and get on with the job.
Delighted to talk any time: I’ll ping you a mail.
Good stuff Neil, from a tech point of view do you intend on using WordPress MU to run this?
The other thing about blogging is the blogs can end up being better than the actual website. Point in case is this one:
http://www.discovertheworldblogs.com/
Their main website is a nightmare to navigate and the white text on black is troublesome. The blog on the other hand is fresher.
I wonder if by using blogging their case, it will inform the creative direction of their main site?
If not, then it should.
A blogger-for-hire: interesting concept. The big challenge will be convincing potential clients that you’re able to live, drink and eat the brand well enough so you can reflect their culture, passion, strategic goals, etc. Still, if it convinces some companies to climb into the blogosphere, it can only be a good thing.
Mark
Hi Garri
I will certainly use WordPress though not necessarily the multi user version.
As you can see from that example you gave, Typepad was my first choice when I helped Discover the World set up their blogs a couple of years ago but I much prefer WP now.
Please don’t tell Clive his blogs look better than his main site. He’s spent a lot of money on it!
Thanks Mark
I guess I also might have trouble living and breathing the brand if it was, say, a caravan park in the West Midlands. However, I’d like to think that those travel companies which are a) successful and b) willing to open themselves up to the market like this have a good story to tell and I will have no trouble throwing myself into the task at hand.
Not that there’s anything wrong with caravan parks in the West Midlands.
Good stuff Neil, from a tech point of view do you intend on using WordPress MU to run this?
The other thing about blogging is the blogs can end up being better than the actual website. Point in case is this one:
http://www.discovertheworldblogs.com/
Their main website is a nightmare to navigate and the white text on black is troublesome. The blog on the other hand is fresher.
I wonder if by using blogging their case, it will inform the creative direction of their main site?
If not, then it should.
A blogger-for-hire: interesting concept. The big challenge will be convincing potential clients that you’re able to live, drink and eat the brand well enough so you can reflect their culture, passion, strategic goals, etc. Still, if it convinces some companies to climb into the blogosphere, it can only be a good thing.
Mark
Hi Garri
I will certainly use WordPress though not necessarily the multi user version.
As you can see from that example you gave, Typepad was my first choice when I helped Discover the World set up their blogs a couple of years ago but I much prefer WP now.
Please don’t tell Clive his blogs look better than his main site. He’s spent a lot of money on it!
Thanks Mark
I guess I also might have trouble living and breathing the brand if it was, say, a caravan park in the West Midlands. However, I’d like to think that those travel companies which are a) successful and b) willing to open themselves up to the market like this have a good story to tell and I will have no trouble throwing myself into the task at hand.
Not that there’s anything wrong with caravan parks in the West Midlands.
Neil, the DTW blog is a great case study on how to use blogging effectively. They’re good folk too and I mean Clive no disrespect about their main site as it was probably made a few years ago when ‘we’ knew no better
(I include myself in the ‘we’ as a fellow business owner)
Hopefully Neil, you will help companies such Kon Tiki avoid hiring firms who ‘market’ them via blogs like this one:
http://www.blogtext.org/TikiHutte/article/17447...
…or even worse, this one:
http://tikihutte.wordpress.com/
These are just 2 examples of a recent blog ‘campaign’ by the same ‘marketing’ company
Neil, the DTW blog is a great case study on how to use blogging effectively. They’re good folk too and I mean Clive no disrespect about their main site as it was probably made a few years ago when ‘we’ knew no better
(I include myself in the ‘we’ as a fellow business owner)
Hopefully Neil, you will help companies such Kon Tiki avoid hiring firms who ‘market’ them via blogs like this one:
http://www.blogtext.org/TikiHutte/article/17447.html
…or even worse, this one:
http://tikihutte.wordpress.com/
These are just 2 examples of a recent blog ‘campaign’ by the same ‘marketing’ company
This came to my attention today, quite relevant I feel:
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3628539
This came to my attention today, quite relevant I feel:
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3628539
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