Let’s Enter the Blogosphere

 

Everyday the Internet invents, morphs and changes.  A new payment tool appears and changes the way we get paid (Paypal), traditional advertising morphs and the little guy can afford to market his wares (Google Adwords) or communities spring up and change the way we exchange information (blogging).  One of our greatest challenges as travel writers is to keep abreast of the potential of the Internet and use it to our benefit.

 

So, now we have the Blogosphere to explore and I dare say it may be all the adventure that we need for a while.  Blogging is considered revolutionary. Now that the masses can self-publish, it is  being compared to the printing press. Virtual communities they are expressing their opinions and companies are harnassing problem solving capacity from the blog community and personalities are being seriously affected by the information distributed in the most popular blogs. 

 

Blogs have started to go mainstream and both blogs and their contents have become newsworthy and powerful.  Consider that a blog about Trent Lott, the then Senate Majority Leader, started the controversy over his comment that Strom Thurmond would have made a good president.  Thurmond used to preach white supremacy; Lott is no longer Majority Leader.  Dan Rather, a news anchor with 30+ years of experience, was tossed about by a blog that questioned the validity of his news sources and blogging was the newest information distribution vehicle during the last US Presidential Elections. 

 

But, how does blogging affect us as writers?  For starters, they are a type of web presence.  Blogs are easy to set up.  Tripod and Bravenet among others have simple blog creation tools that let ANYONE be up and online in minutes.  While only a limited percentage of travel writers have their own websites (html-phobia?), travel bloggers can be up, running and self-published in no time.  Blog search engines are organizing and categorizing this information making it easy to search for destination journals, discussions on how to write and personal opinions on organized trips.  The latter even works as a type of rating system about a company and its product or service.   As an example, do a blog search for Travelwriters.com, a popular travel writing web site, and take a look at the sites it returns.  The Andrew Hempstead and Help for Travel Writers blog [http://travelwriters.blogspot.com/2004/12/andrew-hempstead-and-help-for-travel.html] argues the usefulness of Travelwriters.com for beginning writers.  Others, such as A Writer's Life blog makes reference to discussions on Travelwriters.com’s bulletin board.  If Travelwriters.com owners read these blogs they can begin to understand what some of their readers like about, need from or can’t stand about their site allowing them to deliver more of what their users want.

 

Aside from getting to see how others view the value of your website and their opinion of your service or product, you can also generate traffic from blogs TO your website and you can get free content.

 

Yes, you heard me, free content.  Start a blog related to your website.  As people contribute to it they are creating content related to your site and if other blogs discuss your site and link to it, it is a type of free marketing.  You also can solicit contributions from your bloggers to resolve a problem, a type of free development.

 

Take this article/blog as an example.  It is part of my website as the root address begins “writingfromeurope.tripod.com/”.  If you give me your opinion on this article via the blog or exchange ideas with all readers about the usefulness of blogs for travel writers, relevant, related content is being created on my website.  Since content and key word frequency are part of the ranking formula when the search engines crawl my site, there will be more of both next time it is crawled.  But a lot of the content it will crawl will have been created by you.

 

I could also search the Blogosphere for sites that deal with a subject mentioned on my website; Writing for European publications, ezines, blogs and travel photography to mention a few.  Entering into the discussion I could ,just as I did here, link back to my own website creating my own incoming links!  Not to mention the bloggers who are talking about your product thus linking to your site.  Can’t happen to you?  Why not, it happen to Travelwriters.com.

 

Now, let’s put our virtual heads together to solve one last problem that will benefit us all.  How can blogs and blogging help us generate income?  Blog your ideas here and we can triumph the blogosphere together.

 

 

Your travel blogs:

http://travelight.my-expressions.com

http://www.richarduhlhorn.blogspot.com

 

Washington Post Travel Blog listing:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/daily/graphics/blog_121204.html?referrer=email

 

create a blog:

www.blogger.com

www.tripod.com

www.bravenet.com

 

Blog Search Engines:

Daypop.com

Blogdex.com

BlogPulse.com

 

 

Ref – The Power of Us: www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_25/b3938601.htm

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