Category: Blogging

Last week I spoke at the North American Travel Journalist Association conference in Anaheim. It was the first real travel writer conference I had ever attended and I got to meet many veteran travel writers who have been plying their craft for decades.

Being there and talking to travel journalists got me thinking of how what I do is different from what they have been doing for years. Perhaps the biggest difference is interaction with your readers. As a blogger, my readers can comment on anything I write knowing that I will read it. I get emails all the time from readers asking questions and I will often meet with readers in cities I visit for drinks or a meal.

You never see this sort of behavior with people who work on print or TV. If you sent a message to someone who worked for a newspaper to meet up and have drinks, they would probably think you are crazy. I haven’t meet a single writer who has ever met up with one of their readers or even has had an invitation from one. There is a very large chasm between writers and their readers. There is almost nothing in the way of feedback, comments and god forbid, actually meeting your readers.

Being an individual rather than someone who is works behind a larger brand name makes us very approachable, and that is our greatest strength. The fact that people think they can email us directly to ask a question or they can meet us in person is by far the most powerful thing about blogging. That personal connection makes us more trusted and listened to.

What audience we have, we had to earn. It wasn’t given to us by a gatekeeper at a publication and it wont disappear the moment they decide to downsize.

I’ve hammered this point home dozens of times in discussions with travel industry people. They assume that because something is glossy and has a big budget that people have a stronger relationship with it. It is higher “quality”. The problem is, the exact opposite is true. If it was true, magazines and newspapers wouldn’t be in the trouble they are in. You can’t interact with print. You can’t click with print. Pound for pound, a blogger will have a much more loyal audience than a print publication. Companies will toss 5 or even 6 figure ad buys at magazines which have an audience smaller than some blogs. They would never consider an equivalent ad buy with blogger of equal size.

This assumption that print is more powerful is absolutely wrong. The power of personality is the reason why people know the names of the bloggers they follow. It is why they follow them. The power of personality is what makes bloggers influential.

This familiarity, however, blows up in our face when we deal with the business world. Even if you have an audience larger than a print magazine, you wont be given the same amount of respect. Even though many bloggers are running small businesses, it is assumed that the influence and power of a business is reflected in its size. If you are just one person, you can’t be that big of a deal.

I’ve seen this first hand. When I started working with my assistant Amy, just having another person talk on your behalf changes the perception of the company you are working with. Suddenly, you aren’t just a person anymore, you have “people” (even if those people are just helping you on a part time basis or are on commission).

The informality which works so well with readers often leads to business behaving in ways in which they never would with a publication. Companies have no shame in asking for free consulting, free product mentions, or just ignoring bloggers altogether. I don’t think anyone would dare send an email to the New York Times asking them for free ad space.

I don’t think there is an easy solution to this. I believe that in the long run, things work themselves out. Part of the onus is on bloggers to change how they work with the industry, and part will be on the industry to see the real power and VALUE of working with independent online publishers.

Tonight I got into a discussion argument with a guy on Twitter which ended up with him basically taking the position that she should get send on press trips because he is an “influential” WordPress developer and a consumer and therefore people would listen to him.

Maybe.

Or maybe not.

What I found surprising is how “influential” this guy thought he was. I looked at his blog and by any public measurement you can think of (RSS, Alexa, Twitter, Facebook, etc) this guy wasn’t that big of a deal. Really.

It ended up in him getting in to a “who’s dick is bigger” contest, which I knew I’d win because I looked his and he didn’t look at mine.

I’ve heard stories from PR people about bloggers who think they are prima donnas and act like total dicks on press trips.

I bring this up because I do my monthly Q&A post I often get questions pertaining to my “success”. The thing is, I really don’t consider myself any sort of blogging “success”.

Yes, compared to other bloggers I may have had more “success” (in some numerical sense), but in the big scheme of things I am nothing.

All I have to do is think of my friend Scott who has a popular webcomic. His audience DWARFS mine. It isn’t even funny. He shares office space with some guys who have another webcomic who have an audience that is way bigger than his. I am an accounting error compared to these guys.

There is always someone out there that makes you look insignificant.

When I think of how big the travel and tourism industry is, I know what I’m doing it just a drop in the bucket. Maybe not even a drop. The potential audience for travel is so big, and the bar is set so high, that the difference between me and a new blogger is nothing compared to where I am and the top possible rung. In that comparison, no blogger should get depressed about their size, nor should they get cocky.

I will often compare what I am doing with large magazines like Conde Nast Traveler or National Geographic. That is a pretty bold comparison, especially considering that they have hundreds of staff, giant offices and 8 figure budgets, and I’m just one guy. That, however, is the ultimate measuring stick and in that comparison we (bloggers) all come up massively short.

I truly am nothing…..and so are you.

I’ve been accused of being arrogant and at times there is probably some truth in that. But believe me when I say in my own mind I am constantly thinking about how to be better and how I could lose everything overnight.

You have to work your ass off and never rest on your laurels.

The Public Relations industry has been built upon a certain balance between their clients and journalists. Clients want publicity in the media and journalists who need to fill space and meet deadlines were looking for something to fill that space. PR provided assistance to journalists and provided a service to their clients and everyone could come away from the relationship as a winner. If successful, the exposure provided by the “earned media” coverage was far more cost effective than advertising.

I think that relationship is starting to break down.

Bloggers for the most part do not have deadlines nor do they have space to fill. Unless you happen to be a news site covering a particular industry, you have no need for press releases. In fact, almost every blogger I know finds press releases to be an extreme nuisance.

PR agencies have been broadening what they do, providing more promotional campaigns for their clients and straying into the world of advertising. The problem is, they still seem to have the mindset of “earned media”. I’ve had dozens of PR people contact me asking begging for what is basically free advertising. They don’t have the budgets that ad agencies have, nor do the have the mindset to actually pay for exposure.

What I’ve seen is that they start at the top of the list and work their way down until they find someone some sucker who is willing to do it for free. Inevitably after I say no to some promotion, I’ll see it pop up a month later on some site where the blogger is just flattered that someone is paying attention to them.

Of course, you get what you pay for. As with most things on the internet, blogs are distributed by a long tail curve. Any niche or sub-niche you want to look at will be distributed pretty much the same way. If you are willing to work with anyone, that is exactly what you will get. The bloggers who are willing to do anything for free and the ones who can do the least for you.

In my world of travel there are still opportunities to work with PR which make sense. Press trips being the most obvious example.

PR companies need to know that if they start to expand outside of the traditional bounds of PR (which they should), they need to adapt their methods as well. Begging for bloggers to promote their clients for free just doesn’t work, and in the long run is actually counterproductive.

1) Put all of your focus on Twitter. Despite the fact that they claim to look at other networks, the vast majority of any Klout score is just Twitter. Having a blog or a fan page doesn’t help you with your Klout score. Ignore everything else.

2) Auto-follow everyone. It doesn’t make a difference who they are, just jack your followers up as high as you can. Klout doesn’t care about how many people you follow.

3) Stop producing original content. Klout doesn’t care where content comes from, only that people retweet you. Content creation is a waste of time from a Klout perspective. Time spent writing is time that could be spent tweeting. You don’t get bonus points for being original in Klout.

4) Take part in every Twitter chat you can. There are tons of chats which happen every week on Twitter. Take part in all of them. Lots of retweeting going on with these events.

5) Follow conference tags. You don’t have to attend the conference, just use the hashtag a lot and retweet what others are saying.

6) Pump out lots of inspirational quotes. People eat this shit up. These are the Successories posters of Twitter. Try to do several every day.

7) Troll Reddit or Digg for links. Just find linkbait from other sources and tweet that. Remember, the title matters more than the actual content for getting retweets.

8 ) Take part in weekly hastag events. #FotoFriday #TravelTuesday #MexicoMonday Find as many as you can and take part in all of them.

9) Do not go on vacation. Being away from Twitter for even a few days will result in your “influence” going down.

Congrats! You are now influential. Enjoy the Klout Perks you will be receiving such as free tickets to the next Rob Schnider movie or cheap electronic gadgets which are no longer produced.

Every so often I use the site load time tool from Pingdom.com. Not only does it give you a great analysis of what is and what isn’t slow on your site, it will also record the tests so you can check it out in the future. Here is a screen shot of my most recent site load test:

You can see just how much faster my site has gotten. It has gone from a 7 seconds page load 3 months ago, down to only 1.5 seconds now.

There are still a few minor things I could do to improve page speed, but we are talking things which would in total shave off only a few tenths of a second.

Overall I’m very pretty pleased with the performance of my site now.

I think I’m going to put this aside for the moment and focus on increasing conversions in September.