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Tips and Tricks from a the Getaway Travel Blogging Conference

WildWeb’s new media ninja, Kelly Kidson, attended the Getaway Travel Bloggers Conference in Cape Town last week. She came to Durbs stirred with new vumma and equipped with some new ammunition to tackle WildWeb’s clients new media needs. We thought that it would be a good idea for her to share the experience with all of you in our weekly blog as well as throw in some nuggets of insights, which she pocketed from the conference.

Kelly Kidson:

On Saturday the 4th of August I attended the Getaway Travel Bloggers Conference in Cape Town and left it inspired. The full day conference threw 160 travel-lovers, bloggers and travel industry professionals into a room at the Upper Eastside Hotel in Woodstock and taught them more than a thing or two about blogging as travellers for travellers.

Eleven guest speakers made up the whirlwind line up and each of them spoke about relevant and super interesting topics related to travel blogging. Some of the names on the schedule included Nellie Huang from WildJunket, Keith Jenkins from Velvet Escape, Matt Long from Landlopers and Melvin Boecher from Traveldudes. Their niche travel styles, interests and areas of expertise were as varied as their personalities.

The group of attendees lapped up the gems of experience and wisdom that were shared and the inspiration caused was clear in the tweets that were flying around during the conference. We were all asked to #GTBC whenever tweeting about anything to do with the conference and just a few minutes into the first session #GTBC was trending on Twitter in South Africa, and by the afternoon, it was trending worldwide. The hot topics that were being discussed in that small room were making huge waves on the social media platforms and people all over the world followed the conference through the tweets and interacted too. The power of a community of like-minded, passionate travel-lovers armed with social media platforms was shown.

The networking opportunities at lunch, tea breaks and at the fun-filled after party were a highlight too and many contacts and new friends were made. I speak for everyone who attended when I say it was an excellent and very effective conference and we all left richer in knowledge and inspiration to blog more effectively. It had value for individual bloggers and for those blogging for clients and for marketing reasons in the travel sphere too. Thanks to Getaway for organising it.

Here are a few Travel blogger Gems of advice I picked up there and want to share with you:
1)    The beauty of a travel blog post is that it has a long shelf life and lives forever. This makes it more effective than traditional print media published pieces.

2)    “Glocal” is lekker:) Travel blogging is great for both local and global exposure.

3)    “Eureka moments” take a lot of hard work to get to. This is true of every idea to success story. True in travel blogging inspiration too.

4)    When it comes to travel photography for blogging, @guy_with_camera advised us not to miss out on the experience by analysing while you create. Lose yourself in a place.

5)    An effective quote linked to travel photography:  “It’s not about depth of field but rather about depth of feeling in photos.”

6)    It is essential to use social media to drive the success of your travel blogs. There is lots of work to do after your blog is posted. You must share it and drive it so that your potential readership gets to see it and interact with it and you.

7)    Nellie from @wildjunket taught us the importance of picking your blog style and niche.

8)    Write with personality and don’t be too fact-heavy. Write about the type of travel and experience you love and keep it “niche” so your posts are more effective and speak to your specific readership.

9)    Travel bloggers are a brand unto themselves and should be aware of their potential influence and value to the travelling community.

10)    We got into the nitty gritty tech info too about keeping tabs on your blogs stats through Analytics,  driving it through cost-per-click advertising and optimising it through SEO

Read up on more of the details on what went down at the Getaway Travel Blogger Conference in the Getaway blog post here: http://blog.getaway.co.za/events/day-inspiration-fun-getaway-travel-blog-conference/

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