Just returned from Toronto where I attended TBEX 2013, the Travel Blogger Exchange with over 1,300 attendees including close to 1,000 travel bloggers, journalists as well as North American destinations courting each other with speed-dating meetings, alongside a full schedule of seminars and educational keynotes about the state of the travel blogging industry. To read original article on my blog: http://fredericgonzalo.com/en/2013/06/02/10-tips-for-working-with-travel-bloggers-and-destinations/

1. Frederic Gonzalo

2. Just returned from Toronto where I attended
TBEX 2013, the Travel Blogger Exchange
with over 1,300 attendees including close to
1,000 travel bloggers, journalists as well as
North American destinations courting each
other with speed-dating meetings, alongside
a full schedule of seminars and educational
keynotes about the state of the travel
blogging industry. While there were many
great insights shared during the two-days
event, I wanted to share with you some of
the highlights from William Bakker’s
session, called “Lessons Learned: Working
with Bloggers & Destinations”. It was
interesting to see that, just like women are
from Venus and men are from Mars, there
are similar contrasts between travel bloggers
and destination representatives.

3. William is an associate partner at Think!
Social Media, a boutique agency that
specializes in social media and new
technologies, in particular with destination
marketing organizations (DMOs), helping
them put social media and digital tactics at
the core of their strategies, in particular
when reaching out to influencers. After
giving the audience a few great examples
of recent initiatives, including the 365 days
of dining foodie blog showcasing
restaurants in Tourism Richmond (BC,
Canada), he gave some excellent insights
on what criteria destination representatives
were using in selecting travel bloggers in
various outreach programs with his
agency:

4. Instead of wondering what value the blogger can
add to your destination, you need to flip the
question around. If the blogger specializes in
off-the-beaten-path adventure travel, should
you really invite him over for a family-themed
trip in a big city?

5. The size of the audience is often considered
the utmost factor, but it’s not always the most
important one. Yet, it’s key to know how many
readers go to your blog, how many followers or
fans you have.

6. More than the sheer quantity of people reading
your blog, the question is WHO is reading it:
are they young or old, French or English,
affluent travelers or occasional day-trippers,
etc.

7. If we segue from the two
previous points, you may
have specific influence in a
particular niche: boomers,
50+, solo travelers,
photography or video
blogging, backpacking, etc.

8. Contrary to most journalists,
travel bloggers tend to be
part of various communities
of freelancers, travel
aficionados and passionate
about a topic or another.
Thus, they carry substantial
influence amongst peers as
well.

9. Yes, how you
write, how you
speak or take
pictures is very
important. Brands
don’t want to be
associated with
poorly produced
material. Period.

10. Speed of communication: In
some instances, destinations
will opt for specific social
influencers because of their
known speed to pinstagram,
tweet or blog what’s going on
during a trip, often enough
before it even started!

11. Not that you should be using every tool there
is… but it’s an asset when you have an active
presence on as many platforms as possible.

12. What’s your personal touch?
Humor, irony, contemplative descriptions?
Whatever your style may be, it does become a
part of the decision-making for
destinations, so long as you stay true to your
“voice” throughout your various contents and
platforms.

13. These criteria may or may not be used by
all destinations in choosing travel
bloggers, but they do make intuitive
sense as important elements in the
decision-making process. The following
were the key takeaways for both travel
bloggers and destinations:

14. 1.
2.
Find your niche: Stay true to your voice and
know your audience are other ways of
telling your know you’ve found your
niche, or area of expertise.
Build a community: Networking is not a
one-step process. Seek out twitter
chats, Google+ communities or Linkedin
discussions, and do attend events IRL – in
real life, just like TBEX or other industry
events.

15. 3.
4.
Be clear about your approach and
objectives: You should have a content
mission statement for your blog or content
platforms, just like brands do!
Understand the destination’s objectives and
expectations: Is the destination seeking
awareness and brand buzz? Or perhaps a
laser-like focus on gay travel or solo travel
amongst the boomer demographic? Can you
fulfill these expectations?

16. 5.
Stay humble: Whether you have a PageRank
of 3 or 7, and whether you have 100,000
followers on Twitter versus 10,000,
destinations who seek to work with travel
bloggers over a 3-week campaign will opt
for the nicer personality rather than the
total prima dona.

17. 1.
Invest time to find the right bloggers: It’s
not enough to base your decision-making
on the blogger’s Klout score alone. Do the
research to find out about online
community engagement and other
intangible elements important to the
“bigger” view.

18. 2.
Don’t just focus on web traffic when
selecting: Traffic referral is certainly a key
component, but they can be misleading.
Because a blogger boasts 10,000 visits per
day to their site, do you know where readers
go? Could be to the fashion section of the
blog, or to an older travel article that keeps
getting hits through time. Again, look at
social media engagement and expertise in
the niche.

19. 3.
Rethink your measurement of success:
Because travel bloggers are part of a greater
community, some may produce great
content but can also help with product
research, not to mention benefits of long
term relationships, referring other bloggers
for extra awareness and publication
opportunities, for example.

20. 4.
Wifi everywhere, all the time. If
you want bloggers to tweet,
pinstagram or facebook live
during their travel while at your
destination, wifi is not a niceto-have feature. It’s a musthave!

21. 5.
Personalize and build in some free time:
Destinations will tend to build full-on
itineraries to maximize the time spent by
the blogger there, but this is not necessarily
a good idea. Make sure you personalize the
trip according to blogger’s niche of
expertise, and do leave some time for them
to roam free in the city or resort, where they
can choose to go with the flow and speak to
things they know best or that appeals to
them. In the end, everybody wins.

22. If you are a travel blogger, I’d be interested to
hear your opinion on the matter. As for DMOs,
do you agree with the above criteria and
takeaways? Please do leave a comment in the
section below and let’s see if we can practice
what we preach, here…

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