Addicted to Blogging
By Darren Cronian on Thursday, August 3rd, 2006

I have to admit to being a complete addict where travel blogging is concerned – I now see myself as a travel blogger, and I’m enjoying writing content which I think you are all enjoying, but what I would like to see are more comments!

ET phone home!

Today, I thought I would start a discussion about some of my favourite travel blogs, and I’ll also throw in a tip for those readers that are travel bloggers who use free hosting, because I’m hearing bad stories coming from bloggers using the likes of Blogger.

Old World Wandering

I love the design of this blog, whilst simplistic in design, it’s very easy to read – the content is good, and informational – I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again, I love blogs that have photographs, it makes me want to read the blog entry.

Travolution Blog

This is more of a commercial blog – but has tons of interesting content for people like me who have only been working in the travel industry for a short period of time, so it’s a good learning source, and also good if you want to know what’s going down in the travel industry

South Pacific Blog

I dream of one day visiting New Zealand and some of the Islands in the South Pacific, and I just love this blog – the blogger, David Stanley is the author of many travel guide books on the South Pacific, so the blog is always full of great stories and information.

A Luxury Travel Blog

If you can afford luxury travel, or want to see how the rich go on holiday, then this is a great blog to visit, updated regularly with tons of content on posh hotels, cruises – the blog makes me jealous, because I’d love to be able to afford to stay in five (or seven) star hotels, and travel the world in luxury.

My Blogging Tip

Those bloggers that are using free hosted blogging software, like Blogger – I would seriously recommend that you guys move onto a blog application that you have complete control over – get it hosted, and do regular daily backups.

I am hearing a lot of comments from bloggers that they have lost their blog on various free hosted blogging applications, and it would ruin your business if you rely on the blog to market or earn an income from it and lost all of your information. You’ve been warned!


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9 responses to “Addicted to Blogging”

Travel plaza | 3 August, 2006 at 3:23 am

Wow! Darren. That’s really informative. I have a blogger account. Maybe I have to change to something else soon. Thanks.

Darren Cronian | 3 August, 2006 at 3:33 am

Thanks :)

I’m just worried that one day Blogger (or any other free blogging application) will loose your blog and all of the time and effort you’ve put into the blog will be wasted. I’m learning about internet marking (and doing great #4 in Google for Travel Blog :D), and I’m hearing from a lot of people that they have lost blogs off Blogger - when they contact Google, they never get a response.

These are just rumours mind, but if you think about it - you have no control over your blog, and whilst you have no control over your blog when you are using a hosting company, you can take daily backups in case your hosting company looses any data.

If anyone wants any help just shout.

Lee Harrison(owner Select World Travel Malvern) | 3 August, 2006 at 8:25 am

I Love the title Darren especially as I am Addickted to Charlton Athletic Football Club.
For those readers from abroad, Charlton Athletics Nickname is ” The Addicks”
You make some good points about blogger, and We moved our blog http://www.selectworld.travel to Squarespace from blogger as it did not support the .travel domain.
Since moving to Squarespace, we have picked up two major Industry awards, TTG ( Travel Trade Gazette) award for innovation, and it has just been announced we have picked up the Travolution Smart Agent award for http://www.selectworld.travel and a special feature will appear in the September Special issue celebrating the last ten years of the on-line travel industry. We are extremely chuffed and honoured.
We too would like more comments, but perseverance has prevailed, and our awards proove it’s worth blogging and worth being different from the norm.
Our blog has certainly bought in more business than our website, We had a phone call from a Client in Oldham, who had Googled Asfiya Turkey and our blog was in 1st , 2nd, 3rd place on the first page compared to the Tour Operator that sells the property who appered way below us.
So it is worth keeping your blog up to date, and make sure you can keep a backup.

Now about your holiday darren?

Paul | 3 August, 2006 at 2:27 pm

Hi Darren

Another comment for you… ;)

Thanks for mentioning http://www.aluxurytravelblog.com once again. I’m having good fun working on it and, as you’ll see, have just returned from a posh stay in the Hague.

I agree with your comments re: Blogger. It’s OK if you want something simple and are looking to keeping a personal diary or something, but if you’re looking for something that’s SEO friendlly, or being used for business purposes, then you really need to explore beyond. Wordpress gets my vote.

Paul

Kevin May | 3 August, 2006 at 4:17 pm

Thanks for the mention, Darren.

For a start-up blog, Blogspot has been very easy to use, but functionality is now feeling rather limited. It is impossible to categorise posts and reliability is becoming an issue.

Reed Business Informtion, the publishing house behind Travolution, is beginning to roll out Movable Type to other magazines in the group. Expect some changes on he Travo blog soon!!

In the meantime, keep up the good work with Rants.

Kevin, editor, Travolution

Darren Cronian | 3 August, 2006 at 7:43 pm

Lee, that’s great news about the awards - funnily enough, I was looking for blog awards, to see if I could nominate this blog, it would be great if it won some sort of award. About the holiday, thanks for providing me with tons of information, I will definatly 100% be in touch, just up to my eyes in work.!

Hi Paul, I’ve never been to the Hague, I used to have family living in Holland, and seen a lot of Holland, but not the Hague unfortunately. The list of destinations I want to visit is growing daily!! Your right about SEO friendly, Wordpress is certainly the right way to go - I’ve also tried Live Journal, and I was impressed with that, but you don’t get the plugins you get on Wordpress, and its easy to implement.

I’m happy to help anyone out setting up a Wordpress blog.

Kevin, Blogspot is good to get used to blogging, but Wordpress especially is so powerful - you’d not believe how powerful it has become. Moveable Type is another good blogging application - but I’ve not used it so I don’t know if it’s as flexible and secure as Wordpress

Kevin May | 3 August, 2006 at 8:03 pm

i’ll keep you all posted on Moveable Type, once we switch over.

Travolution has recently entered its blog for an award with the Association of Online Publishers - Best Use of Digital Platform.

Shortlist published on September 5. Fingers-crossed…

Paul Johnson | 3 August, 2006 at 9:02 pm

For me, the key advantages of Wordpress over Blogger are:

- SEO friendliness
- the ability to categorise posts
- the ability to schedule posts

As for the Hague, I posted a few pics over at
http://www.aardvarktravel.net/chat/viewtopic.php?t=21883 if you fancy a peek…

Paul

Colin Maddocks | 24 August, 2006 at 3:37 pm

I agree on two points:

1) Its’ so easy to get addicted to blogging. I have been blogging about our travel agency business for over 2 months now, (not an amazing length of time, I know), but feel almost withdrawal symptoms if I dont’ blog each day.

2) If you are going to blog use a dedicted blogging platform. I use Typepad, ($8.95 a month, I think), and its’ so intuitive, it almost leads you through creating a great designed blog. (My current design is a “hybrid” of the various designs it offers).

Colin
http://www.virtualtravelcast.com