All posts in Travel tips

For those of you that enjoy reading Blogs, Metro, UK’s only Urban Newspaper has shortlisted its Brit Blog Awards for 2007. One of my favourite blogs, the London Underground Tube Diary has been short listed so good luck Annie!

Here’s the list of travel blogs shortlisted:

• Phileas Blog
• London Underground Tube Diary
• Disgruntled Commuter
• Mindhorn: Random Outbursts of a Frustrated Nomad
• Bloodbus – A Driver’s Blog Of Nightbus Terror

Apparently, they were over a thousand nominations, in 8 categories, and a panel of judges will now choose the winning blog in each category. My money’s on Phileas Blog.

Blogs are great at helping you plan and inspire your holiday, so I thought I’d mention a few of my favourites at the moment. Make a cup of tea, sit back and read the 80 days or Bust Blog. I’ve enjoyed reading this blog and it details Mark’s trip around the World, with added humour along the way.

If your looking for a hotel and are in need of some inspiration then drop by the Active Hotels blog [I’ve used Active a few times over the years] – search for hotels with boa constrictors, or read up on the city of Stuttgart in Germany, with this interesting blog.

Finally, it sounds that the lost girls are having a fun time in Thailand. I love the Lost Girls World blog, tons of humour and interesting content. It’s written by Three twenty-something New Yorkers who ditched their media jobs to embark on a yearlong, round-the-world – I wonder what the thoughts are of having an Englishman joining them on their trip!

For a change I thought I would take a different direction and write a blog post that is going to be useful for bloggers rather than travel consumers. I have put a lot of effort into my blog, both writing unique content and promoting it on the internet, so don’t let anyone tell you that it’s easy creating a blog, because it isn’t.

Here are my tips to help promote your blog

Write Unique content.
When blogging about a news story, don’t copy the content from the news site, i.e. BBC, instead re-write it completely, and add your opinions on the news. Ask for people’s thoughts on the story and people will leave comments.

Visit other related blogs
Find other travel related blogs on sites like Google’s Blog Search and leave comments. Don’t promote your blog within comments instead write a useful reply giving your opinion. Promotion within comments is frowned upon [well I it is with me]

Submit your blog to directories
They are a ton of blog directories out there, so spend a few hours and submit your blog to these directories. Also keep a look out for RSS feed directories where you can submit your RSS feed and this attracts people who are interested in your content.

Claim your blog on Technorati
I’ve found that Technorati to be a good referrer of visitors, even though I haven’t promoted Technorati within my blog by using tagging etc. I do think people spend too much time on improving their Technorati ranking, but its popular place to promote your blog.

Analyse your blog stats
I’ve tried out all sorts of applications for analysing my blog stats, and I have to say that the best application is Google Analytics. It’s free, and provides tons of stats with graphs – you can easily find out where your traffic is coming from and what keywords people are using in the search engines to find your blog posts.

Link Love
Yes, the search engines love links – and if you write unique and interesting content then people will link to you without you having to offer anything in return. Most people link to your content or blog because they enjoy reading your content or because they think that their readers would be interested in what you have to say.

Don’t give in
The hard work will pay off – only in the last month I have been featured on the Travel Guardian website, website of the day on the Breakfast show on Splash FM radio, interviewed by a freelance reporter for the Times about the impact of blogging on travel and featured on Rolf Potts Vagablogging.

You might be interested to know that I have finally launched my little secret – Blogged Out – yep, another blog [am I mad? - Yes!] which will help fellow bloggers promote their blog. Drop by and let me know what you think.

Pam is a freelance writer who divides her time between Seattle, Washington, and her husband’s tiny town in the middle of Austria. She has written about destinations for Snowshoe Magazine, World Hum, Travelblogs, International Living.

For a little over a year, she has been the travel editor for BlogHer – she seeks out interesting blog writing by travelers or about travel. Though her first passion is writing about travel, she blogs at Nerd’s Eye View, a site she started nearly five years ago.

What is the BlogHer Network and how did you become involved?

The BlogHer network is defined on the “about” page as a guide to blogs by women – though in my eyes that’s not entirely true. BlogHer is more about blogs – and issues – that are of interest to women. As to how I became involved, shortly after Hurricane Katrina I helped out with Hurricane Katrina Direct Relief, a project started by a Grace Davis who’s connected to BlogHer.

BlogHer was starting a community site and they were looking for subject editors. Grace recommended me for the travel section. At that time, the editor positions were first come first served and I was too late. As a part time resident of Austria, it made some sense for me to take Europe.

About six months in to it, I was back in the states and I was getting blog fatigue. Luckily, there was a shift. The travel editor position opened up and knowing that it was my first choice, the BlogHer founders asked me if I’d like it. I snapped it right up. There’s nothing I like more than when I get an idea for a post and I get to spend a few hours surfing for good writing about – oh – well, right now, I’m working on something about aquariums as good rainy day travel diversions.

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