Those of you who are on Twitter may wonder how you can find other “tweeple” who enjoy travel and like to tweet about it. The “Find People” search function on Twitter is notoriously inaccurate, so finding like-minded travel fans is not always a simple task.
A recent feature, Twitter Lists, makes it a lot easier to find all kinds of interesting folks on Twitter, grouped by topic area.
Y’all know I can be pretty tight-fisted, right? I’ll happily spend money when it makes sense to do so, and for things and experiences that are special, but when it comes to transportation and hotels, I’m okay with your basic clean versions.
I simply want to get back and forth and have a decent night’s sleep and shower while I’m there. My best experiences are usually OFF the aircraft and OUTSIDE of the hotel.
So, while living in Europe, my family and I did fly the notoriously cheap Ryanair a few times, because how else could I get from the Netherlands to Pisa, Italy and back for a family of four for about US$150?
The wise traveler must know what he/she is getting into with cheapo airlines, however, which is why I think this video spoof of discount airlines is so funny. They pack in almost every problem you’ll run into – surprise extra fees, ground tours that may suck, fees for luggage (especially checked luggage) and of course satellite airports that are MILES from their namesake.
You won’t believe what’s going on 650 feet underneath those Kansas wheat fields (about the height of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis from top to bottom.)
It only takes 70 seconds going straight down an elevator shaft to see one of the 8 Wonders of Kansas.
A mining museum — the Kansas Underground Salt Museum in Hutchinson, Kansas.
A working salt mine — although museum visitors are not anywhere near any blasting or ongoing work.
And Batman costumes — because at a constant 68 degrees and 45% relative humidity in 325 feet of solid salt, the already-mined sections are a perfect home for the Underground Vaults and Storage company’s long-term records and artifact storage, including a bizarre variety of Hollywood’s goodies and film masters.
Actually, it’s not that bad, but I’m certainly getting some of the frenetic startup-flavored experience as my partner Becky McCray and I prepare to launch a new online business next week.
I’ve been writing about tourism and the social Web on another blog for a couple of months (Sheila’s Guide to the Good Stuff) and now we’re preparing to open the digital doors to a learning community for tourism professionals.
We’d like to think we know something about travel, tourism and social media, so we’re sticking our flag in the ground at the intersection of all that and launching a paid membership site called Tourism Currents.
We’re really excited about bringing useful, practical information to a wide variety of Convention and Visitors Bureaus (CVBs,) Chambers of Commerce, PR professionals who work in tourism, heritage/preservation organizations, agritourism, festival planners – really anyone involved in destination marketing.
I just want to say that this blog post’s title is totally awful SEO (Search Engine Optimization) ’cause I’m feeling like a REBEL. 🙂
Those who know me, know how my mental gears grind and how I over-analyze.
I prefer to think it’s my massive intelligence coming to the fore, but mostly I think it’s plain old worry-wart perfectionist tendencies.
Anyway, after crying in my beer this week about blog ranking, I dug around in the Family Travel Logue archives to find some posts to bring back out into the light.
This allows my readers some discovery fun and also helps me to remember that blogging is not all about whether I dominate Google for certain search terms in exchange for some ad dollars.
….because, you know, I could have my way with Google if I really wanted to (she says with a lot of bluster.)
In between the dust and cat hair, here are some of my family travel blog favorites pulled from the Archives attic. Please excuse any broken links – some of the posts have been around awhile and the Web keeps moving:
*** Travel in Second Life. Because I don’t get enough of it in First Life and I like my Goth avatar.
*** Inexpensive Travel Souvenirs. Because I was just starting to figure out video and I combined total vlogging inexperience with all of my worldly shopping from all over my house. Yay!
*** Best US family beach vacations. Because it’s summer, you know?
*** Survivor’s guide to Walt Disney World. This was when I figured out that I ought to listen to my readers even though I’m not personally a huge Florida theme park fan.
*** Visit bountiful Brussels and What my daughter learned in Belgium’s Flanders Fields. We never felt more immersed in Europe than in Belgium (and the Netherlands, so here’s Rotterdam for you.)
*** Winner of the who-knew-I’d-love-it award: Big Country – the Kansas Flint Hills.
*** Two of my first big hits: Paris with kids – The Louvre, followed by High above Paris: a meal in the Eiffel Tower.
Thanks to Wendy Perrin of the PerrinPost, I found this Invesp Consulting list of travel blogs broken out by various measurements: Google PageRank, number of inbound links, number of RSS subscribers, number of unique visitors per month, etc.
Now, normally I try not to pay too much attention to such lists. They often compare a one-woman show like mine to wide-ranging, multi-author efforts like World Hum, and there’s no way that I can match a gargantuan site when it comes to some measurement metrics.
On the other hand, seeing the Family Travel Logue floating around in the #40 – #60 range (for most metrics) was rather depressing for me, I’ll admit, considering that I’ve been writing here since February 2006 and have some nice recent kudos in addition to past recognition in the UK’s Guardian, the Telegraph and Real Simple magazine.
I lost some Google search engine placement/authority last summer when we shifted the blog to this URL, but we’re talking almost a year ago now, so that’s like claiming you’re fat because you had a baby, but the baby’s now 9 years old (like, ahem, my son. Hey, the baby excuse can no longer explain wearing “fat jeans” all the time.)
First, a big, pink-cheeked, awww-shucks Thank You to Tripbase.
They kindly included this blog in their carefully-selected list of Top 10 Family Travel blogs.
What an unexpected surprise.
The Tripbase folks said,
“We look for bloggers with original destination, travel and activity ideas who can also give good advice on vacation planning and organising. The idea is that the blog is interesting, even humorous, without compromising on utility.”
I am honored to be included in such esteemed company as Delicious Baby, the rollicking Traveling Mamas, Europe-based SoulTravelers3, the Mother of All Trips and many others who I know and admire either online or IRL (in real life!)
There are other Tripbase Travel Blog Award categories too, so take a look….
In other news, I’m also excited to be included in a new project by the travel research site UpTake and Tips from the T-List: it’s the Travel Insights 100.
I’m happy to announce that my 9-year-old son and I are getting on a plane next week to visit the Hawaiian islands.
Vacation? Uh, no. Work.
Really.
A lot of tourism organizations are starting to see the value of the social Web and social media-based content, and the Hawaii Tourism Authority is no exception.
They are sponsoring a group of bloggers to come to Hawaii, look behind the scenes and the standard tourism glitter, and show our readers a more local-flavored “So Much More Hawaii” (a dedicated site for our tour content is launching in a day or so.)
Visionary tour organizer Christine Lu is big on cross-border cultural understanding (I was on her China 2.0 tour in November 2008) and social media is a common theme in her life for creating those connections. She writes:
“The upcoming So Much More Hawaii tour is meant as a proof of concept that through social media, first-hand insight of Hawaii can create content and outreach that influences those to understand Hawaii better and want to visit the islands…key bloggers in different vertical niche markets [will] experience the islands as a group, with separate sector focuses. Each one has a sector they are known for covering and their visit to Hawaii is meant to share this with their audience.”
My focus will be primarily family travel, of course. Other bloggers on the tour include:
As we all know, the economy is down around the world. The Hawaii tourism industry is in crisis right now and the outlook is grim. I applaud Christine and others for seeking new, more effective ways to use social media to showcase the islands for potential visitors.
Austin-based tech journalist Omar Gallaga mentioned me during today’s edition of the National Public Radio (NPR) All Things Considered program All Tech Considered.
Still awaiting my close-up….
The topic is Tech in Travel (here’s a link to the full travel-related NPR broadcast.)
*** The first part of the segment talks about integrating mobile into travel; using cell phones to check into your airline flight plus using a cell phone-displayed bar code in lieu of a boarding pass.
*** The second part of the segment (about 4:00 minutes in) shifts to other helpful travel sites and tools on the Web. That’s where Omar mentions me and I have my moment of fame.
Did you know that there are 106 pages of iPhone applications that are travel-related? That includes one for American Automobile Association (AAA) travel guidance – pretty handy.
For amplifying information, Omar links to all of the sites mentioned in the broadcast in an associated post on the All Tech Considered blog: The Tech of Travel. He included my post on how to find the best hotel deals.
Thanks, Omar and NPR!
Many folks ask me how to get started as a travel writer and blogger, so it was a pleasure to participate in two recent email interviews that can partly answer that question.
*** On the Netherlands-based blog The Happy Hotelier, I answered 10 Questions for Sheila Scarborough of Family Travel Logue, including how I got started as a writer, my top 3 destination experiences and why I don’t really care about hotels. Thanks, Guido!
*** On Working Your Way Around the World (based on the soon-to-be-published book of the same name, about how to be a digital nomad) you’ll find Interview with a Travel Writer: Sheila Scarborough where I discuss the differences between writing for print and writing for the Web, how I find new ideas and what I want to do next. Thanks, Thursday!
Please drop by each of these excellent blogs and tell Guido and Thursday hello….