Blog homeI wanted to give an update as to where we are going with this blog (and where we have been)
So far I in 6 months I have written 111 posts and you have made 205 comments (for which I thank you).
From humble beginnings I now have 170 or so subscribers - which I think is reasonable for what I set out to do. Here is a screenshot from my Feedburner stats:
You can see that this blog has been live for 6 months - and traffic has been climbing regularly - although at a fairly slow pace (a bit too slow for me considering the time spent on it).
I have never paid to advertise this blog and I don’t have a large client base who will subscribe to anything I write - so this is 100% organic growth.
My favourite posts
I have a few favourite posts that I just want to share again:
- Undesign - is this how travel websites should be? - where I attempted to clearly define a term to describe websites with only “light touch” visual elements
- Future of travel distribution and travel ecommerce 2017 - as if I have any idea what it will be like then - but at least I tried!
- “Click here canary” - judge a website in 2 google searches - I liked doing the research on this one - reminded me from when I started out in the travel industry a long time ago - when I was a usability consultant. The Travolution re-serve (it can’t be a reprint can it?) of this post made it into the T-List (travel blogger) annual book
- Long term competitive advantage - using the web to gain advantage over competitors. This one is getting lots of traffic from universities. No doubt it is being used by students looking for help with an essay…..
- Travel MLM - YTB reviewed - this one got everyone excited - with 49 comments (!). So much so that it is the only post where I have had to close the comments
- The travel porn experience - I love the search engine traffic that is coming in for this post!
- 15 travel itinerary websites reviewed - where I went all “Techcrunch” and tried to work out who of these 15 companies are going to sink or swim. Best leave that kind of thing to Techcrunch really
- Hotel description arms race - is it time for a truce - what happens if all websites continue to invest in hotel content? Who benefits from an arms race?
Actually I have lots more favourites, but I don’t want to bore you with them all.
My favourite battles
Yeah. It has not all been Roses. I have had:
- Cheapflights adding spam to my comments….. (this lead to me using their PR agencies IP address and tracking down the edits they had made to Wikipedia)
- Boo gaming Digg - and in the process sending me some users who were probably as shocked to find themselves on this blog as I was to receive them (a bit like unexpected guests at a party)
- Travel industry bloggers upset that I have linked to them (normally the problem is the other way around!)
- Clients concerned that I am spending too much time blogging (!). Indeed one client went to the effort of doing a word count on one weeks worth of blog posts - and suggesting I could have spent the time more wisely. They are probably right.
However, to date, I have not yet received any legal letters. Long may that continue.
My blogging strategy
I never really set out with a very solid blogging strategy (a bit odd coming from a web consultant, but there you are!).
However, if I had to say what the strategy was, it was probably along these lines:
- You can’t exactly go around telling clients that they need to get into blogging and social media - if you are not applying that kind of thinking to your own business
- Blogging gives me a mechanism to join conversations with other bloggers - because people can see where I am coming from. These conversations are very informative.
- I used to pay about 3000 GBP (6000 USD) to a travel industry PR consultancy - in order to help me with PR - in particular with the usability research I published 4 years ago. Blogging is cheaper. I no longer have a PR company
- Blogging helps with search engine optimisation (particularly as I am blogging on the same domain as one of our products). This isn’t ideal and if I started again I would blog on a separate domain. Actually I am not so sure. This is a difficult one. (This blog is ranked number #1 for “travel ecommerce” and number #5 for “ecommerce blog”) [UK Google]
- You are reading this right? Exactly.
What our blogging strategy isn’t:
- An ego trip (!)
- Turning me into a professional blogger (note there is no advertising on this site)
- Turning this site into an industry news website or industry community. (This isn’t Travolution or TravelMole)
However, I feel it is time that I have a strategy that makes sense and could deliver a return on the time I spend blogging. There is only limited ROI on Musings as it currently is.
Now normally people don’t share strategies but I haven’t got time for this secretive stuff. Its only a blog for goodness sakes.
The new blogging strategy
Shortly I am going to launch a new blog. Yes it has a name but I am not sharing it yet.
Key aspects:
- It will be on its own domain
- It will have a name (rather than be my blog - indeed it could be multi-author)
- It will be more tightly focussed on the niche that we sell products to (which is small tour operators)
- It will be owned by Travel UCD (my company) - just like this one is (as opposed to most travel industry bloggers who post in a personal capacity).
This blog (Musings on travel ecommerce) will continue - and I will continue to post about big industry issues and aspects relating to larger travel websites. (We do ecommerce consulting with larger travel companies / dot coms).
More about this other blog when it is launched….. not long to wait now…..
In the meantime - what do you think of this blog? Has it helped you in any way? Has it inspired you? Have you been upset with anything I have written?
I want to hear your stories….. please comment below….
Thanks
Alex
Southampton, UK (see map)
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Alex,
I love your quote : “You can’t exactly go around telling clients that they need to get into blogging and social media - if you are not applying that kind of thinking to your own business”
I see (we see) to much consultant(S) telling us how to swim but have never been in an swimming-pool or in the sea
You have already a great blog, I wonder if you will have time for another one !!!
My 2 cents:
trying to not only focus on the UK market
make some pools
make some “reviews” about technical solution of the market
Best regards
Claude
Hi Claude
Thanks for your feedback. The the swimming pool / sea - I think you know what the new blog name is! (Actually I am confident you don’t - but for those of you who do - please don’t post it!)
Yeah - I have been trying to make this blog less UK focussed - but that is quite difficult - because I know UK travel websites really well - and the companies behind them - so I know the context they are working in. Although I write about UK websites, I try to ensure that everything I write can be applied to non-UK sites.
I am not sure what you mean by “make a pool”? That is what I am trying to do with the new blog - to make it so that I have a focus - rather than just being broad like this one. I think having a focus is really important as I am not sure people want to subscribe to something as broad as this.
Alex
This blog has been very useful for me. Coming from a tech background and somehow finding myself in the travel industry (as a small tour operator) I was actually actively looking for bloggers that would deal with the subject in a manner that is more approachable than the usual travel industry media and with a bit of a critical eye. So keep up the good work!
A blog for small tour operators is something that I am sure would help a lot of people. Our own experience of using a blog to promote a tour operator has been a great success and in meeting with other small tour operators you realise that while most of them depend on the web for most of the bookings few of them really know how to best use it. So there is plenty of space for a blog providing that kind of information.
Hosting it on a different domain (even if the affiliation to TourCMS is made obvious) should lend it more credibility as well.
We are presently toying with the idea of forming a European travel blog. “We” are people form Holland, Belgium and Austria. If you are intrested in hearing more of our ideas, pls mail me at rvandenhoff@cdefholding.nl.
Alex,
I make a mistake, I was thinking about “Polls” !
Claude
Hey Alex,
I have been reading your blog from quite sometime now and believe me I have majority of these emails still stored in a seperate folder and I keep reading them often.
In your new blog, I suggest you to divide it into regions and let people from each region be a member to write posts, news articles etc which can be edited, monitored etc by you (If you have that much time) and then the same will be posted.
It will help all the members to know about travel market across the world and it will not be then restricted to a particular market.
Let me know if I can be of anyhelp from India side.
Rajat
@Claude - Je fais les erreurs quand j’ecrire en francais. C’est pas un problemme! (sauf pour les gens qui doit me lire!)
@Ronald - Thanks! I have sent you an email on another matter.
@Ronald Van Den Hoff - there are other bloggers who may be interested - hence I moderated your post on the assumption you meant to have this published.
@Rajat - yeah - I know what you mean about regionalisation. I wonder though instead of regionalisation a blog would be better divided by langauges? I really don’t want to fragment a blog into regions as that really would take some work to pull together - but having a blog in multiple languages would be interesting.
Yes it is an interesting concept, but if there is a very good post lets’ say in swedish, then many people will not be able to read the same in English and will miss out an opportunity of a good knowledge share. In this case, you have to get language translator attached with blogging application.
Like, you have replied to Claude above and I couldn’t understand the same.
With regions, you will atleast be sure that you are getting best updates on that region which might give you some interesting information.
You can say to people that a blog is a powerful marketing tool to build traffic and build awareness of a brand until your blue in the face, but unless someone see’s this in practice, and being successful then there’ going to have doubts, especially when it involves companies putting in a lot of time writing unique, interesting content.
Let’s pretend..
That you have a blog and you wrote about holiday planning ideas, the travel company would receive traffic from their targeted audience, i.e. holidaymakers, and they could drive these holidaymakers to their holidays.
Advantages
1) The travel company is going to receive targeted traffic so reducing PPC bills
2) The travel company is showing that they know what they talk about = TRUST
3) The travel company has UGC [whoo hoo!]
4) Low cost to create a blog
5) Blogs are in my experience easier to SEO than sites.
6) I could go on..
Disadvantages
1) Time, writing unique content
2) Frustrating waiting for the blog [if on a new domain] to drive traffic from Google
3) Time promoting and networking your blog
Networking is vital for any blog.
Anyway, I’m going wayy off-topic.
I enjoy reading this blog, and your style of writing, and as a consumer blogger, it’s interesting and educational to read ‘insider’ blog posts.
Keep going with this blog - I subscribed about 3 months ago and you are one of my most popular feeds
p.s. On the new blog make sure you have feeds per author/sector and the whole content is in the rss feed.