Creating an Online Travel Community: What Do You Want?
There has been growing discussion in the blogosphere lately about the need for an online travel community. Many travel bloggers feel that the travel blog presence isn’t united. And I completely agree.
Compared to other categories of bloggers, travel bloggers (in general) don’t do a very good job of spreading goodwill and presenting a united front on the web. Perhaps this is because many of us are naturally more independent. Whatever the reason, I think we need to join together.
Liz from Traveling the Green Way / Write to Travel, Pam at Nerd’s Eye View, and I have been exchanging some thoughts via email. We all want to build an online travel community and we’re brainstorming ways to make it happen. But first, there two overarching questions that stem from this conversation:
- What do travel writers (and their readers) want from the community?
- How do we achieve this?
I propose we start with the first piece.
What Do You Want from an Online Travel Community?
I’m posing this question for you to answer in the comments below, or on Twitter or the Nerd’s Eye View Forum. If you have a website, I encourage you to ask this question on it, too. Let’s get a discussion going this week with a deadline of next Saturday. By next Saturday (August 2nd) please either post your ideas below, post them on the forum at Nerds Eye View, or email me the comments from your website and we can compile them in one place. Once we know what we jointly want, then we can figure out how to achieve it.
I’ll start with some of the things I want from an online travel community:
- Interesting travel stories to read
- Tips and tricks for traveling
- New destination ideas
- People who will offer travel advice when I post a question (e.g., Janelle from IT is on the west coast this week and looking for ideas about where to go. Why don’t those of us who have concrete suggestions help her out?)
- New websites to read
- New Twitter, digg, and StumbleUpon friends
- A way to get to know other travelers and meet up with them while traveling
- More pageviews on our website
- More links to our website (yes these last two are obvious and self-serving, but also what we all want, so why not be frank with each other)
Ok, I’ve offered more than I intended to right off the bat. So, now the question for you is:
I thought that’s what Matador was?
Good point, Beth. I’m using the term “community” very loosely. I don’t necessarily mean a website, etc. I mean it like a “sense” of community. Matador is great for connecting travelers, but doesn’t provide for as much of a connection for travel bloggers with blogs hosted outside of Matador.
I would be interested in getting some economy of scale going for my puny, little green vacation rentals. It’s too much work for me to research news for guests and keep up with blogging, teaming with others to affiliate, consolidate, write, etc would help. I need more page views etc without wasting hours at the computer.
Also, I’d like fresh ideas. Travel is a lifestyle for our guests, food, music, destinations, and health consciousness all roll together for them. And personally, I’m sick of finding the same resorts and Disney-like travel on every site, there must be some way to promote the less known, yet to be a comodity destinations.
it will be interesting to see what you come up with. are you leaning towards more of a forum or something like matador?
I will be following the forum closely, I’m curious to see how it turns out. For travel stories and destinations, I feel like there are already plenty of resources. For travel writing, there is also some active forums. What I would like to see specifically is Travel Blogging… promoting a travel blog, social networking for travel, what works, what doesn’t etc. All that technical and marketing stuff that isn’t covered anywhere, unless you look at Problogger.net, but then it’s so general it doesn’t apply. For example lots of places talk about using Digg, but if you’re writing a travel blog this won’t work. Digg likes tech and political posts, or Top 10 weird crazy posts, but you’re unlikely to do well with an article on green travel or a festival in brussels. I think there is a very specific market for travel blogs, and we have to navigate the waters completely differently than someone who wrote, for example, a celebrity news blog. There are probably only 1000 people (max) who would be interested in these topics, and maybe 25 people who will take an active role in the discussions. That’s probably why there isn’t a place for it, and most of us just end up talking about this stuff via email with other bloggers. We’ll see! I hope it works out!
I’d like to see a travel community that is more inclusive — where all travel writers are welcome, not just those who blog. Many “blogs” aren’t even blogs in the traditional sense of the word — they’re publications and magazines that use the blog format to publish. How is that different than working for an online magazine or print publication, except that the latter gets excluded from blog rolls, blog carnivals, and other blog associations?
It seems to me that there are too many divisions.
@Another Elizabeth:
I would agree, if you don’t mind alot of tech talk and social networking strategies. With travelwriters.com there is a great forum that is used for all side of the travel writing industry, but for me, it lacks on that “How to” side for those running their own sites (or working for a publication where they help with that stuff).
So basically, for me I don’t want to keep people out, but that’s one area that doesn’t already exist…
Hiya,
Thanks for posting about the forum. As the person who clicked “install” I had a few ideas of my own, but mostly, I thought it would be as good a place as any to start talking about what that community would be. I’ve heard an awful lot lately about how travelbloggers want community, but not enough about what they want from it.
I think there are (as stated above) lots of communities for travelers, but not so many for travelbloggers where the issues are focused on the blogging aspect. I do realize there’s an overlap with writing and I happen to believe that the first goal should be to write well. After that, there’s a lot of stuff with tech/hosting/traffic/readers/etc… that plays into blogging that isn’t part of traditional media writing. That’s a starting point.
But mostly, I just wanted to create a common space so we could talk about this kind of thing - including defining what the community would mean.
I hope you’ll take the time to participate.
Pam (at) Nerd’s Eye View