“Every day is a journey to be traveled; it’s all about attitude and state of mind.” writes Jenna Makowski. Even a good book is a journey in of itself. As a traveler, teacher and writer – her own journeys have taken her to places far and away which have enriched her life and her state of mind.
© Gretchen for TravelBlogs, 2011. |
Just Doing It |
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Post categories: Blogs
Post tags: Asia, cultural experiences, Europe, female travellers, living abroad, teaching, United States
Sometimes you think you have had enough of the world, whether it be from extensive travel or all the things life throws in one’s path. So was the case for Meg Pier. Whatever events happened, she gained a new perspective and new lust for life and travel. She has found her sense of purpose and a view.
© Gretchen for TravelBlogs, 2011. |
View from the Pier |
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Post categories: Blogs
Post tags: cultural experiences, Inspiration, photography, Round the world, travel writing
Claire van den Heever and Iain Manley decided to leave London and visit Shanghai. It took them 18 months, 39,000 kilometers, 20 countries and several bad hotels to complete the task. They are now on their return trip to Cape Town, South Africa, where they both call ‘home’.
© Gretchen for TravelBlogs, 2011. |
Old World Wandering: A Travelogue |
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Post categories: Blogs
Post tags: Africa, Asia, couples, Europe, India, long-term travel
(I am curious how large a role social media plays in your assorted positions as travel bloggers, writers, authors and in your assorted work-related situations.) What do you consider true social media? How do you use it? How often do you use it? Is it effective?
I swim a little against the tide when it comes to social media, in that I don’t use it too much to promote my blog, other than an occasional link on my personal Facebook page. I know all the rhetoric about followers and fan clubs and how all that stuff will make me queen of the universe if used properly, but in the conversations of the committee in my head it always comes back to “you already have a blog where you talk mostly about your own life, now you are going to TWEET all about it too?!” If I had a more informational or impersonal blog, maybe it would be more relevant and I would feel less self-mocking. But if there’s a new truth in the digital age, it’s that no one likes a spammer.
I am in my mid-60s so the era before texting, smart phones, and social networking is not ancient history but rather a well-remembered young adulthood. During that period when someone traveled overseas they were generally out of touch from friends and family except for the occasional picture postcard that took weeks to travel the globe and usually arrived long after its sender had returned. That was fine with me, as I don’t need real-time updates on each and every bus tour, museum visit, and dinner. I don’t need to be informed the very same day about snorkeling with sharks, riding the Killer Quake roller coaster, or your David Letterman sighting along Fifth Avenue. I am quite content to enjoy photographs and stories over shared meals after the happy holiday has been concluded but well before its memory begins to fade.
I always thought that sending a photo of white sand beaches to someone back home in 0 degree weather and a foot of snow to be a form of mental torture. Telling a friend about your three-star Michelin dinner while they sit in a cubicle eating Lean Cuisine and grinding out committee reports to be one of the unkindest cuts of all. For these reasons I do not make use of either Twitter or Facebook while on one of my extended working vacations – I travel by living and working overseas for 2-6 months at a time.
Yes, I do email family and friends to let them know I am safe and doing well. Yes, I do answer email when it is something that cannot wait – e.g., letters from my children, accountant, renters, or boss! Otherwise, I am happy to wait until I return home to post stories on Facebook for friends to read and enjoy. Why should I gloat about the many pleasures of my extended overseas breaks to those who may not be as fortunate in terms of travel time? Why post a note that essentially says Look at where I am; Look at what I am doing, and which contains within it the subliminal message “… and you are not!”
How large a role social media plays in your assorted positions as travel bloggers, writers, authors and in your assorted work-related situations.
As one of those people who wears many hats (writer, blogger, photographer, editor, whatever), I use different tools for various aspects of my work. In terms of networking with potential clients, Twitter has been an invaluable tool for quick easy access, and I admittedly was one of the skeptical late-comers to the Twitter game. While you won’t find me tweeting about that decadent slow-broiled buttered lobster dish I’m currently eating, you will find me linking and introducing various people/organizations to each other, occasionally checking in on fellow writer-photographer buddies, finding the right contacts quickly, and sharing links I think can provide value to others. As photoblogger for Sweden.se – I tweet to actively engage different people and organizations that might be interested in and curious about everyday life in Sweden as well as use StumbleUpon to share pertinent travel links across my network.
And considering I still don’t own a Smartphone, I don’t live on Twitter on an hourly basis either. For me, Facebook is really for connecting with my family, colleagues, old classmates, and friends spread out all over the world. I use it to share links and photos I think they might like as well as just keep in touch from my own corner of the world in Scandinavia.
In the early days of our around-the-world journey, we began using Twitter as a broadcast tool to get around censorship in places like Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and China. In those days, we mainly used it for one-way communication.
But we, Twitter, and social media in general have all grown up a bit.
Today, social media to us implies a toolset of connection and conversation with our community. It’s like one part sensory nervous system, one part circulatory system. As such, we don’t believe there’s a “true” social media, but rather levels of effectiveness – a function of one’s goals — in social media that impacts one’s connection and conversation with one’s community.
People get wrapped up in the quantitative – the number of followers, fans, RTs, etc. While that’s important, it’s only one facet. Quantity helps, but quality really counts. Although it takes time to maintain and grow one’s social networks (there’s the investment), there are recognizable returns in terms of conversation, community and potential business partnerships.
As travel bloggers, social media is an integral part of what we do. Here’s why:
1. It helps extend and grow our conversation circle from connections in related niches (travel, lifestyle, food, personal growth) to networks of loosely-related interest overlap, to the entirely random. This extends our reach; it also keeps things interesting.
2. It enables real-time micro-storytelling updates to fans and followers. For world travelers, social media updates are one part storytelling device, another part personality indicator. Some people don’t like to read articles. For this “now” crowd, tweets, updates and other social media bits help them remain connected.
3. It offers a direct line of opt-in communication to some important people whom we might not traditionally otherwise have direct access to.
4. It greatly aids trip planning and connecting – everything from practical info on the ground, to lining up a short-term apartment to securing a last-minute trip to Antarctica.
5. A bridge to the face-to-face or going beyond the avatar. We try to convert these virtual relationships to “in the flesh” relationships.
6. Gives us leverage and ripple to reach large groups of people at one time. There’s not only promotion and exposure for newly published content, but also for the long shelf-life bits to new followers and fans.
A Totally Impractical Guide to Living in Shanghai
I am a teacher by trade and a writer by passion and social media has worked its way into both, often dragging them together in my streams of conversation and connections. I am relatively limited in what I do with social media: I only use Twitter and Facebook, using a VPN because I’m in China and they are both blocked. I don’t have a smart phone. I don’t use apps. I check them when I’m at home in the evening because I can’t access them at work during the day. China is a good place to go on a media diet, should you wish to do so.
For me, social media is totally about throwing words and ideas out there and seeing what sticks. These days I do it for both my writing as well as for teaching ideas. When I was 10 years old, I posted an ad in an Archie comic book for pen pals and started writing to dozens of other ten year olds around the world, thrilled to be making so many far-flung, improbable connections. I continued this into my teens, having long handwritten intense conversations with people in the former East Germany, in India, in Ghana. This is pretty much the same thing, except I don’t store my letters and postcards in shoeboxes now. I use social media to know what others are doing with their days. I use it to stumble upon creative projects and to meet people who inspire me and who have inspired others. My blog’s Expat Interview series took off because of Twitter and re-Tweeting. People I’d never heard of asked to tell their stories on my blog and still others wrote in to say how much they loved this. I don’t make any money from this and don’t intend to. It just makes me incredibly happy to be swapping stories, brainstorming mad possibilities, finding common ground. Is it effective? It depends on what you expect to get out of it. For me, social media is a tool, like a phone or email or a bicycle. It gets me where I’m going, connects me to the world, and that’s all I ask of it.
My first response to being asked about my social media strategies were curt, critical, and slightly biting. We never really dove fully into the social media scene at Vagabond Journey Travel, using the various mediums only as a way to communicate with readers and for the small time promotion of new articles. I found that my first response to this panel discussion focused mainly on the negative or otherwise annoying points of social media — the sea of garbage posts, the “you promote me, I promote you” ethic, the petty squabbles that evolve between various bloggers, the wolf pack tactics of travel blogging “gangs,” and the sheer amount of time it takes to run a successful social media campaign. I’ve always focused more on the creation of content, on writing, on photographing, on talking with people and living than with promoting myself on Twitter and Facebook. To these ends, I sent off a rather snarling response to Gretchen as my contribution to this panel discussion.
Then I began realizing that I was taking the benefits of social media for granted while focusing only on its negative aspects, I remembered how I worked within a group which used Facebook and Twitter to unparalleled success when trying to locate a Vagabond Journey correspondent and old friend who went missing in the earthquakes and tsunamis that rocked Japan this past March. As I came to publish in How to Use Social Media and the Internet in Disaster Response, through communicating with each other, people on the ground in Japan, and various media outlets we were able to accurately provenience our missing friend from various living room “command stations” on the other side of the planet. When NBC called on their pursuit of a story, we were able to tell them exactly where to go to find the “missing Americans.” This would not have been possible without the communication platform that Facebook and other social media outlets provided.
The power of properly utilized social media is vast, and this relatively new way of communication can give a group of commoners the power to efficiently coordinate people from around the world in a singular task as well as communicate with a network of thousands almost spontaneously. This ease of mass global communication for common citizens through social media is truly revolutionary, but, now that they are so common and thoroughly a part of global culture, it is also easy to take these systems for granted. Yes, there are truly mountains of crap to sift through when trying extract information on a given topic from social media platforms, but the fact that we have these avenues easily available to be able to contact and communicate with literally thousands of people at the touch of a few buttons is STILL truly remarkable. Recreationally speaking, I still don’t dive too deep into social media, but this does not diminish the fact that I view these platforms as truly awesome ways to communicate what you have to say, to make essential contacts, and to round up a tribe of people to accomplish various goals and objectives.
Editor’s Note: As always, thank you to everyone who has been a willing participant! I would also like to thank everyone who has contributed to past panel discussions as well. The responses have been numerous, enlightening and much more than I anticipated. I applaude you all.
~~~~~~~~~~
On a side note, I want to take this time to pay tribute to Marlis Seelos, who was not only my friend and colleague on Travellerspoint, but also graciously let us use many of her photographs for articles here on TravelBlogs. She passed away recently and will be missed by many, especially me. So, in Memory of Marlis…
Thank you all once again. G.
© Gretchen for TravelBlogs, 2011. |
‘Why Can’t We Be Friends?’: Social Media – Part Two |
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Post categories: Panel Discussions
Post tags: Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, MySpace, Social Media, StumbleUpon, Twitter, YouTube
In that vein, I am curious how large a role social media plays in your assorted positions as travel bloggers, writers, authors and in your assorted work-related situations. What do you consider true social media? How do you use it? How often do you use it? Is it effective?
What do you consider true social media?
I don’t know and I don’t care. I’ll let the self proclaimed social media gurus worry about that. All that matters is that I can talk to people. To that extent, however I can do is social media to me. I can talk to them through my blog, through Twitter, email, Facebook, whatever.
How do you use it?
I use it to talk to people. To tell people what I’m doing, to answer questions, to ask questions and sometimes just to shoot the shit. Social media for me is nothing more than talking to people online.
How often do you use it?
Every day, usually many times a day.
Is it effective?
Absolutely. People like being able to talk in real time to people who are out traveling. What separates bloggers from big media is the ability to have a conversation.
When I first began blogging — when typefaces were black and mice were wired — there wasn’t what you would call a ‘social media culture’. That was in 2006. This was also the year I joined Flickr. A year later, I dropped MySpace in the gutter with all the broken animated-gifs and Friends Reunited; and hit the spangly high-rises of Facebook.com.
Two years later, in 2009, I was hopelessly lost in a sea of forgotten passwords, and followed the square-eyed mobs to Twitter. It felt warm and fuzzy. My first tweet captured the momentous occasion: “Branching out, and checking out Twitter for the first time.” In other words; My name is Ant Stone, and I’m a social media junkie.
Round of applause. Pat on the back. Group hug.
Two years after that, a major travel company hired me as their Online Community Manager. In other words, they saw me shivering in a corner, squishing hashtags and @replies into the dark rings beneath my eyes; and through a series of jittery interviews, they realised I was still sane enough to hold their hand as we skipped into the #scary #woods.
Social media has been the proverbial bottle to my message. It’s carried my name to the far corners of the world; and put me in touch with people who I would rarely have encountered otherwise (for a start, I was travelling in rural China and India, so the chances of bumping into a paying client were rather slim!)
I use social media every single day; not only for my day job, but to fuel my passion for travel. If I’m researching my next trip, I turn to Flickr, Twitter and Facebook, to deepen my knowledge, highlight any potential flash points, and unearth hidden gems in the region.
True social media is a meadow of minds; a place where an organic community can mingle at the push of a key. Social media allows us to sprinkle our thoughts and ideas in front of complete strangers, and also provides a platform to confidently confide, observe or converse with anyone who desires the same thing.
It’s energized by personal equilibrium; and I value social media for continually growing my knowledge of the world around me, because at the very least, it enhances the journey of my core passion: travel.
I think I may be one of the few people to only use social media as a social outlet. And at that, a minimum one.
My main output is Twitter (@TLWH). I use it primarily as my personal global rant as I travel. Many a time I am sitting by myself during a meal, and will tweet out my observations of anything and anything I find amusing, annoying, or interesting. Likewise when I wake up in the morning I might quickly scan through twitter to see what people are up to, say hello, and read a few posts while telling my followers what I thought was a good read. I usually sign off with a link to my latest post.
Breaking news and Twitter go hand in hand, but so does responsibility.
I find Twitter good as a surface call out. Some people sitting behind desks go head over heels for scheduled tweets, and sourcing the very best, hoping to up their KLOUT etc. I simply don’t have time, nor the interest. What you get, is what you see with me. That’s a pretty honest social trait 
Facebook and I don’t get along. Period. My website has a page. And that’s it. I find it too restrictive to be beneficial. Again, I am not online 24/7 and I find my best content goes to my site, not a third party.
My YouTube account is active, and I do post videos there. But again, I simply don’t have time to be searching online for other videos, etc. So these videos end up on my site instead.
StumbleUpon had potential at the start, but since then has become a bit of a traffic only thing for people looking for high bursts and Alexa ranking between themselves. I’d much rather a stumble for original, good content than .0001 sec hits.
Again, I write for my myself, and for my readers who enjoy my original style of writing, photography, and my journey. I realize there are a another few worlds out there clambering to get attention. No problem, I throw my streams out there, and if someone wants to join along, I can be their best friend. But, not at the expensive of being online 24/7 updating, RTing, linking, and stumbling just for the sake of it.
A lot of people use social networking tools to solely promote their work, and others in the hope of returns. It does get a little tiring to see this. And I recon in about a year this will start to die out apart from quality content, and large multinational content. The rest will just go the way of email spam, and be ignored.
Better to be a person, than a tweet
Social media plays a big role in my life as a travel blogger and writer. From Twitter to Facebook and beyond, social media has been a great way for me to engage with my readers, encourage visits to my blog and other articles I’ve written on the web, and connect with other bloggers and potential business partners.
True social media can be anything that allows a person or company to interact with an audience. Whether it is a travel blogger sharing stories about a recent trip and getting tips for the next one, or a company telling consumers about a new product and running a competition for a free sample, social media can take many forms and can be done across a range of outlets. Obvious examples include Facebook and Twitter, but there are many other sites that fall under this category as well.
I use social media on a daily basis. Whether it is Tweeting about an event, a place I’m visiting, or a new post on my blog, Twitter is an integral part of my daily social media use. Facebook is also an important social media outlet for me. My blog has a Facebook page that I use to interact with my readers and post new media for them to see. On a less frequent basis, I use sites like Stumbleupon to discover new blogs and websites, and to share some of my favorite posts from around the web with others.
Social media has been a very effective tool for me. My goal in using it is twofold: to interact with my readers in a meaningful way, and to encourage both new and existing members of my audience to visit my blog. Social media has helped me do both of these things, and I have seen great results since I started using it.
I think social media is a necessary evil these days… Sometimes it feels like a high school popularity contest, and it also takes up more of my time than I’d like it too. On the positive side, social media has connected me with interesting people. The prominence of social media will be increasing as time goes on, so my involvement is likely to grow correspondingly.
As a travel blogger and writer, my work is my life is my travel is my work. So my use of social media as both a personal and professional tool is intertwined. I love Facebook; my personal page is a great way to both stay in touch with people from home and friends that I meet along the way, as well as to broadcast articles I’ve written that might be of interest. I also have a Facebook fan page that is a great forum for interacting with readers, asking and answering questions, and again broadcasting articles of interest.
I’ve been playing with Twitter for a couple of years, and as such I’ve met some interesting people, including other travelers and writers with whom I’ve stayed when I’ve been in their neck of the woods. I also have a LinkedIn profile, which I admittedly don’t spend a huge amount of time on, but I belong to a few groups that sometimes offer up some interesting ideas and connections.
The ever-present battle with social media in general (and one that I know I’m not alone with) is how much time to spend on it. You can fritter away days (and weeks, and months) with social media and have a lovely – but largely unproductive – time. Somewhere in there is a balance; a point past which the time you spend on social media no longer reaps the same benefits (professionally speaking). The same can be said of dealing with emails, which, although necessary, can stretch to fill your allotted work time before you’ve gotten any “real” work done.
My trick is to write my articles first – offline – before connecting to social media. Once I’m online, I can’t help but to delve into social media etc. If I’ve gotten something tangible accomplished first though, then I can fill the rest of my allotted time with social media and explore the opportunities therein in a relatively guilt-free way.
There are an infinite different means of communication. The slightest change of inflection can speak a thousand words, yet a whole oration can say, literally, nothing. Social Media is simply one aspect of that and, as such, is subject to the same conventions of all human communication.
As bloggers/writers/whatever the value social media can bring to what we’re trying to achieve is best assessed before we even put finger to keyboard. What are we trying to do here? If it’s simply to inform, then beyond spreading the good word and raising awareness of what you’re doing, Social Media isn’t going to play too critical role in your output. Frankly, I’ve never been too concerned about interacting with my Atlas. However, if you choose to view what you’re doing as more conversation than polemic, social media is going to be critical.
Look, let me be honest, I can only speak with any authority on my own output. However, what I can say is that this output has been shaped and moulded by the conversations I’ve had, via Social Media, with those people around the world who’ve read and commented upon my work. That’s to say that, while still distinctly my own, the finished product is growing steadily more collaborative. Let me run with the honesty thing a bit more, because it’s this collaborative aspect that’s not just added to the enjoyment of writing , but has also shaped – massively – the experience of travelling. Because that’s what the best conversations are about; exchanging experiences, experiences that then go on to make our lives that little bit better.
Social Media has taken the possibilities of any one conversation and wrapped them around the globe. The value that’s ultimately going to bring is down to you.
What do you have to say?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Editor’s comment: Stay tuned for Part Two as six more people have given their opinions on this subject. All are quite interesting…
© Gretchen for TravelBlogs, 2011. |
‘Why Can’t We Be Friends?’: Social Media – Part One |
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Post categories: Panel Discussions
Post tags: Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, MySpace, Social Media, StumbleUpon, Twitter, YouTube
Stan Diamond was an educator for most of his working life. But, it was his explorations and travels of the world that made his style of teaching unique. Now retired, he has begun to document his experiences – leading others down exciting paths they may not have chosen without his inspiration to guide them.
© Gretchen for TravelBlogs, 2011. |
Off the Beaten Path |
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Post categories: Blogs
Post tags: Africa, Asia, Central America, China, couples, cultural experiences, education, travel writer
By the title, you can tell what was Dave Conroy’s previous profession. Tired and suffering ‘burn-out’, he began his transformation into to a round-the-world traveler – on a bicycle. Though he has encountered several difficulties along the route, Dave is still on the road of discovery in more ways than one.
© Gretchen for TravelBlogs, 2011. |
Tired of I.T! |
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Post categories: Blogs
Post tags: Canada, cycling, North America, overland travel, road trip, Round the world, solo travel, United States
Thursday 17042011Philipp and Fabian arrived in the afternoon They rang the doorbell of number 1 Adriaen Poirterslaan by mistake as Id omitted the 9 in the sms I sent with the address. After giving me a call I went and fetched them at the end of the road on my earthwing. Smiles spread quickly and it was so good to see such a friendly face again After a bit of lunch I had to start ge
Hi everyoneArrived in Istanbul to be confronted with the wost peak hour traffic Worse than the Monash.....so it took some time to get to the hotel. Worth the wait very posh 5 star hotel which scanned us our baggage for weapons overlooking the Bospherous well Nobby Chris got that view...we just had an overgrown garden and a barking dog. Decided we could handle going out for dinner a
Up early this morning to catch boat to cambodia. Nice group of people on boat and not too packed. Had to get off boat for border check but was nice to stretch out. Got our visa ok but only for four weeks so may need to head out cambodia to renew it at some point. Really hot and humid here. Had dinner at nice wee restaurant. Lots of child labour here with kids selling books really hard not to feel
After almost three days in Ho Chi Minh City Steph Rickie and I were feeling a serious need to get the hell out The city was overwhelming difficult to navigate and really polluted.Thus we hopped an evening bus to Can Tho a small town on the Mekong Delta after having one last meal in HCMC at a great restaurant around the corner from our hotel. We arrived fairly late in the evening after an
we had quite long weekend and there's one day off on tuesday so me and bf decided to have holiday together..what a tanning holiday... olalaas you can read above it means we went to beaches area with lot of sun lights and seas around us.. wohoooSaturday February 12nd 2011....so we departed from Malang on saturday afternoon we're almost late like always then from Juanda airport we to
In Chilln I was quite lucky to get a room as some were even reduced to living on the porches over doorways see first picture. I tried to speak to these less fortunate tourists but they seemed strangely taciturn. However they seemed to be making the best of their lot by growing some flowers to cheer themselves up. The housing situation was not just confined to my species and even the dogs we
Ce matin maria m'emmne dans le centre ville de Rionegro pour prendre le bus 7h00. J'arrive vers 9h Medellin prends le taxi et me voila de nouveau devant la porte du DAS. Maintenant je sais me dplacer toute seule dans medellin avec les transport. C'est agrable car je ne suis pas oblige de dranger les gens pour m'accompagner. Une petite demiheure d'attente et me voila sortie du D
My passport finally came in the mail and I might have an internship. The good thing about the internship is that they have a company based in Europe that I can visit on the trip. The bad thing is that I may need to come back early in order to work.I found a ticket across Europe through Ryanair.com for only 7 euros. It's feasible to backpack and won't be too expensive. My friend is meeting me a
Again it has been an attack of the lazy bug that has seen so much time pass since our last blog but don't you worry we finally got some good bug spray and have vanished the lazy bug for good. I will try to keep this blog brief but there has been so much going on that I can't promise anything. First off isn't the easter bunny an amazing blokesheila we are thousands of kilometers away from home in
I can't believe it has only been 4days I have spent in Byron because it feels like I have been here a 2weeks. I feel somewhat at home here in this busy little town. After seeing some of the nightlife this town has to offer on our first night Michelle and I have since had the opportunity to wander the streets of Byron day and night and take in the festival atmosphere. With rain forecast each da
After another good night sleep we were up out of bed and ready to do final packing for our flight to London. The last two and a half weeks in Turkey have been a fabulous experience. We have seen such wonderful sights and met many friendly locals. The school children were always ready to find out where we came from and wanted to try out their English. Every time we tried out our few Turkish words
On Saturday the16th we packed our swags and boarded our 4wd taxi seatbelts operational to Amritsar. This 6 hour drive was an experience in beeping and traffic weaving and it gave us great views of lots of little villages as we passed by. N.B. Indian drivers do not drive on one side of the road. They drive on both sides At varying speeds they beep the cars beside them to get them to move over
Happy EasterWe're staying in Cirencester for a few days with Chris Floss and the gorgeous little Bess. Peter and the Willow family have gone off to Ledbury to introduce Bess to some more members of the James clan. I'm having some quiet time at home at Floss' house. It's nice to not be racing around for a few hours.Cirencester is a very impressive romanmedieval town. It's had quite a long hist
