Category: Blogging

Sean Dodson with The Guardian´s Alternative Travvies.

Is it because the Guardian or Sean Dodson didn´t think about launching a Best Travel Blog Award themselves? Their reasoning is even wrong, because at least one of the winners of the Travvies is a Dutchman´s Blog (Exposed Planet) and not a US based Blog. Anyway, they had to publish their own Guardian Alternative Travvies list in Sean´s Best of the Net Column:

Well at least there are movements in the field.

How to boost your Blog’s Web Presence: The T-List

T-List

The main wisdom is that the more links point to your website, the more traffic you generate and the better the (Blog)search engines can find you. So how to spread the word about your Bog?

Some examples of techniques to get the desired results are:

  • Comment, comment and comment; The advise is both inbound and outbound:
    • Give as many comments on interesting posts of fellow Bloggers as is feasible.
    • Obtain as many comments as possible simply by writing about subjects that may be of interest to others.
  • “I have been tagged”: Somebody points to (tags) usually 5 fellow Bloggers and the tagged ones should answer the pointing (tagging) by a post under the header “I have been tagged” and should give away a few until then unknown personal facts about themselves and at the same time tag 5 new fellow Bloggers.
  • Get interviewed by another Blogger:
    • Guillaume Thevenot exploited this successfully with his tag 20 Blogs I like, wherein from time to time he posts an interview. In addition he started this week publishing a list of 50 top Travel and Hotel Blogs according to technorati.
    • Paul Johnson copied the idea and has thus far published 17 interviews on A Luxury Travel Blog and yes yours truly Happy Hotelier is amongst them!
  • Join communities: For instance My Blog where you can obtain a nice widget (see my right column) that gives you an idea who passes by your Blog. Technorati, is another possibility and there are many more.

The T-List was launched yesterday by by Mathieu of Radar who modeled it after the Z List, originally launched by Mack Collier of Viral garden:

  • The idea is simple: Write a post, and copy and paste the list of the one who T listed your Blog into the post. Make sure the links are active and correct. If your blog is on that list, remove it as all to obvious self promotion is “not done”. Don’t worry, because if your Blog is on a T List, it will be on others and will spread. Add your favorite blogs to the top of the list. Publish the post. People will notice the incoming links, and hopefully write their own T List posts. The result will be that all bloggers will get more links pointing to their blogs, and more readers got to be good!

In other words:

  • Create a new post on your blog.
  • Copy and Paste the entire list of blog links in the post
  • Add any blogs that you want to include near the top of the list. (Optional)
  • Include the blog where you first got the list from, on the list in your post.
  • Do not include your own blog links on the list in your post.
  • Make sure that all links are copied intact.
  • Publish the Post.

Here we go

I add:

To the list of Radar:

  • Hotel Blogs [discontinued]
  • Les Explorers [discontinued]
  • Chrispitality Media Blog [discontinued]
  • A Luxury Travel Blog
  • Travel Rants [discontinued]
  • Travolution Blog
  • BootBlog [discontinued]
  • Erin Julian [discontinued]
  • My Travel Backpack
  • The Travel PR Blog

Your turn!

Added 10 March 2007:

Thanks David Ourisman of Travel Horizons for creating a T-List logo that proudly appears at the top of this post.

Look at my T-List page for an as complete as possible updated T-List.

 

Last edited by gje February 6, 2017.

The 2007 Travvies Winners

Travvies 2007

Today the Winners of The 2007 Travvies were published:

A grand total of 2306 votes were cast. In some categories, the competition was truly fierce, with the winner separated from the runner-up by single digits.

The winners:

  • Best Photography on a Travel Blog: Exposed Planet.

    Based in the Netherlands, Harry Kikstra, a self-described “climber / expedition leader / photographer / filmmaker / producer / writer / public speaker / cycler and many other things” proffers up a beautiful portfolio of images from his travels around the world. His photos portray both people and places — a reminder that the beauty of travel is not just found in vistas we see, but in the cultures we visit.

  • Best Single-Author Travel Blog: The Cranky Flier.

    Self-described airline dork Brett Snyder serves up commentary on the aviation industry with insight, humor, and a penchant for Photoshopped stock imagery. If it’s about air travel, he’s likely to have an opinion, though in reality it’s not always as curmudgeonly as his blog title implies.

  • Best Group-Written Travel Blog: The Lost Girls’ World.

    Three New York women faced burnout in a “quarterlife” crisis, put their media careers on hold, and took a year to travel the world as a group. The blog is their collection of dispatches from the field, as they explore South America, Africa, and (most recently) Asia. Jealous readers, living vicariously, can pick up locally-specific travel tips as they watch these women living the dream.

  • Best Informative/Practical Travel Blog: The Cranky Flier.

    Cranky, again! Though other blogs were nominated in multiple categories, the Cranky Flier is the only one to actually win multiple awards. As mentioned above, Brett Snyder’s focus on airline news and opinion, with a humorous touch, has won him many fans.

  • Best Destination Blog: Newyorkology

    Amy Langfield helps her readers get a lay of the land in the City That Never Sleeps, with news and event listings for tourists and locals alike. For visitors hoping to hit the ground running, the site is a goldmine of up-to-the-minute information that traditional travel guides might only get around to putting in print 12 months from now.

  • Best Travel Blog: National Geographic Inside Traveler.

    Finally, the big one: Best Travel Blog. Emily King, National Geographic Traveler’s assistant to the editor, and researcher Jessie Johnston round up stories and links from (quite literally) all over the map. Sometimes practical, sometimes destination-specific, but always about exploration and travel. The 2007 award for best travel blog goes to them.

PhotoLogiX

Bruno van den Elshout

Because almost all van den Elshouts living in The Hague are distant relatives, Bruno van den Elshout is likely to be one of my distant relatives. He is 30 years younger than I am – happy him – and he lives around the corner.

I had spotted his PhotoLogix Photo Blog already some time ago. Now it appears he is spreading out with his work and gradually his Blog is becoming a real Travel Photo Blog. Therefor this plug.

Waiter Rant

It took me some time to vote for the Travvies, mainly because I carefully inspected all the finalists and also the nominees, because methodically as I sometimes am, I wanted to know whether I missed something. The reading took me to some lists of travel writers and also to the 2007 Bloggies and found there Waiter Rant.

The writer remains anonymous because:

There are many books about waiting tables penned by frustrated authors and wannabe loser actors, so why should I add my tiny voice to the fray? Because all of these treatments are milquestoast pussywhipped stories written so as not to offend anyone. I read these books and I get a sneaking suspicion that the author is afraid he/she will be found out and lose their job. Inhibited bullshit. F*ck that.

I will remain anonymous so I can tell people what this job and working in the great American “service economy” is really like! All I will say is I am a waiter in a high end restaurant in the NYC area. The stories are true but some of the names have been changed to protect the innocent ( and my self form litigious customers!).

An excellently written Blog I do agree with the Bloggies.

Also nice to see that my Chocolate and Zucchini find is nominated for 2007.