Budget travel. It’s one of the most powerful buzzwords in the travel industry. And for the vast majority of bloggers and travelers using the word to describe themselves, it’s an absolute, bold-faced lie. Read More
Blogging
Peeled Away – The Raw Side of Travel Blogging
Posted by T.W. Anderson | Blogging, Traveling Tips | 6 CommentsThe end result that you, the reader, see upon publication is a polished, honed, crafted and planned piece of content. From the videos to the photos to the subject matter of the blog post in question, nothing is written by chance or upon whim. This is the reality of a professional travel blog; nothing is done without planning in advance. Want to know more? Let’s take a closer look behind the scenes. Read More
TBEX 2014 Cancun, Mexico – The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
Posted by T.W. Anderson | Blogging, Entrepreneur, Social Media, TBEX | 38 CommentsThere are high points in your career that anyone who does something long enough will recognize as turning points. Completing a difficult degree. Earning your first promotion. Landing that dream job. Earning your first published piece with a respected publishing outlet. Landing your first sponsored gig…and then getting to the point where your sponsorships continue to roll in. And for those of you who are in the blogging world, getting an invite to speak at the TBEX travel blog convention is up there on the list.
So for me, personally, it was a definite high point of the year to receive my invitation to speak at the convention as one of the featured speakers covering a session on day one just after the opening keynote on advanced Facebook marketing and management tactics, as well as being able to cover a pair of blog posts for them on Cancun beyond the Hotel Zone and its numerous parks and plazas. But even though the event itself was another notch on the belt in an already adventure-packed series of gigs and opportunities in the past few years, I would be remiss if I didn’t cover both sides of the coin. Read More
“Blasphemy!” I hear the multitudes cry, so entrenched and and trained are they to believe that the number of comments on a blog post has any significance whatsoever beyond the “feel good” factor of vanity traffic. “A post with 50 comments is proof that it is more popular than a post with only 5 comments or only zero”.
That, my dear readers, is the myth of popularity. The true nature of engagement is far more complex, and relies on many more components than merely the number of readers (most of whom are fellow bloggers and armchair readers and not your target audience of paying customers) leaving random one-sentence fluff replies simply to build up their layer of backlinks to their own sites. Read More
Any time you get into the business side of dealing with another country, you’ll find that things vary dramatically from the way things work in your home country. If there’s one mistake I see bloggers and travelers coming into Latin America make, it’s the #1 mistake in the book: a lack of know-how in navigating cultural differences and the assumption that it will work just like it does in <insert home country/primary audience here>.
What works back home or for your English/French/German/Insert-Favorite-Language-Here audience doesn’t necessarily translate into the Latin way of doing things. And if you plan on making any sort of deals here in Latin America, you are going to have to unlearn everything you think you know about business…because it doesn’t apply. Read More
