Travelblather

I was really struck by a recent job ad on journalism.co.uk from Frommer's.

The job title is 'Editorial Manager' and it's to manage and implement the upgrading of content for a major travel brand's website.

I know Frommer's does a lot of work for BA and for Hilton hotels so I'd imagine it's probably for one of these two.

Some of the requirements are as follows (the elements I've taken out for the sake of space are mainly about softer skills like people management and getting the job done.)

* At least five years' experience of managing successful online
projects where high volume, high quality editorial content has been
delivered to specification and deadline
* Meticulous editor, responsible for ensuring quality control at every stage of the production cycle
* Technically savvy, and a whizz with Excel
* At least five years' experience at a senior editorial level in the travel and hospitality industry
* Broad destination knowledge of EMEA and APAC
* Acute sensitivity to tone of voice and brand
* Unwavering ability to ensure content connects with customers

The job requirements and the job itself are very very close to what I do for iCrossing. What is really striking is the combination of writing/editing skills and marketing, project management, technical skills.

There's no degree course or even job title that adequately covers this role - at least I don't know of one. Indeed it's interesting that the job is titled 'Editorial Manager', but the detail talks about 'Project Manager' and the email subject line for applicants needs to be 'Travel Project Manager'.

The web is constantly creating new jobs as it evolves - SEO manager is a classic example. A role like this wouldn't have even been thought of 5 or so years ago. I've no idea what this kind of role that combines writing and editing skills with detailed project management abilities and a solid awareness of more technical stuff like Excel will ultimately be called. At iCrossing I'm called Travel Editor - but I get involved in really clunky stuff like defining XML feeds, user experience and SEO. 

Will there be degrees in On-line Content Management and Creation soon? It wouldn't surprise me. Personally I'm very happy with being a 'Travel Editor' - above all else I am a creative writer and it's these talents that I think really set me apart from people competing for similar jobs in this space.

What skills do you think are needed these days for online travel content creators? And what would you call this kind of role?

Pic by Flickr User Brian Lane Winfield Moore

I'm in Jersey this weekend writing a piece for Visit Jersey's magazine Pure Jersey. They've also asked me to record a podcast of a guided walk I'm going to be doing. I've done some TV work before, but this will be the first time I've done pure audio. I'll have a Blue Badge guide with me and they've given me some helpful pointers:

All well and good, but I think there's probably far more to it than that. Ideally visitors to Jersey will download this podcast and use it as a guided tour. Clearly, walking the route first and working out key areas of interest to describe will be very important indeed.

Anyone got any other hints or tips for recording a great guided tour podcast? I'd love to hear them.

Hardly a new topic I know... but a couple
of things really hit home for me on this recently.

I met a journalist who writes for The
Guardian - one of the UK's major national newspapers - a week or so back. She was saying how her hours have been cut and the
desk she works on, creating two biggish chunks of the Saturday Guardian and
Observer has been cut by about 50%. She said:
"Basically all we have time to do now is knock together stories from
Press Releases."

We all know why the newspapers are cutting
staffing levels - they are all losing vast amounts of money and the future
looks bleak. Fewer people are buying newspapers, preferring to get their
news from other media channels - in particular the internet. Advertisers are deserting in droves as a result.

I then read a piece about the decline in serious investigative journalism.
Investigate journalist Nick Fielding was saying how only 5% of content in UK newspapers
these days is proper hardcore researched investigative writing. The rest is
made up of stuff from the newswires and PR rewrites.

The quality of our media is suffering because people won't pay to consume it anymore... there's a lowest common denominator effect taking place. I'm sure I'm joining a very long line of hacks saying similar things.

But - what's the REAL impact of this? Here are a few things we need to be really concerned about.

Fewer real stories, more noise
With less money spent on quality, original
journalism, everyone is using the same few sources of news. So the 'news' in
one paper is much the same as that in another. We're seeing real
homogenisation as everyone plugs into the same basic news feeds. The same stuff on the BBC, ITN in the Independent, Times and Guardian. Just a different spin... but the actual news agenda is the same.

Pseudo research masquerades as real fact
In the absence of time or resources to do
proper research, people resort to quick and dirty techniques instead. I see
this in the daily avalanche of press releases I get in my in-tray. PR agency
has committed to churn out a certain number of releases for its client -
regardless of whether they have anything newsworthy to say. So they 'create news'
by doing a survey. Ask a sample of say 100 people (almost always a tiny number
that is statistically completely insignificant)… and presto! You have a
percentage. 70% of tourists said they'd holiday outside the Eurozone this year (sample size: 200 from the website www.wesellholidaysinTurkey.com or some other interested party with a line to spin.) Some PRs reading this won't like this suggestion... I accept that not everyone does it... but I do get a LOT of pseudo survey guff in my in-tray.

The cult of the expert
The alternative to pseudo research is to
wheel in an 'expert'. In the absence of hard facts, media organisations are turning
to opinion instead. You don't need to do hardcore costly research to back up
your story if you can wheel out an expert - doesn't really matter who he is or
where from - to verify your claims. Doesn't matter whether global warming will
really kill us all by 2050 as long as a Professor from some university claims
it will. And if he's no longer around to stand by and back up his claim in 2050, better still. You see this so much in 24 hour news these days. Pseudo fact... backed up with waffle from expert... job done.

'Truthification' - repetition creates truth
The web has made it much easier to publish
- in all sorts of formats - so whilst we have less real news, we have many more
publishers. This means that some stories get disproportionate coverage for
their real value. And mistruths with their pseudo research and their so called expert opinion get spun on and on - picked up on an endless cycle
of websites, twitter feeds and more - until no one remembers where the original
story came from and these unsubstantiated claims become fact. 'Truth' is
literally created before our eyes from rumour and spin.

Being first is all that matters
Now that you can publish in an instant, being first is what matters. You
publish first and worry about the facts later. This is being driven by the
immediacy of the Net and of rolling TV news. One minute half of Mexico has swine flu and we're all going to die, the
next it's only 100 or so people worldwide. But that's OK… just update people with 'the latest
news' and correct your gross exaggeration later. No one will hold you to account
as - for the 10 minutes you published your mis-truth - it was as close to the
truth as anyone could get. Unfortunately that first rather inaccurate statement has
now been propagated all over the world by the 'Truthification' effect described above. 

Can bloggers be some kind of antidote to the dilution? Perhaps they can.

Or am I just an 'expert' creating the same half truths myself?

VisitBritain Britain's national tourism agency is responsible for marketing Britain worldwide. There has been some interesting debate of late about the value of DMO's (Destination Marketing Organisations) as they are known in the trade. Some of the accusations levelled have been about being 'risk averse' and failing to adapt.

So I guess it's good that VisitBritain is embracing Web 2.0 technologies by partnering with a company called Digital Visitor to launch a reviews platform.

According to the write up on Travel Eye:

Currently on course to create the largest media library for leisure and tourism
in the country, Visit Britain are building a one-stop shop for user
reviews, photos and videos of tourism experiences around Britain
through Digital Visitor’s white-labelled social media platform, Visitor Review.
Furthermore, Visit Britain are looking to partner with businesses who
want to utilise this content to enhance their own marketing – free of charge.

Is it just me or is there something fundamental missing here?

Here's more from the Digital Vistor website announcing the deal:

Justin Reid, Online Marketing Manager for VisitBritain stated, “...we plan to really make the most of the
growing trend for social media and user generated content. Providing
potential visitors with more online information on Britain is one of
our key strategies moving forward and this, we are sure, will encourage
even more people to visit.”

Yes, lots of UGC on the Visit Britain site will certainly encourage people to visit. All the stats show that UGC raises traffic and conversions. And yes, businesses in Britain that depend on tourists will welcome free UGC for their websites for the same reasons.

Just the one question then: Where's the UGC going to come from?

Do VisitBritain or Digital Visitor really get social media? I'm not at all sure... You can't just 'create' a network or a community. It's NOT a case of 'build and they will come'. I took a look at Digital Visitor's 'About' page. The detail is kind of worrying. The company is at heart a video production house that has 'recently moved into social media.'

It sounds like UGC is some kind of fruit or vegetable that can be 'gathered' from somewhere or other.

UGC doesn't just grow on trees guys... Why would anyone bother to post a review on Visit Britain? What's the incentive? Particularly when there's this small website called Trip Advisor out there already that has literally millions and millions of reviews on it? 

Talk to the likes of TUI or Thomas Cook who have also built reviews into their sites and they will tell you it's not easy. They work hard to encourage reviews by emailing customers returning from holidays and asking for feedback, uploading info culled from customer feedback forms, moderating the discussion. And there's a far stronger connection between a customer and a tour operator than a visitor to the UK and VisitBritain. (British Airways even incentivises people to add reviews to its Metrotwin social media site with free BA miles.)

I wish VisitBritain the best of luck. I hope they prove me wrong. They will get some reviews on there, but this idea of creating a vast library of UGC that other companies can tap into seems rather hopeful. And I wonder about the reviews they'll get - will they be any good? Will they be trustworthy and dependable? Many of the reviews on there so far are people bitching about awful hotels they've stayed in, warning others not to go there. Hardly the best of advertisments for visiting Britain.

If I was a business looking for UGC reviews to go on my website I'd go to the market leader - Trip Advisor - just as another DMO Visit London has done.

As I've gained more readers on Travelblather I've noticed increasing numbers of people who work in the Travel PR industry following my tweets on twitter  signing up to get my blog posts delivered by email or by RSS feed.

There's clearly a huge appetite amongst the PR community to engage with and understand the blogosphere. (Which I think is a good thing.) I imagine that for PR agencies, blogs are a bit of a new frontier - a wild west where all the work they do to try and gain their clients positive coverage can be competely unravelled by a vitriolic blogger on a mission. And, conversely, positive coverage could be exponentially valuable, given the way that for now at least people are increasingly turning to blogs for up-to-date, accurate and trustworthy information.

I have really mixed feelings about the role of PR generally. I see it as often quite insidious - attempting to undermine the objectivity of the journalist by pushing a particular angle or product or company at them. Of course, journalists are supposed to be pretty hard-skinned individuals, well able to make judgements of their own regardless of the attempts to influence them that will come from all over the place. But as the old saying goes "The mouth that shouts loudest gets fed first". And with remuneration for freelancers sprialling downwards no one wants to bite any hand that feeds them. (Oops... metaphorical overload there... sorry.)

Anyway... like it or not, PR is here to stay and it's massively influential in travel writing.

Recently I was offered a press trip to Sydney in Australia. The request from the PR company was that I blog about the experience. This for me was a watershed moment. I was invited solely because of this blog and the assumed value that the PR company placed on coverage here. That in itself is quite remarkable... particularly given the distance and expense involved. (This isn't the first instance actually - my previous post about new Aer Lingus low cost flights from Gatwick was completely driven by the fact that I went on a short press trip to Faro on the airline's inaugural flight on this route. But that was a far shorter trip and I was one of 80+ people on it.)

So... should I take the PR up on the Sydney offer?

A number of interesting issues:

Impartiality? The great thing about blogging is you have no editor or ad team breathing down your neck expecting you to write things up a certain way. Will I be under some obligation to give the experience a positive write up - even if it's not that great?

I think that actually this one is quite easy to resolve - despite the very heated discussions about this issue on Alex's Musings on Travel Ecommerce blog a few months ago. I make clear that I'm posting because of the press trip (as I did with the Aer Lingus post) AND I make clear to the PR that's inviting me that I can post whatever I want to. Just as a restaurant reviewer or car reviewer would do when presented with a new dish or the latest convertible.

I actually think that I'd post quite a lot about a trip to Sydney... (Let's face it... there will be lots of down time on planes... might as well do something!) Some posts would be descriptions of the trip and the services experienced - just like a normal travel feature in print (and presumably the sort of coverage a PR person would hope for). But other posts would be more like opinion pieces - behind the scenes stuff which I think people reading the blog would find really interesting. The life of the travel writer on the road - what it's really like.(Not all sunsets and pina coladas by the way...)

Pay? All very nice to get offered the trip - but in the real world of freelancing that's probably 5 days of my time with no remuneration. That won't pay the mortgage. Right now I'm on a short term contract so I am earning a vaguely OK amount of pay. I could take a few days' holiday and just go for the hell of it. But it's hardly a good practice to get into. I have ads running here on the blog, but they sure don't provide anything like the income needed to pay for five hours of my time - let alone five days!

What's the solution? Well one idea could be 'sponsored posts' - not disimilar in concept to promotional features in magazines and newspapers. I make clear that the post has been paid for - AND crucially, the tour operator/airline/tourist board that wants the coverage and is sending me on the trip pays me.

SO... PRs - would your clients be interested in something like that? Not only sending me on the trip, but also paying me for my time in return for a certain amount of coverage? AND would it make a difference to you if the posts relating to the trip were marked as 'sponsored'? (VERY interesting point this one.)

AND... READERS - how would you feel about the occasional post on Travelblather that is more promotional in nature? Does it completely negate the value of the blog or is it no big deal?

The idea raises all sorts of issues and making it work in practice would not be easy.