Travelblather

I've blogged in the past about a new model for online travel writers - working directly with a tour operator or travel agent to create genuinely compelling content for them. Perhaps the most groundbreaking example of this new model for travel writing is the very excellent Granturismo blog. Travel writers Lara Dunston and Terence Carter are working with HomeAway Holiday-Rentals. They are travelling the world for a whole year, staying in HomeAway rental properties in every location and writing, photographing, videoing and tweeting as they go.

That's a serious undertaking for both the writers and the operator - a big commitment from both parties. I'm fascinated by the idea. So I figured it was time to find out more. Here's a truly fascinating look at both sides of the relationship. The same questions answered by Lara and by Sarah Chambers who is the PR manager for Homeaway UK. Very interesting stuff!

How did the idea come about?
Lara Dunston: Terence and I were having coffee with my aunt in Australia, where we spend time writing each year. We were working on books and articles and whining about the downsides of guidebook writing (i.e. tedious tasks like checking bus times and dotting banks on maps) and magazine work (spending only a few days in places). We were also complaining about how some travellers travel: how they rush through places, only staying a day or two, seeing sights mainly, using guidebooks obsessively, and in the process miss out on amazing experiences.

Sarah Chambers: I was thinking about how best we could communicate not only the benefits of staying in a holiday home rental, but also the huge range available in terms of destinations and property types. Sending two journalists on an ‘around the world’ discovery-type trip seemed like an engaging and adventurous way to do this. Luckily, and coincidentally, Lara and Terry were already considering a similar idea.

Why did you do it?
LD: Selfish reasons and lofty goals: we wanted a more enriching project that would give us the best of both worlds, i.e. a month or so in a place as we have when we work on guidebooks, but to get to know the place deeply through its people, culture, food, music, etc, as we do researching magazine stories. Plus we sincerely want to see travellers overcome their shyness, not rely solely on guidebooks, connect more with locals, stay longer, do and learn things, travel more slowly and sustainably, and travel in more enriching ways. Although obviously we appreciate sometimes people just need to lie on a beach! Ah, that would be nice…

SC: We wanted to do something that would really inspire people to try this different way of travelling and show them that ‘holiday rentals’ = much more than just apartments and villas with pools. I love travelling myself and often stay in rentals now too, so I’m committed to spreading the word!

What have been the big successes so far?
LD: We’re halfway through the project so Terence and I have just been reflecting on these actually. We’ve concluded our experiment a success: this is definitely the best way to travel! We can now confidently say that staying in apartments and houses enables you to have so many more meaningful experiences and allows so many more opportunities to connect with locals in ways that staying in hotels do not. This has truly been the most memorable 6 months of travel of our lives. We’re also proud of the content we’re generating. We’re working hard to create compelling stories, do engaging interviews, and Terence in particular is making beautiful photos and videos.

SC: The blog is beautiful and really seems to have captured people’s imagination. They are getting great traffic and involvement via social media, plus we can see there is some good conversion in terms of visits and property enquiries on our site. For me, their writing also really captures and eloquently conveys the type of experience you can enjoy in a holiday home.

What have been the things that haven't worked so well?
LD: We don’t have enough time and we’re spending too much money! It’s always time and money, isn’t it? We compromised on two weeks per place, though we understand why HomeAwayUK needed us to do that. We’re working harder than ever: on top of connecting with locals, having experiences, writing, editing photos, and maintaining the site, we’re constantly planning ahead, running a monthly competition, doing social media, tweeting, and so on. It’s also been frustrating that we haven’t had as good Internet access as promised in many properties we’ve stayed at, as that’s crucial obviously – in one place the best access was from an olive grove! Not fun in the rain.

SC: We had hoped that other publishers and media would be interested in featuring content from Lara and Terry, as they have complete editorial control over everything they produce. However it seems that publications are still hesitant to engage with this kind of innovative hybrid projects presenting independent content sponsored by a brand. 'Though essentially this is no different to one very long press trip.'

Would you do it again?
LD: Absolutely! After a period of recovery of course! But in our original form, i.e. one month in each destination, so we could really get beneath the skin of places and do and learn more things. For instance, Terence is a brilliant musician as well as a great cook. Our original plan involved him learning instruments and working in kitchens. I’d hoped to take language lessons, other classes, and volunteer. We haven’t exploited as many opportunities as we could have, or slept as much as we’d like. If we did it again, we’d ask the partner company to handle more research and planning tasks, more social media, do more PR, and run any competitions they might want. Projects like this need in-house staff dedicated to it full-time for better results. My advice to writers embarking on similar projects would be to clarify the amount of resources being allocated to the project.

SC: I’m not sure, but only as it seems a lot of other companies are jumping on the bandwagon now, doing similar things. So I think we have to set ourselves the challenge of finding a slightly different angle for our next project!

If you did, what would you change?
LD: We negotiated a fee based on industry rates, but agreed to part of it in bonuses attached to securing additional print coverage. We’re widely published so didn’t envisage that being a challenge, but we didn’t expect editors to see this as advertorial. We thought we’d negotiated things to circumvent that, like editorial control (HomeAwayUK doesn’t see our content until you do), only reviewing a property (critically and honestly!) every two weeks, and promoting the travel lifestyle rather than company. However, some editors still see it as advertorial because HomeAwayUK are paying us. That will be the main challenge for writers working directly with travel companies who want traditional media coverage in addition to social media content. My advice is to negotiate a fair and realistic fee and don’t agree to bonuses based on anything, because – just like travel – there are some things you just can’t predict.

SC: I imagine the answer is the same for lots of projects; Plan more in advance about how we could fully integrate our PR and marketing activities. I think this is an ongoing challenge for many companies. We are doing this, but we have also taken a lot of learnings from this project so I think we could do it a lot better next time.

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This idea was actually Lara's and a very good one at that! Thanks to both Lara and Sarah for contributing as I know both of you are very busy!

Lots to take away for travel writers and for PR people too. What's the single most useful insight here for you and why? I'd be interested to know.

Destination Guides - everyone does them. Airlines, tourist boards, airports, hotels. The web is awash with the things and I've even contributed quite a number of them for one of the UK's leading airlines.

For a while content solution companies like Whatsonwhen (now part of Frommer's of course) made a pretty good living providing travel sector companies with off-the-shelf blocks of content to populate their sites with 'useful content'. Then people got wise to the SEO potential of this kind of stuff and started adding keywords into the mix.

The end result nowadays is lots of very generic, sometimes ageing content which is often targetted at search engines and not particularly useful for the user.

• Here's an example of the pretty standard kind of thing from Manchester Airport.
• And another from Air France.
• Spot the keywords in KLM's destination guide to Amsterdam.
• And check out the incredible detail in this Sicily guide from Think Sicily. Amazing.

The content in the KLM guide is particularly interesting for me as a content person. It's very detailed and of a genuinely high quality. It's written by Whatsonwhen/Frommers. I particularly like the themed walking tours (which look like they might have been lifted from the Day By Day guides series that Frommer's publish).

But, does anybody find or read them?

I tried searching for keyword combinations like 'Amsterdam guide', 'destination guide to Amsterdam', 'things to do in Amsterdam', and two of the terms it looks like the page is targetting 'flights to Amsterdam' and 'Amsterdam holiday'. None of these pages show up on the first page. In fact I struggled to find them at all.

Guess what? I've been asked to come up with a format for some destination guides. And I want to create something that's a bit different and genuinely useful. (Particularly as the KLM example above suggests that going for the SEO/keyword approach isn't really worth the effort.)

I think  the KLM example is lovely from a content perspective, but probably a waste of money. Are people going to come to an airline for top things to do and places to go for a destination? Probably not I'd say. You'd go to a more well known and credible source like say Lonely Planet or for example in London, Time Out. So why spend all that money on destination guides that few people will read anyway?

So what do you need in a destination guide?

Minimum requirements I think are base-level facts. We're talking stuff like weather, visa requirements, getting around in relation to your physical property (the airport if you are an airline or airport, your hotel if you are a hotel etc) getting there, health and safety. I do wonder though if you could link to the right (ie most authoritative) places which offer really frequently updated information that is trustworthy, rather than having to maintain content of your own. So for Health and Safety link to the FCO website's travel advice pages or (if only the offered them) pull relevant info onto your page using their RSS feeds.

Going totally local could be a smart idea for a hotel chain. Get the guys on the concierge desk to recommend their top restaurants, shops, things to do and really focus on writing about the less-visited, genuinely cool recommendations rather than the usual old favourites.

Targetting specific readers could be good for an airline or airport. Think about organising your things to do and so on around the differing needs of your distinct customer groups - families, couples, business people etc. I think Top 5 things to do for families, weekend breakers, business people could be much easier to digest and more useful than far more long and detailed offerings we tend to get at the moment that try to be all things to all  people. Keep it light, but make it much more focussed - easier for the reader to find the stuff that's appropriate to them.

Using expert opinion to add more credibility seems like a nice idea too. Who cares what Air France thinks are the top things to do in London? Paris maybe, but London? Why not find some people who live in London (maybe people with specific demographic profiles - a family, a businessman etc) and get their Top 5 ideas? I'm far more likely to believe them than a big brand that has no real association with the place. Here's a rather nice example from Red Visitor.

What would you put on a destination guide to make it genuinely useful and a bit different?

Here's the second of two posts about the new buzz-phrase "Content Strategy" - written by my colleague Charlie Peverett - content strategist at iCrossing. The first post explains why content strategy matters. This one explains a little about the who and the how. Let me know what you think...

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What a content strategist does

The clearest definition for how a Content Strategist can sort out the messy state of so many websites these days is provided by Kristina Halvorson, in her landmark book Content Strategy for the Web (2009).

The headlines are that a strategist must:
• Audit the existing content
• Analyse it alongside all the research inputs – stakeholder feedback, customer surveys, UX work, site analytics, competitor analysis, SEO recommendations, etc
• Create a content strategy

That is, they audit the available content – what does the client have, who makes it, looks after it, how, why, when, who for?

They analyse it against the available research and the project's objectives – how is it being used, what's the return on effort, how does it relate to other content, what could be deleted or simplified, where are the opportunities for new and better content?

They create a strategy – a roadmap for getting from the status quo to an agreed objective, which understands and addresses the realities of creating and looking after content (the necessary inputs and ownership, how long it takes, who does what) and how to measure its success.

Who can be a content strategist?

Anyone who understands how content works, how it's made and maintained, how to measure its success - and how to work with all available parties to make it happen.

They may be from a technical background (web dev/IA), a digital strategic/planning background or an editorial background (publishing/web editing).

The important thing is: they really get how content works and know how to get it organised.

And of course, a lot of people with other job titles are already doing this work successfully: those web editors with the necessary clout, obviously; on smaller dev projects, the information architect (IA) or project manager; in social media activities, the social media strategist or blog editor perhaps.

But even where people are already doing it very well, it's often an 'invisible', partial success. The content strategy succeeds in places as a by-product of some other officially-recognised process – the 'site design', the 'social media strategy', the 'editorial brief'. And the opportunity for applying a cohesive strategy across the organisation is missed.

I'm not a big fan of cheerleading new roles and terminology for the sake of it. There is a strong argument that 'content strategist' may, in some cases, be indistinguishable from the role of a consultant web editor, or web editor in chief.

But whether we still use this language in ten years' time or not, the principle behind its arrival is right. And it seems unlikely that the desire for it - simultaneously seized upon by professionals across disciplines and sectors - will turn out to be passing phase.

Image by richardjingram

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I think this need to be strategic about the content that goes on a website is as important as working out a flatplan for a magazine. There has to be order and organisation and there has to be complete focus on the reader. This stuff may sound clunky and even dull - but I  think it's essential if we are serious about the value of the content that we publish on-line. Do you agree?

I'm very fortunate to work with such smart people at Search and Social Media company iCrossing. Here's the first in a couple of guest posts from Charlie Peverett our Content Strategist. All too often the person doing the writing for a website is left out of the planning. The end result is a poor user experience and often poor quality content. A number of people have begun to try to start addressing this problem - and the discussion has quickly focussed around the phrase 'content strategy'. (I posted this last night as one long post, but on reflection I think it works better to split it into two.) This first post then describes why we need content strategies. The second will describe what a Content Strategy is and how you create one.
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Late last year I left my role as an 'Editor' and became a 'Content Strategist'.

It was, if I'm honest, a bit of a punt. As 'Editor' I wasn't getting into the conversations I felt I needed to be in - and I was fed up with being passed work where 'the content bit' had already been decided on, often by someone with no apparent clue about what producing the content might entail.

'Content strategist' seemed sufficiently high-falutin', and so we settled on that and wrote a job description to support the main objective (in short: getting our oar in early whilst decisions about design, user experience and so on were being made ). About that time I started to look around at what other people meant by the title and I had a bit of a shock.

It was like arriving in the middle of a maze and seeing people converge from all directions - techies, information architects, web editors, journalists. All looking battered and frazzled, but with a glint their eyes. Different paths - same conclusion.

What is content strategy?

I say 'conclusion' when I really mean: a good place to regroup and begin going somewhere else.

Content Strategy™ is a work in progress, bringing together several strands of expertise in ways that are yet to be fully worked through. It's not neat. It doesn't all make sense to me (or, I gather, to others).

But at iCrossing, as at a good few other places, we see it as a promising approach to some of the biggest challenges faced by us and our clients.

Problems, you say?

All the relevant inputs to a web project – on-page optimisation, metadata, UX, brand voice and messages, editorial guidelines, press releases, Ts and Cs etc – everything manifests as content. As videos, pictures, podcasts – but overwhelmingly as written words.

And when does a 'content person' get involved? Usually at what is, effectively, the last minute. When the lorem ipsem (that placeholder copy that's just stuck there  by a designer) needs to be magically transformed into sparkling, all-singing all-dancing 'copy'. At this point you'd be better off with an alchemist than a writer.

Who's made the decision about what form this content takes? What its production requires? How it should be presented?

Will the writer have enough time to understand all the things that they are required to do – to make it findable, meet user needs, be engaging, reflect the brand, hold up in court, etc? And can they cry foul if they can't fulfil those needs because the IA's already been agreed and the dev site built and it's just not right? Often the answer is... no.

Even the least enlightened fool will tell you Content Is King, but more often than not it's treated like a hostage; to be brought in at the end of a project to fill all the containers that have been built for it without its consent. And then left languishing until the next site redesign.

Projects that continue to be carried out like this are built to fail.

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So... what do you think? Do you share Charlie's frustrations (and mine too) that the person writing the content always seems to be last in line on web-projects?

Pic by richardjingram

It's now official. The Times and The Sunday Times will soon have separate websites and will charge people for access. News International, the newspapers’ parent company, has announced that people will be offered a day’s use for £1, or £2 for a week’s subscription.

For me this is one of the most important announcements in a very long time. As a journalist who believes in the value of his craft I have long been fed up of the way that it's just become 'normal' for anything online to be free. Why should that be? I write a feature for a newspaper and, without my say-so, it appears in the online edition too - for no additional payment. As a reader I've become fed up too with the amount of crap that is clogging up the net - words used just to target search engines rather than to deliver useful information to readers. Just this week I was offered between £15 and £25 to write 500-word pages for a fairly well-known travel website about flights and hotels in particular destinations. This is the sum-zero of this game. Content that's of little real use to anyone aimed in the main at getting people to land on a page - even if they click straight off again, just to earn ad revenue. And the people who write it being paid a pittance to do it. Something has to change.

More interesting still, it's looking increasingly likely that Murdoch (who is of course the real player behind all this as the Chairman of News International) will bar all his content from Google and conversely do a deal to make it available on Microsoft's competing search engine Bing. Google - no longer the search engine that covers everything? Wow... that is a serious cat amongst the pigeons and something only a huge player like News International would be able to consider.

So, I applaud the intent. But will it work?

1) People hate paywalls. Ironically I wanted to link to a piece on the FT that I found on Google about this - but I hit a 'register to read this' wall. So I went elsewhere to find something. I just struggle to see how they will get the casual browser to convert to  becoming a paid-up subscriber. Hitting a paywall will not make me want to subscribe.

2) Differentiation is all important. News is totally commoditised. Sorry, but I just don't see people paying for news. If I can't read it on Times Online I will read it on the Guardian or the Independent or literally hundreds of other sites. (There is a possibility of course that everyone will follow News International's lead. I wonder if NI management have been having quiet chats off the record with their opposites at other major publishers?But even then there's the BBC. ) Features of course are a completely different err, story. I had a fascinating chat with someone who works at News International last week about the way that NI plans to have The Sunday Times' online content focussed on Features - print, images, video and the Times on News. I can see a payment model working for the ST's more feature-orientated approach because this content will be genuinely unique.

3) What will that mean for writers? Well, again, according to my contact at NI there are serious budgets available for pure online content. Our conversation was all about the importance of video, and I can see how exploiting the technical advantages of web over print seems the logical way to add value here. So, maybe, just maybe, it will be possible for journalists to make a living writing/creating content for the web? If that's the case what will that mean for the travel writer? Now it's not just notepad and SLR to carry around, you'll need a video camera, tripod and mic too and the requisite skills to use this new kit.

4) What will that mean for advertising? This is the one that really fascinates me. I watched the video clip on that link above to the timesonline of Times Editor James Harding explaining  (not particularly effectively in my opinion) why this step is  being taken. Ironically, I had to watch an advert before the piece. I hate that. God, I'd pay not to have that crap getting in the way if I could. I loathe the increasing banality of online advertising - as the media landscape gets more cluttered advertisers resort to ever crasser ways to try and grab our attention - people walking across the screen, pop ups, things jumping around in the sidebars. For me it just doesn't work. An ad-free reading/viewing environment on-line would be heavenly. But will Timesonline and Sunday times online still carry ads? I bet they do.

Fascinating times. What do you think this means for writers and for readers?