Meeting Britain’s best parent bloggers

by Steve Keenan

Eight parent bloggers from BritMums met myself and Mark Frary from Travel Perspective at a one-day seminar in central London to launch a new co-operative project to find the best of Britain’s parent bloggers.

BritMums’s co-founders Jen Howze and Susanna Scott were there, and they invited along six parent bloggers they had highlighted as excellent writers with a strong interest in travel writing. Our role was to help with insights and tips about the travel industry and how it is harnessing social and digital media.

The aim is to held regular training seminars with this growing group of parent travel bloggers - and to invite guests to share best practise. The first meeting included an illuminating talk of self-publishing by Terry Lee of LiveShareTravel and Jaume Marin, marketing director of the Costa Brava Tourist Board.

Travel Perspective has been helping Jaume plan his first trip for parent bloggers, and he has plans to invite music, wine bloggers and other niche writers to Spain in 2013. He told the parent bloggers that he is interested in storytellers, and that the trips will include ‘experiences’ such as gastronomy that provides plenty of food for articles. “Stories come from natural people - don’t show bloggers castles and churches..”

Talking of ROI, he said: “It is a long-term thing - from bloggers through to influencers to digital ambassadors.”

The bloggers included Lucy Campbell, Kirstie Pelling, Selena Jones, Trish Burgess, Gretta Schifano and Sarah Ebner, who writes the Schoolgate education blog for The Times and who has, since the seminar, set up her own travel blog. Lucy wrote about the day here.

Last year, I chose Trish as the winner of BritMum’s 2012 Brilliance in Blogging (Bib) awards when I was asked to judge the travel category and she, and the others, all gave valuable insights into their ambitions and abilities to expand their travel portfolio.

One of the lovely things about tutoring the group is their diversity of interests and travels. As Trish said: “Parenting ties us together but we all write about different subjects.”

And the seminar went well, with a pile of ideas from the bloggers on future subjects they would like us to cover, including video, creating media packs, creative writing, blogger collaboratives and tech-on-the road.

Said Selena in a follow-up email: “What a great day! I went home buzzing with ideas. I really appreciated all of the information and found it to be very helpful. The format was terrific, relaxed and comfortable. So thank you very much for including me. I was proud to be part of such a talented group of bloggers.”

Update: March 12 - Trish Burgess also wrote a post about the day.

Thanks Selena and Trish, and all the other bloggers and guests. Jaume seemed to have enjoyed it too….!

We’re aiming to stage our next TP/BritMums seminar in June, with more guest speakers and sessions drawn from the list above - this is the first step towards working with the bloggers and BritMums on many more collaborative projects in future.

Finally, huge thanks to the Royal Horseguards Hotel which hosted the seminar wonderfully. We chose the venue as it bends over backwards for families staying at the hotel, including connecting rooms and high teas for kids (at £12), which include games packs and these rather wonderful gingerbread men. They went down very well with the bloggers… Also thanks to Ed Maule of Siren Communications, who very effectively greased the wheels to make the day work well. Pic courtesy: Jen Howze, BritMums.