Travel Blog Camp 2012

by Steve Keenan

TBC has long had a remit to be controversial in what can often be a sea of blandness and bollocks around World Travel Market. And this year was no different, with organiser Darren Cronian devising with Tnooz moderator Kevin May a theme of ‘Back to Basics.’

In the fifth year of Blog Camp, the idea was to invite speakers to talk about good writing and story-telling, the basics of a good read.

And speakers Matthew Teller, Rick Calvert and Jeremy Head didn’t fail to find controversy - albeit from different angles. Perhaps most acerbic was Matthew’s withering denunciation of PR as “corrosive: it undermines independent thought and judgement.”

See what you think …

Twitter and Facebook make sharing easier

By Mark Frary

When you were young, you were probably told many times a day how nice it was to share. It’s something you probably forgot as you grew older but the rise of social media gave us a glow inside as we all started sharing things again.
Twitter and Facebook have just made it easier to do just that. If you are using native Twitter rather than a client such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite, you may have noticed the arrival of a new dropdown on your tweets called “More”. Not everyone has it yet but it is coming your way soon.

Click on More and you will be given the option to Email the tweet. I look at it as a retro retweet aimed at those who are not on Twitter yet or use email as their preferred channel of communication. Twitter engineer Stefan Filip announced the change on the Twitter blog here.

The image below shows where it can be found on Twitter.

The other thing about a word like More is that it gives you a great sense of anticipation. What More could the nerds at Twitter be working on now?

Twitter isn’t the only social network committed to making us all share more. Facebook has announced that its mobile app is to get a share feature too.

This means that you are no longer restricted to liking or commenting. Clicking on share will report whatever interesting content you are reading in News Feed onto your own Timeline.

For travel companies, sharing is the sort of engagement from your fans and followers that you should be looking for. We heard at WTM Social Travel Market how Spain had decided to end its race to get more Facebook likes and focus on engagement with its best fans instead. Creating great, shareable content is clearly the way to go.

WTM Social Travel Market in pictures

WTM Social Travel Market is over for another year but you can relive our successful conference by clicking through our slideshow.

WTM Social Travel Market - the wrap

The floor fills for the opening session of WTM Social Travel Market

by Steve Keenan

Two days, 13 seminars and 37 speakers - thank you one and all, as you made this year’s event a triumph.

And to all you unlucky people who missed the event at Excel last week, here we’ll present a wrap of everything that made WTM Social Travel Market such a resounding success. We look forward to meeting you next year.

1. WTM Social Travel Market - the live blog from Wednesday including all the presentation slides
2. WTM Social Travel Market - the live blog from Thursday including all the presentation slides
3. All sessions from the first day of WTM Social Travel Market on video
- an introduction to WTM Social Travel Market from Mark Frary
- Foursquare: is this the travel app that will dominate travel?
- The pyschology of social media from Allister Frost
- Mobile trends: getting content into the travellers’ hands
- Video and blogging: more than one way
- What jobs are there in social media for 2013?
- How to sort the blaggers from the bloggers
- The best bloggers’ innovations of 2012
4. Sessions from the second day of WTM Social travel Market on video
- The Silk Road: creating a WordPress site in 40 minutes, with bloggers Chris Richardson and Steve Whale
- #Travelfail: Andy Jarosz, Jeremy Skidmore and Sarah Rathbone (Siren Comms) on how companies should use social media to tackle a crisis
- Enrique Ruiz de Lera of the Spanish National Tourist Office in the UK on how his country is marketing Spain in times of austerity

FEEDBACK
5. A post on WTM and STM sessions by Grow with Organic
6. Bloggers v blaggers from PlanetSki
7. A report from the Spanish National Tourist Office session on marketing in the time of austerity
8. View the video blog of Siren Comms at Social Travel Market and WTM
9. A report on the session on blogger innovations in 2012 from TTG Digital - registration required
10. Jen Howze on her appearance on the blogger innovation panel - with a link through to her BritMums blog and another post