{"id":9218,"date":"2014-06-08T08:33:17","date_gmt":"2014-06-08T15:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/?p=9218"},"modified":"2014-06-08T10:59:05","modified_gmt":"2014-06-08T17:59:05","slug":"travel-blogging-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/08\/travel-blogging-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"On (Travel) Blogging in 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Part One: Where I Whine About Writing<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>About a year ago, maybe more, I fell into a hole with my writing and since then, I have been stalled and uninspired.<\/p>\n<p>This doesn&#8217;t mean I can&#8217;t write, it&#8217;s not the classic writer&#8217;s block you see played up for dramatic effect in movies &#8212; I&#8217;m still able to meet my deadlines, to be a working writer for hire.<\/p>\n<p>But the work where I let my mind go free range, the special alchemy of travel and writing, has been hard to create. My practice is broken. A great deal of writing is practice, the act of just sitting down to write for whatever time on whatever repeated schedule I create for myself. For a while now, I just don&#8217;t want to practice.<\/p>\n<p>I have an inkling of why this is. I have been diverted by focusing on the virtual neighbors in my category &#8212;\u00a0 travel writing. Specifically travel <strong>blogging<\/strong>. Looking at how travel blogging works in 2014 is giving me a massive identity crisis and making me feel like a failure.<\/p>\n<p>I have failed to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Say goodbye to the day job to travel the world<\/li>\n<li>Build lucrative relationships with brands and\/or brand focused organizations<\/li>\n<li>Convince marketing companies that it is worth 300 dollars a day to have me rabbiting on about my personal experiences in their destination.<\/li>\n<li>Produce an eBook (or series of eBooks) that I sell via my website<\/li>\n<li>Start a tour company, get a book deal, aggregate bloggers into a marketing organization, get hired as a brand ambassador, sell my site wholesale to a content organization&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now, admittedly, most of these things I do not want. So why do I think I&#8217;m a failure? It&#8217;s because all around me, voices are telling me how great it is to have those things. They are telling me that as a travel blogger, I must somehow straddle the line between lifestyle guru and online marketer.<\/p>\n<p>There is so much noise in the virtual space where I live that I can&#8217;t hear myself think. That I can&#8217;t focus enough to just do my work.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Part Two: Where I Blame Social Media<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I blame social media.<\/p>\n<p>No, let me restate that, I blame my addiction to and use of social media.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s probably a direct correlation between the increase in my use of social media and the decline in my enchantment with blogging as my primary writing format. At some point, I hit a critical mass of exposure to social media show-offery. An overflow valve in my brain triggered and said, &#8220;If all these people are doing so well, you must be a failure. What&#8217;s wrong with you?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not a rational conclusion.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a bit like the fashion industry. You&#8217;re not pretty if you don&#8217;t have this year&#8217;s shoes, you&#8217;re not cool if you&#8217;re not wearing the latest styles, this is what&#8217;s in this year, girls, and if you&#8217;re not wearing it, you&#8217;re not it.<\/p>\n<p>That message is wrong. It&#8217;s a lie to sell you clothes. It&#8217;s a lie to make you spend money on things you don&#8217;t need. It&#8217;s a lie to make you feel like you&#8217;re failing if you don&#8217;t live abroad six months out of the year. It&#8217;s a lie to make you go on needlessly complicated routes to Philly because it allows you to stack up the miles to get the airline status to get on the list for a free upgrade for flight across the Atlantic which you may or may not get because 30 other people are ahead of you on the list, did you know that? It&#8217;s a lie to make you feel like you will be better happier taller prettier more interesting and therefore much more lovable and oh, smarter too if only you buy this idea.<\/p>\n<p>And we do buy it. We buy it so completely that it permeates our social relationships. Our &#8220;friends&#8221; &#8212; and people who are literally our friends &#8212; are selling the lie now.\u00a0 &#8220;Your life would be as good as mine if you spent money doing the things I&#8217;m doing (for free).&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I need to turn that shit off. It&#8217;s ruining my morale. Literally.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Part Three: Where I&#8217;m Tempted to Point Out Specific Examples and Think Better of It and Instead I Just Post This Slide from a Conference and Say &#8220;I Don&#8217;t Even Know Where to Begin with the Reasons this is Completely Wrong.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_9223\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9223\" style=\"width: 560px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/journosvsblog.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-9223\" src=\"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/journosvsblog.jpg\" alt=\"journosvsblog\" width=\"570\" height=\"359\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-9223\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Via Twitter (various sources), a slide from a presentation <br \/>at a tourism event called &#8220;<a title=\"Digital Innovation Asia\" href=\"http:\/\/www.diasiaevents.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Digital innovation Asia<\/a>.&#8221;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In case you can&#8217;t read the text:<\/p>\n<p>Journalists versus Bloggers<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Journalists: Paid, unbiased, one core expertise, content limitations, &#8220;push&#8221; content, publishing schedules, mass audience, traditional core focus<\/li>\n<li>Bloggers: Passion, opinion based, multiple content skills, unlimited content, &#8220;responsive&#8221; content, immediate, niche audience, social media at core<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Part Four:\u00a0 Where I Explain Why This is Hard<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Social media is a critical part of what I do as a travel writer. I don&#8217;t sell social media placement,\u00a0 but I do post when I&#8217;m traveling.\u00a0 I know that my social &#8220;status&#8221; is a consideration when I am working on PR backed stories. Even when I&#8217;m on assignment for a third party publication, PR folks ask me for my statistics &#8212; Twitter followers, page views, all the usual analytics stuff.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not quite a requirement for success, but it&#8217;s very much implied that regardless of your role in travel these days, you&#8217;re fluent in social media. I have the good fortune of having picked it all up early on. And I enjoyed it tremendously for years. It used to be fun &#8212;\u00a0 the opposite of depressing.\u00a0 So even while my virtual neighborhood gets gentrified with McMansions and chain stores and online marketers, I hold out because I remember having such a great time living here.<\/p>\n<p>I was happy here once, I could be happy here again, right?<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, right.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Part Five: Where I Say What I Want to Happen<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I want travel marketing companies to stop mistaking bloggers for online marketers. Some are, some aren&#8217;t. Know the difference.<\/li>\n<li>I want bloggers who engage in marketing initiatives to fully disclose to their readers, up front, what they&#8217;re doing. &#8220;I was paid a day rate plus expenses to travel to and write about this destination.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>I want my &#8220;friends&#8221; and my friends to stop using their feeds to sell to me.<\/li>\n<li>I want people who equate travel writing with a &#8220;lifestyle&#8221; to disappear.<\/li>\n<li>I want anyone who says &#8220;I gotta make a living&#8221; as an excuse for sleazy web practices to talk with people who *really* &#8220;gotta make a living.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>I want publishers to stand behind their sponsored content so completely that they&#8217;re not afraid to tell their readers exactly what it is.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Part Six: Where I Say What&#8217;s Really Going to Happen<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Unfollow.<\/li>\n<li>Unfriend.<\/li>\n<li>Goddammit, Mandel. You can&#8217;t control the whole web. I know you&#8217;re bummed out, but you don&#8217;t suck as a writer, could you focus on that, already?<\/li>\n<li>You shoot a decent photo, too.<\/li>\n<li>Now close down Twitter and work on your stuff.<\/li>\n<li>You heard me.<\/li>\n<li>Work. On. Your. Stuff.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Part One: Where I Whine About Writing About a year ago, maybe more, I fell into a hole with my writing and since then, I have been stalled and uninspired. This doesn&#8217;t mean I can&#8217;t write, it&#8217;s not the classic writer&#8217;s block you see played up for dramatic effect in movies &#8212; I&#8217;m still able &#8230; <\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more-container\"><a title=\"On (Travel) Blogging in 2014\" class=\"read-more button\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/08\/travel-blogging-2014\/#more-9218\" aria-label=\"Read more about On (Travel) Blogging in 2014\"><br \/>&#8230;read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":9244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-administrivia","masonry-post","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9218"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9249,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9218\/revisions\/9249"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}