{"id":748,"date":"2009-07-31T17:50:17","date_gmt":"2009-07-31T21:50:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/?p=748"},"modified":"2009-07-31T17:50:17","modified_gmt":"2009-07-31T21:50:17","slug":"travel-blog-exchange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/2009\/07\/31\/travel-blog-exchange\/","title":{"rendered":"Travel Blog Exchange"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.blogher.com\/photo-gallery?term=chicago&amp;iid=282241\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft\" style=\"border: 0pt none; margin-left: 6px; margin-right: 6px;\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.picapp.com\/ftp\/Images\/0278\/34d42308-815a-4414-9e41-45fe3a17dc01.jpg?WLSource=WLBlogher.pg&amp;adImageId=2057504&amp;imageId=282241\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Chicago Skyscrapers\" width=\"320\" height=\"216\" \/><\/a><script src=\"http:\/\/cdn.pis.picapp.com\/IamProd\/PicAppPIS\/JavaScript\/PisV4.js\" type=\"'text\/javascript'\"><\/script>Last Sunday I attended the first <a href=\"http:\/\/www.travelblogexchange.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Travel Blog Exchange<\/a> meeting in Chicago. I was in town for BlogHer and had already planned to stay Sunday to do some sightseeing. Instead I decided to attend the meeting to get a better flavor of the travel blogging community.<\/p>\n<p>The organizers did a terrific job. They managed to get sponsors for the entire thing, making cost to attendees zero. The panels and speakers were excellent &#8211; how to write a lively successful travel blog, working with PR (a topic that comes up in every blogging community), the difference between travel journalism and blogging, and podcasting\/videocasting.<\/p>\n<p>I wasn&#8217;t surprised to hear that the travel blogging community is also concerned with <a href=\"http:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/2009\/06\/30\/more-on-ftc-guidelines-and-impact-on-bloggers\/\" target=\"_blank\">the proposed revisions to the FTC guidelines<\/a> for endorsements and testimonials. As a panelist pointed out, you can&#8217;t return a trip or offer it as a giveaway to your readers. As a result, travel bloggers need to be even more careful about what they accept from marketers and make sure that it fits their blog.<\/p>\n<p>This was a very focused audience, and the sponsors were part of the community, not big brands. As a result, the few short sponsor presentations were fairly organic to the content and quite interesting to me, a travel blog newbie. <strong>Every <\/strong>preregistered attendee also got a terrific swag bag, including a High Sierra travel backpack from Hertz, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0470418494?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=snapshchroni-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0470418494\">Ask Arthur Frommer: And Travel Better, Cheaper, Smarter<\/a><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=snapshchroni-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=0470418494\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/>, gift cards for Gogo Internet and Boingo, a coupon for a level 1 Rosetta Stone course\u00a0 and an Energizer reusable battery recharger. Gogo Internet also shared their <strong>special offer<\/strong> for the month of August:<strong> <\/strong><em>Save 50% on Gogo Inflight Internet access with promo code 158FLF7365, thru 8\/31\/09<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I was also able to meet a few BlogHers who are also travel writers, @MomMostTraveled, @KitchenGadgetGirl and @CajunMama, as well as spend a little time with friend @KimMoldofsky. So, while I wish I had booked the sold-out architectural boat tour for the afternoon in advance (next time!), I don&#8217;t regret spending part of the day getting to know the travel blog space a little bit better.<\/p>\n<p>An unexpected bonus (in an otherwise disastrous trip home that night) was meeting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.italylogue.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Jessica Spiegel<\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bootsnall.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Bootsnall.com<\/a> at the airport, and recognizing each other by virtue of the brand new backpacks. We shared a power strip and alternately guarded the other&#8217;s belongings as we searched for food and flight information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last Sunday I attended the first Travel Blog Exchange meeting in Chicago. I was in town for BlogHer and had already planned to stay Sunday to do some sightseeing. Instead I decided to attend the meeting to get a better flavor of the travel blogging community. The organizers did a terrific job. They managed to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[111],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":762,"href":"https:\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748\/revisions\/762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}