Telling a Travel Story through Blogging
We ran a very enjoyable blogging workshop for the Bosch Global Explorers yesterday.
The session was part of the Global Experience campaign where Bosch is essentially taking six lucky volunteers around the world to look at where Bosch technology is being used in incredible ways.
The 16 day agenda is packed full of activities in six of the world’s leading cities. Highlights include a look at driverless cars in San Francisco, the World financial Centre in Shanghai, the Panama Canal in Panama, and their adventure starts out at Tower Bridge in good old London.
Our mission (which we chose to accept) was to run a workshop on how to use blogging to tell the story of this adventure.
With a group of experienced bloggers and social media experts, it was at times more of a discussion than a workshop, but we certainly covered plenty of ground. Our notes covered most of the whiteboard wall we had in our meeting room at Desklodge.
Here are the key blogging tips and highlights of what we discussed:
1. Start out by understanding why you want to blog, this will help with direction and motivation.
2. Your writing muscles require exercise to be honed. Write 750 words everyday to tone up those muscles.
3. To become an authority there are some core characteristics of good blogs and blog posts we all agreed are worthwhile considering:
a. Clarity in writing and design
b. Conversational style and tone
c. Have a different point of view
d. Have an in-depth knowledge of the topic
e. Add value to your readers
f. Shorter posts are better than long formats
g. Use images to the support the story
h. Posts are shared regularly and consistently
4. An editorial calendar will help you to plan your ideas into a structure that tells a coherent story, whether that’s across the 16 days of this journey or the life of your blog.
5. If you think about solving a problem for your readers by answering questions your posts are more likely to be found in Google.
6. There are some useful tools you can use to help you curate ideas and promote your posts:
* Hootsuite
* Storify
* Pocket
* Evernote
* If this then than (IFTTT)
7. Collecting email addresses is still a valid strategy for connecting with influencers and sharing your content.
8. To get exposure for your writing you must share it widely through other social media platforms: facebook, twitter, instagram, Weibo, Tumblr
9. Comments are much harder to achieve now than in previous years, but consider using Disqus, Facebook comments or G+ comments to encourage people to comment. Also comment on each other’s posts to get the ball rolling.
10. You can use different types of blog posts to engage with your audiences, they do not all have to be long form. For example: list posts (listicles), how tos, photoblogs, video blogs and so on.
11. Build a pattern and some regularity to engage, for example take a photo everyday at 12.30 to show your journey. Share on twitter with a hashtag.
I hope you enjoyed attending the workshop as much as we enjoyed having you here Bosch Global Explorers. Perhaps you could leave a comment in the footer below and don’t forget, if you have questions #justask.
Happy and safe travels Explorers.
To find out more about the Bosch Global Experience visit the website or follow the Explorers on twitter with the hashtag .
