Bloggers+Work

I blogged my wedding, then dropped off of the blogosphere and am trying to ease back into it now-I miss it and all!  Partly because I blogged in the past and knew firsthand and partly because it's definitely the way things are going, but I'm starting to work with bloggers more and more in my job.  I'm a Dir of Public Relations for my hometown Convention and Visitors Bureau, and one of my Fiscal Year 2013 goals was to organize a press "fam" trip, where you get a bunch of jornalists/travel writers to come to your town and write (hopefully positively) about it.  It can be pricey, and you aren't guaranteed coverage.  So

I did some research and found a thriving community of midwestern family travel bloggers and now we're reaching out to them to host them for visits!  It's really amazing-we're able to find bloggers with interests that reflect our advertisting campaigns (Back in Time features all of our historic attractions, Family Fun is geared towards families with kids, and Great Outdoors highlights all of the outdoorsy-things to do in the area).  We're going to be promoting a "Family Fun Passport to Savings", and that's something I'm going to request that the blogger highlights in the posts they write about their visit here, and it will be pushed in our print advertising (Midwest Living, Missouri Life and Southern Traveler magazines, among others) as well as on our banner ads we purchase at Tripadvisor.  We'll basically pay for some of the costs of the bloggers trip here, and in exchange they'll blog about their visit, touching on some features we'd like them to highlight.  All of their posts have a disclaimer, and they share the content around on social media too.  We'll really get some bang for our buck in terms of promoting our destination, and they are relationships that I am really looking forward to furthering.

My town is right on the Mississippi River

Blogging encompasses so many different areas of interest; I'm really excited to be able to work directly with travel bloggers this summer!

No idea why, but I always love it when blogging friends talk about their jobs.  What do you do?  Is it what you went to school for?  Do you like it?