How do we use travel forums in 2014?

[Pauline]

I know how we used travel forums in 2001, but things have changed so much on the web that I have to rethink travel forums. When I started the SlowTrav forums (in 2001) I wanted something like the AOL Italy forum, but with a different focus. I wanted to talk to people who stayed in vacation rentals all over Europe - mostly because I wanted to find great vacation rentals to stay in! By then I had been running the website for a year and I was getting a lot of email with travel questions. Instead of saying the same thing over and over by private email, I set up the forums.

As the website and the forums grew, we (me and the moderators) changed the forums to be more than just travel forums.

Remember when Cristina's expats forum was part of SlowTalk? It has been its own forum for years now.

We created that Everything Else forum so we had a place to talk to each other about anything, or to post mini-blog posts about what we were doing. But now we have Facebook!

I ran that dreadful photo software so we could upload and group travel photos. Now we Instagram, Flickr, Google+ photos, Facebook photos.

We even hosted blogs on the site. Now I would tell someone who wants to blog to use Wordpress.com. Or Facebook. Wordpress did not exist when we started. Neither did Facebook. Or Twitter.

On SlowTrav Chris wrote a Trip Report manager so people could write about their trips and we would have a place to easily find this information. Some of the other big forums (Fodors and Trip Advisor I think) encourage people to post trip reports on the message board. I like that idea, but I think it is best to have all the Trip Reports in one forum, so someone can look through just that forum for travel ideas and inspiration.

In my SlowTrav days I was not happy with people linking from the message boards to their personal blogs and websites. I was a "content hog". I worked so hard on that site that I was unhappy to see people use it to take traffic to their site. I have changed. Times have changed. If you have your trip report on your blog, do a post on the Trip Report forum, put in a brief description and link to your website/blog. If you have a website/blog with great travel information on it, start a thread and link to the page or section you are recommending.

I think we use these forums to share travel information and ideas, to inspire and support each other in our trip planning, to have fun talking about something that we all love to do - travel!!

And I would love to hear your ideas about how we should use these forums!

 

[dale]

Pauline: Thanks for this. I look forward to lots of positive and useful information.

I hope you recall, as I do, a memorable lunch at your rental outside of Pienza lo those many years ago. Time flies when you're havin' fun!

Buona fortuna e ciao. Dale

 

[Terry]

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, too, Pauline. As you noted, social media has really changed the way we communicate, share, and report on our travels and travails. And yet it just doesn't seem right that great content should not be indexed somehow in a great forum but rather randomly posted on FB. I wish I had some answers. I wholly support your new venture here. Wondering - in order to keep relevant, do forums need to expand their software, maybe to mimic some of the attributes of FB? I guess I'm thinking mainly in terms of the immediacy factor that FB satisfies in people - "here's where I am traveling right now""here's what I'm eating/drinking right now""look at this sunset", etc.

Hope that makes sense. <--stupid looking graemlin

 

[Pauline]

Interesting that you say that. In this software they let you follow people and put status updates. All through your profile. But I have not figured out how it works. I will try it out, because it would be a good feature.

 

[Kathy]

One thing I already like about this software... you can "like" a post!

 

[Cameron]

On SlowTrav Chris wrote a Trip Report manager so people could write about their trips and we would have a place to easily find this information. Some of the other big forums (Fodors and Trip Advisor I think) encourage people to post trip reports on the message board. I like that idea, but I think it is best to have all the Trip Reports in one forum, so someone can look through just that forum for travel ideas and inspiration.

As a blogger, freelance writer (for commercial tourism and garden websites) and now writing fiction, I have a few suggestions on trip reports.

IMHO, long narratives about a trip are great for the writer to capture memories, but are time-consuming for the information-seeker. It's easy to lose the reader with too much description. Make facts and practical information obvious, either at the beginning or the end, of each report.

Photos speak volumes. Add captions and include at least the month and year for reference. That said, too many photos (going beyond six) can weigh down browsers with slow internet speeds. If you have many photos to share, use a few in the report, then link to a photo album. Understand the privacy issues before posting photos for public viewing.

I've had hundreds of stories and photos stolen from my blog and replicated in other blogs (usually by foreign scam artists seeking ad clicks). I've also had individual photos lifted by companies and used without my permission. These are difficult to find and even more difficult to have removed by the offending parties. So...if you've got great photos, at least put a watermark on those (but that won't stop the theft).

Hope this is helpful, rather than scary!

Cameron

 

[JChrisP]

I like what Cameron has to say. From my perspective, I use SlowTrav (and now, also, Slow Europe) for two reasons: the ability to help and provide advice in those limited areas where I have experiential knowledge, and to find information and answers to specific questions where I really need them. On the latter point, I really value the ability to quickly search for and access information that may be pertinent and helpful. Too often that sort of information is buried in pages and pages of prose, unclear headings, etc. Perhaps that is the ineluctable result of this type of board, but if there were a better way to search (or if it exists already, better instruction on how to do it), that'd be wonderful.

On the issue of stolen photos, etc., I don't have a blog, but we do have a casa vacanze in Casperia, just mort of Rome, and a number of my photos have been picked up and used by others, and a neighbor has used language from our web listing on his TripAdvisor advert for his apartment, but I guess that's something of a complement, in a way. For me, I don't publish that much, so the impact is de minimus. But I can appreciate your pique, Cameron, since you are so much more active on the web...

As an aside: Congrats, Pauline, on your new venture here. Wishing you all the best and success with it.

 

[italian excursion]

Dale, I was also at that Pienza lunch! Wasn't it a marvelous way for Pauline to get the ball rolling. How many GTG's do you think have happened from that first one? I've been to dozens so I imagine there have been thousands. Pauline, you really must take a bow!

Ciao,
Cheryl
www.italianexcursion.com