Tuesday 6 November 2012

Eliza Gray, travel blogger and social media expert

The money-spinning ideas are coming thick and fast! As part of the global blogging community, posting from Candlebury to Saigon and all (well, strictly speaking, no) points in between, I am attending World Travel Market's Social Travel Market. (Which is apparently all about social media, which I think means blogging and Facebook and Twitter.) Yay! Bloggers unite! I shall write a travel and lifestyle blog. Eliza Goes Global!

PRs and travel companies are scrabbling to grab a slice of our action. According to Debbie Hindle of Four bgb, we are not writers. We are entrepreneurs! We are publishers, sales and marketing experts, digital innovators and revolutionaries! We are value-added! We don't just blog, we offer social media amplification! Hmmm. Which is probably where I'm going wrong. The thing is, how do all these one-man bands have time to be webmasters and bloggers and vloggers and phloggers, and tweet every five minutes too? Besides which, what is Foursquare? Or Instagram or Tumblr or Pinterest or Google+?

I'm scribbling furiously in my notebook, but I am alone in this archaic practice. Most of the audience don't own a pen. Throughout the discussions they are tapping into their iPads and phones. When an interesting slide is projected, they don't copy the salient points down, they photograph it.

'What's going to work is optimization solutions... leveraging those to iterate,' the current speaker is saying. What? I concentrate on trying to stop my tummy rumbling.

'I'm aware that everyone in this room needs a different set of takeaways,' he says. I jump to. I'm needing a Delice de France takeaway. Or at the very least a hot chocolate from Costa. 'I can cover that with some macro trends,' he adds, pulling up the next slide with its stats and forecasts.

'The average person checks their mobile 150 times a day.' My tummy growls. 150? I check my mobile quite a lot, but I'd be hard-pushed to check it 50 times a day, let alone 150. He must have got that wrong.

'10% of UK teenagers think it's fine to send a text during sex.' Honestly! What is the world coming to?

2 comments:

  1. Teehee! I also think I'm quite old school. And there are a lot of soapboxes about!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Visit the Philippine islands to know 7,107 ways to enjoy, eat, party and many more.

    ReplyDelete