The next phase of the campaign asks readers to vote for the woman they would like to see featured in the Work/Life section of the magazine. The overall winner will also receive a year’s worth of business coaching from  Women’s Coach of the Year 2014 Jennifer Garrett.

If you could spare a second to vote (it’s very straightforward) I would be incredibly grateful.

I wrote about the campaign in more detail here on Girl Tweets World.

Thank you to Stylist and Nivea for including me on a list with such inspiring women.

This weekend I introduced the world to my new home on the web – Girl Tweets World. This site will bring together my personal travels with my professional experience as a social media manager. (You can find more about it here.)

This post is a tribute to 40before30 though. A little look at everything the site achieved in its last 12 months of existence. (It hasn’t completely disappeared by the way – all the content from 40before30 is now under the Travelling section of Girl Tweets World and all incoming links have been redirected to help people find it.)

The last 12 months of 40before30 in numbers:

Posts: 92

Destinations: 18

Followers: Bloglovin followers increased by 6 x. Twitter following went from 8 to 12k. Facebook and Instagram accounts doubled in size.

Traffic: 200,000 page views and 98,000 unique visits in the last 12 months. Double the stats of 2012/13.

Awards: Best Travel Blog from Cosmo Magazine. Shortlisted for British Travel Press Award.

Partnerships: Big brand campaigns included Visa, Muji, No 1 Traveller and Three mobile.

Events: Speaking spots at WTM and Tots 100.

It was a great year for 40before30, the best for the site yet, but already in week 1 Girl Tweets World is set to completely surpass it. It will be interesting to see what the next 12 months will bring.

We’re nearly ready…But first…Let me take a selfie…#AirFranceTravel pic.twitter.com/MXLy7Ob1dY

— Air France UK (@AirFranceUK) June 17, 2014

The event had a great response with over 230 participants sharing their travel tips and inspirations.

@TheTravelHack Depending on the destination, usually all of the above! But beautiful scenery & food usually top priority #AirFranceTravel

— Andrea Magrath (@AndreaMagrath) June 17, 2014

Travel-hopping is the best way to maximise a trip. Stopovers are a great way to get a snapshot @TheTravelHack @AirFranceUK #AirFranceTravel

— six out of ten mag (@sixoutoftenmag) June 17, 2014

@SallyZeunert When my brother travelled he brought back a note of each currency he used whilst away and framed them all #AirFranceTravel — Abi Williams (@afloralcrown) June 17, 2014

I had a great time trying to keep up with the over 500 direct mentions that came through to my account as well as the 1225 tweets using the #AirFranceTravel hashtag. The hashtag ended up generating over 3.2 million impressions and was a trending topic in the UK for over 20 minutes! (The team got pretty excited about that!)

And we’re trending folks Thanks to all who joined #AirFranceTravel @AirFranceUK @TheTravelHack pic.twitter.com/iOKjqQN4j8 — Jayne Gorman (@jayneytravels) June 17, 2014

Thanks to everyone who joined the chat. For more information on the Air France Travel Twitter Party click here.

Building Profile

Many of the bloggers attending had already built an engaged audience around their parent and food blog niches. They were keen to discuss how they could raise their profile within travel blogging and potentially start teaming up with travel brands. I offered the following advice:

1. Twitter

My first answer to anything with regards to boosting the profile of a blog is always Twitter. I recommend building up lists of key travel tweeters and dividing them up between brands, bloggers, PR and media. I set up columns within my Hootsuite dashboard for each of these lists and dip in and out of conversations as and when I have something I would like to add or share.

Below are a list of some the key hashtags used by travel bloggers for you to monitor and engage with. I’ve also included a list of regular travel related twitter chats which are a great way to interact with others and find influencers to follow.

General Travel

#TTOT
#Travel
#LP
#NGTUK
#MatadorU
#BeachThursday

Regular chats

#BeachChat
#FriFotos
#TravelBookChat
#GirlsTravel
#WeGoSolo

Family Travel

#FamilyHolidays
#FamilyTravel
#Tmom

2. Events

There are a number of travel blogging events that take place in the UK and attract travel brands and PR as well as bloggers. Some of my favourite include:

Travel Massive –  a monthly free get together held in London but expanding into other UK cities

TBU – travel blogging conference usually held overseas

Traverse – a travel blogging event that offers practical workshops as well as panel discussions at a reasonable price. Aimed at those who have jobs as well as blogs the events are usually held in the UK over a weekend. This summer they are hosting the genius festival-themed Blogstock, held in Herfordshire and open to all blogging niches.

World Travel Market – WTM held at Excel London every November is a great way to meet anyone involved in the travel industry all in one place. There are a number of social media related talks held in seminar rooms during the event and these are free to attend.

Remember: If you can’t attend any of these events in person be sure to check out the related hashtags and participate online instead.

3. Read Other Blogs

Much of what I have learned about travel blogging I picked up by reading other travel blogs. Some of my favourite include:

The Travel Hack
Vicky Flip Flop Travels
As The Bird Flies
Aviators And A Camera
Travelettes
The Blonde Abroad
Abi Marvel
Aussie Nomad
Pack your passport
Inside The Travel Lab
Eat Like A Girl
This Battered Suitcase

4. Guest Posting

A great way to raise your profile within travel is to guest blog on travel related sites. Think beyond just guest posting on other blogs and pitch articles to travel companies and the online versions of travel magazines.

Caroline in the City writes a fantastic round up every month of a number of travel sites who are looking for guest content, including both paid and unpaid opportunities. Check it out and thank her here.

Remember: Be ready to maximise the exposure being featured on another site offers by having relevant content featured on your site the day the post goes live. If guest writing for theluxuryblog.com (which I’ve made up for this example!) have a post on luxury travel at the top of your home page when the article goes live. Include links in the post to other travel content on your site so the reader knows where to look and make it easy for them to follow your site by including clear subscription buttons or calls to action. Also ask the site you are guest blogging with to tag or mention you in any related updates they post on their social media profiles.

Working With Brands

In the presentation I touched a bit on my experience of working with brands. I had been blogging consistently for over a year before I was approached for my first press trip. The travel I write about for my sites now is a mixture of self-funded or partially sponsored trips – for example I will pitch directly to a hotel I am considering staying at to see if they would like to offer accommodation in return for coverage.

Some points with regards to research, pitching and preparing a media pack are included on the slides. You can also check out this guest post I wrote about preparing a killer press pack here.

During BlogCamp I also attended the fantastic talk by Becky from Baby Budgeting about working with brands and everything she mentioned there applies to travel blogging – especially the points with regards to disclosure, integrity and retaining relationships with brands. Momma Mojo has published a brilliant summary of Becky’s talk here.

Travel Writing

I daren’t pretend to be an expert on the subject of travel writing (I’m still learning!) but based on my personal experience the best advice I can offer to bloggers is to be themselves. (I waxed lyrical on this subject here.) I think about the content I prefer to read and it tends to be the more personal stories and anecdotes from people’s travels. These also tend to be the type of posts I enjoy writing most and get the most engagement on.

For those that have already established their own tone of voice and style of blogging I suggested they think about how they extend that into the travel remit. If you write about gluten-free baking perhaps you can extend your search overseas, review foreign restaurants, interview chefs etc.

You don’t have to be travelling to be a travel blogger (I spend a lot of time at home!) but you can draw on past experiences or write about your local neighbourhood to begin building travel content.

My English teacher always told me to ‘Show Don’t Tell’ and I think this is especially true of travel writing. I also like to break up chunks of text with quotes and strong images, so remember to collate these on your travels. For wise and witty advice on the art of storytelling check out the work of Mike Sowden.

Finally my advice is to always add value to your readers, whether that be entertainment, inspiration or advice. Remember why you set up a blog, write about what makes you happy and have fun with it.

Many thanks to Tots 100 and Foodies 100 for inviting me to speak at BlogCamp 2014. If you have any questions or thoughts to add on the content mentioned above please feel free to leave a comment below.

J x

PS Thanks to @ListeningMum for taking the photo from my session shown above. 

Muji have worked with other blogger ambassadors, including popular beauty blogger Essie Button, to reach new audiences and demonstrate how Muji products can be utilized in their customer’s everyday lives.

Click here to read the 40before30 post with packing tips and product reviews.

Click here to view the online version of the #MujiToGo MujiMail newsletter.

 1. Go self-hosted from the start

If at some point in the future you are going to want greater control over the functions and features on your site, as well as the way it looks, set it up as a self-hosted blog from the start. I use the self-hosted version of WordPress for all my sites now, having endured the painful experience of exporting 40before30 from blogger to wordpress.com and wordpress.com to my hosting company. It would have been much easier if I had simply chosen the right platform from the very start.

2. Buy a decent theme

If you do decide to self-host your site you will have more flexibility with the theme you can use. There are heaps of good free ones out there but if you really want to stand out (and are a sucker for details like I am) then consider paying for a professional one. (I’m a fan of the designs found on Themeforest.) When choosing your theme pay particular attention to the small details, like how the social share buttons are displayed on the theme (if integrated) and how users will navigate from one post to the next. (I spent hours searching for a theme that had a ‘Next’ and ‘Previous’ buttons at the end of the post for Travelling Shopaholic but eventually I found one and didn’t have to pay a developer to customise the theme at all.)

 3. Pick your name wisely

The original name of 40before30 (short for 40 countries before I’m 30) is too long and cringe-worthy to say in public (it mentioned hating my job and referenced a popular reality show where contestants are sent to the jungle!) Needless to say, once my readership (somehow) took off I needed to quickly change the title to something that wouldn’t get me fired and would easily be remembered by readers. It might help to visualise saying your blog name out loud and introducing it at a networking event; basically make sure you have a name that you wouldn’t be embarrassed to put on a business card. Also picture what sort of brand and readership you may be looking to build around this name, as well as how the logo or header for the site will look. All these elements are so intrinsically linked; don’t just consider the blog name in isolation. Pick wisely because once you’ve bought the domain and started building up page rank you are basically stuck with it!

4. Secure your domain for several years and set reminders or auto renewals for when it runs out

So here’s a newbie mistake I didn’t expect to make after four years of blogging. There I was about to jet off on a big live-blogging project, I had content and tweets all pre-scheduled to go and the brand I was working in association with had also planned updates that linked back to my site. Except when I casually looked at the blog on my phone that morning to see if my post had gone live there was a white page of death and an advert to buy the domain! Despite receiving numerous emails from Google 1 month prior saying my domain name was about to expire I never did quite get around to renewing it. (I know! What a rookie!) Luckily for me no one swooped in to buy it before I realised and I had my site back up and live before the end of the day with no one the wiser. If you can’t afford to buy your domain name for several years all in one go, select an auto-renew option or set calendar reminders (many of them) to make sure you don’t forget. Don’t risk four years of work like I did!

 5. Get a header designed

I don’t know about you but I tend to judge a blog by its cover (home page) and a Facebook page by its cover photo (what can I say, I’m shallow!) I highly recommend putting a bit of moolah behind getting a good header and logo designed for your site. I hired a freelance designer to work with me on Travelling Shopaholic. He asked me questions about the site and what I wanted the header to convey that I had never even considered before then. He was also familiar with bloggers so once we had picked the logo he sent me versions that could be used as a blog header, Facebook cover, Twitter profile, business card layout and a favicon (that’s the little pic that shows up on the tool bar tab when someone is on your site.) I’m not sure what his workload is like at the moment but ping me an email if you want his contact details.

Other ways to source a designer include looking at sites such as Elance and People Per Hour. Also reach out to bloggers whose headers you like and ask who did them. If you are looking for something a lot simpler (like your name) then Etsy has a lot of headers out the box for less than a tenner (that’s where I got the one on this site – but just pretend I didn’t tell you that!)

6. Build your email subscription list

When I launched Travelling Shopaholic I was quite intent on building the social media profiles and gaining an audience on these as it had worked so well for 40before30. But over time I have noticed that it’s my email subscribers who are more loyal – reading every post and giving me permission to be in their inbox. Make it easier for people to sign up to your blog by embedding a subscription box at the end of every post. If you don’t have a fancy widget you can do this very easily by grabbing the HTML code from Feedburner. (Scroll down to see how this looks in practise!)

 7. Check stats

Set up Google Analytics and regularly dig into your stats to find out what is and isn’t working on the blog. Look at what sites are sending referral traffic to your blog and if it is other bloggers go and thank them. Also look at what posts and pages are the most popular – see if you can recreate that effect elsewhere on the site.

8. Read other blogs

At some point last year I got so bogged down in trying to produce content for my own sites as well as clients that I stopped reading other blogs. This was a huge mistake as whilst I was busy looking the other way the blogosphere was continuing to evolve without me. Whilst it is not healthy to compare your site to other people’s, there is a lot to be learnt just from reading them. The best plugins I use on my sites are ones I have seen being used by other bloggers. When you read other blogs think about how you use their site, what bits you like about it, the bits you don’t and use that to shape the development of your own blog.

9. Be yourself

I’ve always said the best advice I could give to bloggers is to be yourself. That’s why I wrote a whole post about it.

10. Do it for love not money

Yep as corny as it sounds you really do have to love blogging to be able to stick with it for several years. (It can take years to build up a following.) Every blog is different and I am sure there are some bloggers our there who make enough money directly off their site to live on, I just haven’t met any of them yet. A blog can lead to lucrative opportunities, 40before30 scored me a job and then became the platform I used to reel in freelance clients, but it was merely the platform I used to gain work. All the work I do running, writing and promoting the blog is unpaid. This doesn’t mean I love it any less, just that I can’t prioritise it as often as I like. If you’re intrigued to know a bit more about how I make a living you can check out this post here.

I hope my 10 lessons make it a bit easier to create a blog you can be proud of.  Happy blogging!

For blogging tips and updates on my latest blogging projects delivered direct to your inbox, simply sign up here.

The judges for this category this year  (Oliver Brendon from Do Something Different, Debbie Hindle from Four BGB and Mark Maddock from lastminute.com) had a tough job, with more blog entries being received from ever before. The shortlist featured many of my friends (including Kash from Budget Traveller and Victoria from Pommie Travels) and we huddled together to hear the news. The judges said that the winner was a blogger who demonstrated a flair for writing and natural ability to engage with her audience, an audience she has built in a relatively short space of time. I pinched the arm of the girl to my right – ‘It’s you’, I remember squealing. Massive congrats to Backpacker Becki -a very well deserved win.

There was more excitement on the night though as the winner of the Outstanding Contribution Award this year was one of my travel heroes – Michael Palin. He shared with the audience one of his travel tales, that I was too starstruck to fully take in, and then we harassed him for a picture. I felt just like I did when I saw Judith Chalmers at the event in 2011 – I would like to be you when I grow up!

(Rebecca Enright with her award for Travel Blogger of the Year)

(The travel blogger finalists with the legend that is Michael Palin)

For a full list of the winners of the British Travel Press Awards 2013 click here. Thanks to whoever it was that thought I should be shortlisted – it was a great night.

Out of 43,000 nominations it was a surprise and honour for my blog to be called out as the winner on the night.

I tried to say as much to the cameraman on the night but the pink cocktails had left me a little tongue-tied!

For a full account of the event see my blog post on 40before30.com.

Click here for a full list of winners.

Thanks to everyone who voted x

Be yourself.

Me being Me

In an overcrowded bloggersphere (I think that’s a word?) there is only one way to guarantee you stand out and that’s by being you. You are the unique aspect to your site. You are the personality and the voice that people (like you) will relate to. People connect with people.

There is piles of information already on the internet, so what makes what you have to say any different? The fact that you are saying it.

You are the one thing that will keep your site consistent.  (It’s very hard to keep coming up with content if you’re not being the real you.) Be truthful, stay honest.

Understand what you have to offer your readers. What will they come to you for? Is it advice on something they may share in common with you? Or is it simply entertainment?  A distraction? Inspiration? Any or all are fine as long as you understand your value, and keep providing it.

Think of the blogs that you enjoy reading. Why do you keep going back? I enjoy reading about people’s personal journeys, that’s how I ended up sharing mine.

How to build a site, as well as how to market it, can all be taught. All the info you need is already online. You can’t learn how to have a personality though. That one’s down to you.

If you have a voice and know how to use it, I believe there is an audience for everyone. Go forth and build that blog; the readers will come.

If, however, you would like some advice on building a blog and its traffic, you can book some 1-on-1 consulting with an experienced blogger. (I’m talking about me!) Get in touch by emailing contact(at)jaynegorman.com.

The final winner is selected by a judging process which is determined by 50% votes and 50% judging panel decision. So I would like to ask for your help. If over these past few years 40before30 has been at all helpful, entertaining or just a distraction from mundane chores I would be very grateful if you could show your support by voting for me in these prestigious awards. It’s a simple process (no lengthy form to fill out with personal details) but you will also need to cast your vote in the other categories. Click here before the 30th August to cast your vote and follow #CosmoBlogAwards on twitter for news of the announcements.

Many, many, many thanks in advance,

J x