Just to pick up where
Emily left off in terms of content, we narrowed our scope of which online platforms are specifically affecting the way people are traveling, and how - before, during and after. Our feature will do so by our 'how-to' guides to these online platforms and other words of advice; in doing so, we are essentially becoming part of the change ourselves, and that's worth analyzing -
so meta.
Essentially, our content can be organized in these categories: 'How-to' guides, interviews / guest posts and featured articles.
'How-to' guides
We're writing our guides on the following platforms (a good selection seeing as they're different from each other):
Couchsurfer, Tripadvisor, Thorntree, Airbnb and
CoLunching. We should be as unbiased and informative as possible, but also with a sense of lightheartedness and fun! Just as travel should be too. Our guides will typically have the standard 'guide' around its website, its pros and cons, and interviews with people who has participated in the site.
For example...Couchsurfer
"Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living."
- Miriam Beard
Couchsurfer has connected
people in a tight knit community
with a genuine interest in cultural understanding and forming
meaningful friendships, rather than shallow (generally speaking),
commercial tourism that is so prevalent today. It's really more than
just a platform for cost-free accommodation, but really getting the
opportunity to explore a foreign place at the heart of it. It's changed a
certain type of people to travel in a
certain type of way; by this I mean that it's worthy of note that according to
CouchSurfing statistics, 'the average CouchSurfer is 28, and
almost 70% are between 18 and 29' and are generally known as
'open-minded, hippy, free, ‘Burning Man’ type of people', whilst '
Airbnb, you get more ‘regular’ people, just looking to make a buck or save a buck'.
From there, our guides could include:
- How to navigate the website and to get involved in the community (which is seemingly really 'exclusive', re:
Will CouchSurfing Ever Be The Same Again?)
- The risks of using Couchsurfer - particularly for women...? (See:
How risky is Couchsurfing in India?)
- Maybe a fun quiz on whether you are suited to
be a Couchsurfer? Not everyone can be a sofa/bathtub/hard wooden floor gypsy.
- Etiquette of being a Couchsurfer / first time Couchsurfing jitters
- Some lighthearted videos on hosting an actual Couchsurfer / the adventures of a Couchsurfer (Long read, but worth the skim:
I Couch-Surfed Across America—and Lived to Tell).
And this is just Couchsurfing! All these things can be done for other platforms, but using a different approach depending on their purpose.
Interviews / Guest posts
Like Myvawny mentioned, we should interview people (or invite them to be a guest blogger - to give our site a different voice) about their use and interaction with social media, and how that has affected their travel experience (Travel bloggers and writers). These people (who have credibility and an established readership) could give first hand experience and advice, as well as funny anecdotes (as Myvawny mentioned - travel fails, anyone?) that always make a good read.
I think it'd also be worthwhile interviewing someone much older than us (and comparing
then and now), about how people traveled
before social and online media. My grandma always reminded me of how she walked from Hong Kong to Shenzhen
back in the day - no, no Google maps, and definitely no Tripadvisor!
Featured articles
This will probably be on our homepage, a constant flow of blog posts and critical articles about all things social media and travel related - again, informative, thought provoking, but also lots of fun to read. For example:
- We could analyze how social media affects a person's experience, not only before, but
while they travel. On one hand, people are obsessed with constantly updating their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram which might 'ruin' (subjective) their holiday experience; but on the other hand, it is a good tool for documenting your experience and sometimes it might serve as a cure for homesickness - particularly for backpackers.
- Thanks to websites like
Atlas Obscura and Couchsurfer, people have become more so 'explorers'/'travelers' rather than tourists (Is there a difference?), wanting an actual meaningful cultural experience, which means they sought out more unique places to visit rather than tourist hot spots.
- A fun article on the types of travelers? Here's one:
So we need to cast our net wide; we need a fairly
extensive online presence so that we can reach our audience in the places they
congregate. As we’ve mentioned previously, we will be using Twitter as a means
of facilitating engagement with our audience. Through the use of hash tags we
can invite them to contribute their own content by way of stories and advice.
But Twitter is also useful because it allows us to drive traffic towards our
other online properties. We can also use Facebook for this purpose. These sites
are invaluable because that is where most young Australians spend their time. 
Of course, it’s no use funneling traffic if we
don’t have a primary destination that will be the base of all our operations.
This function will of course be served by our main website/blog. To build the
actual site we have decided to use Tumblr because it allows a large degree of
customisation and also have a very active community that frequently shares
content between users. As for the layout of the site, we can take our cues from
other sites. What we’d like to do for our site is to offer a variety of
services, such as reviews for different sites and how-to guides. For ease of
navigation we’re going with a tab system at the top of the page buttons with
leading to the different pages, similar to what Tripadvisor has. 
