This is the 13th edition of powerful, successful and inspirational interviews in the series of Journey of a Professional Blogger, interviews on EASKME.com.
Please share about yourself and your story to enter in blogging?
I am a marketing consultant with over 7 years of B2B marketing experience in digital environments. I opened my first blog in 2006, it was a blog where a group of friends and I used to write about being a trainees and told many funny stories that happened to us at work. I stopped contributing when work got more serious, but it is still a good fun reading.
I started seriously blogging in 2011, when I set up trucosviajeros original blog in Spanish. By that time I was specializing on digital marketing and decided to set up a blog where I could test all I was learning. It has evolved over the time and now I publish there and on the English trucosviajeros site.
I had been traveling since I was born and somehow was a referral for all things travel, from how to get boarding pass to where to find the best deals to travel from X to Y. So I decided to make the blog around travel tips and travel technology that could make your travel life easier. Now I have added new contents, like travel diaries and routes, but the main idea is still to help people travel more and travel better.
How the idea to make your own blog came in your mind? How you found the right people to develop it and what big obstacles you faced?
Having travelled all my life, many friends used to take me as a referral for travelling ideas and tips. They would (and still do) ask me about the destinations they would be visiting or some tips and tricks to make their travel easier or better. One day, my sister told me I should get all those recommendations and travel FAQs together so everyone could benefit from them.
By that time, I was also specializing on digital marketing and marketing trends, so I decided to set up a blog where I could test what I was learning. Back then there was not much you could do to customize your blog, so I chose a blogspot account and started blogging. That is basically how the original Trucosviajeros blog came to life in 2011.
I would say that the biggest obstacle I have faced since then has been finding enough time to push the project forward and start posting more frequently. Now I try to post at least twice a week at both the Spanish and English travel blogs.
Another interesting challenge has been adapting the blogspot blog to the latest visual trends. From 2011 the blog has evolved visually as well as in content, but the platform does not go as fast as the latest trends, which sometimes has been a little nightmare.
Can blogging really change someone`s life?
I don't know if blogging can really change your life. For me, blogging has allowed me to meet very interesting people and visit places I wouldn't have access to any other way. It could be invites, press passes, extra information, gifts....
Another extra point is that you can get feedback on your work and, every once in a while, you have the chance to help a stranger, which is rewarding.
The counterpart? you also get negative feedback every once in a while (famous trolls) and the exposure can be sometimes intimidating. And some people will never get what you do or why you do it
What are your favorite Internet marketing tools?
Hard to choose. For the basic issues of your Internet life, I´d say Gmail, dropbox, Google Analytics and IFTTT (for automation on basic tasks.) Then I'd say anything that allows to program content on your social networks like Buffer or Hootsuite is also pretty basic. And finally, content discovery tools like digg or stumbleupon.
What is your daily schedule? and how do you maintain your tasks?
Blogging have different definition for different person. What is it for you?
For me blogging is about publishing content online. Content that includes your point of view about life in general or about an specific question. It is letting everybody know what you think or what you do and how you do it.
I guess it is about being transparent in some aspects of your life and showing you are passionate about something. It is also about showing off, sometimes, and about showing expertise. For me keeping your knowledge to yourself is unproductive, so I write about what I know and what I've seen, just in case somebody else finds it useful.
Which are your favorite blogs?
How much time do you spend on social media promotion and SEO of your blog?
Probably less than 5 hours a week. I tend to plan the promotion of certain content in advance and have some things automated, so basically I only need to check that everything is fine on a daily basis. I prefer to spend time building a community and making sure that the content is interesting for them as well as for me, so in the end they will be attracted by what I write.
How much time do you spend for blogging daily?
It changes depending on the amount of work I have and whether I am traveling or not, but I'd say I spend about 2 hours average on specifically writing and creating blog content. If I have time enough I could spend like 8 hours a day, but I tend not to write much when I am out living the experience (although I take notes and pictures and post on facebook and Instagram and so on.)
Message for Readers:
Whatever inspires you, go for it. Do not let anybody tell you it is impossible (well, except for the cops or a customs agent.)
And, please, never leave your travel side at home. Keep curious and enjoy every discovery, even if it seems little and you made it just around the corner.
It was a great interview with Leticia Perez from Trucosviajeros.com. eAskme team wish her best of luck and bright future. Her journey as a blogger is an inspiration. If you think that it is impossible, think again. You have the ability to do anything and be what you want to be. So if you still waiting to start a blog, I must say you should start it right now.
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