The Sites in the Living the Dream Network
We have built several amazing travel inspired sites over the last couple of years and are now ready to roll them out completely for your enjoyment! The following is a breakdown of all of our sites, who the authors are, and the direction we will be going with them in the next few years starting today!
Living the Dream: As always, Living the Dream will remain a travel blog dedicated to our personal travels abroad. Both myself and Angie will be authors of posts on this blog with Angie focusing on her "Angie Eats" series as well as reviews and me leading the charge on everything else. We will be re-theming the site in the next few months with a new header image, tag line, and sidebar layout; so keep an eye out for those in the near future!
International Food Project: Our goals for IFP are simple. Eat amazing food about it around the world, share it through blog posts on the site, and recreate them at home through online recipes. In the process we will try and discover what true authenticity is and be taking you for a tasty ride along the way. Angie will be the sole author on this site going forward and will be up and running with continuous updates in just a few more months. So far we've done a bit of redesigning of the layout and are about to commission a header image to represent the site.
Free Travel Contests: If there is one thing we like more than travel, it is free travel. This directory is a dynamic site that we continually update with a listing of the world's best travel related contests. The greatest part about the directory? Every contest is always free to enter!
The Travel Atlas: Did you know that most every major country around the world has a tourism office dedicated to helping travelers like us plan a trip? The Travel Atlas is our directory of the major tourism offices from around the world with links to their planning pages and social media profiles for you to get connected and plan your travels around the world. One of our favorite features on this site is a "Fast Follow" page that allows you to instantly follow every country's tourism board on Facebook and Twitter in just a few clicks - check it out!
Trust a Traveler: If online planning resources are not for you, how about a bit of one-on-one advice with someone who has actually been to where you want to go? Trust a Traveler is our solution for you! We are building a database of verified travel bloggers who you can refer to in getting honest information about destinations around the world from a real traveler. Many travelers featured even offer consultations via email or Skype to help you plan your specific itinerary!
The Long-Term Traveler's Guide: Of course, we cannot round out our network of sites without plugging our long-term travel planning book. Our guide is now available in print, Kindle, Nook, iPad, and digital formats for all of your long-term travel planning needs!
Social Media Consolidation
As you can imagine, having this many sites in our network produces a bit of a frenzy when it comes to running the social media side of things. Multiple sites means multiple Facebook fan pages and an equally large number of Twitter accounts. But our many social media pages is now a thing of the past! With our new focus on our sites being a part of a combined network of resources, we have limited our social media identities down to two.
Living the Dream Network
Facebook - livingthedreamblog
Twitter @livingdreamrtw
Flickr - livingthedreamrtw
We will be retaining our Facebook page that was originally used for this blog, and have merged it with our accounts from Free Travel Contests, International Food Project, and Trust a Traveler to have one combined network! That means if you currently "Like" our page, or do so in the future, you'll not only receive updates on the wonderful blog posts from this site, but also highlights of our eating adventures from International Food Project, contest opportunities from Free Travel Contests, and shares from some of the best travel bloggers out there. So if you are not a fan of us yet on the accounts above, follow us now and join the 6,700+ fans on our social media pages!
The Travel Atlas
Facebook - thetravelatlas
Twitter @thetravelatlas
Our goal for The Travel Atlas is simple - to be the most complete database of tourism boards on the planet. Right now we are 99% finished with the site and have included the official boards from every country that offer this resource. Our Facebook and Twitter accounts are solely dedicated to promoting these tourism boards by sharing their updates to help get you ready for your next trip abroad. Our accounts only follow official tourism boards, so you can easily find your favorite countries from both pages there! Because of this we are keeping this site separate from the rest of our brand.
Join Our Network
But there is more! We have a number of opportunities for travel bloggers to be featured in our network for extra online exposure. If you are a new or veteran blogger, we'd love to help promote you too!
- Living the Dream - We are expanding our travel blogger database resource page and are looking to feature each and every travel blogger on the planet. Got a site? Check our planning resources database to see if you are listed. If not, email us and we'll add you. We are also always happy to host guest articles from aspiring writers looking for a little extra exposure too!
- Trust a Traveler - We are looking for verifiable travel bloggers to create profiles for our database. Check out our requirements and if you match we'll make a profile for you and your site!
- The Travel Atlas - Although this site is to promote tourism boards in countries around the world, we are also giving some love to bloggers in a planning resource section on every directory page. Have a few posts you'd like highlighted? Check out our submission requirements and send them our way for hosting!
- Free Travel Contests - We host links to all travel contests, big and small, so if you ever host a contest on your blog, please let us know and we'll link to it during the entry period!
