ScottC

At a large travel blogger convention now, and the general consensus is that BA bloggers are very happy with their home. It would appear that there is a lot of back seat driving going on here.

FallenPlat

Yes, I've actually found that some of their advice in this and other posts is actually well grounded. Plus I'm always inclined to give the benefit of the doubt (and then some) to anyone who posts content that's original and actually has a point. Perhaps that's because my patience for all the "me, too" credit card posts out there is so limited.

cruisr

Are you at the convention in Cancun? Is it worthwhile?

sbm12

Of course there is. A bunch of people with partial information and grand ideas of how others should do things better suiting their own preferences surely must know better than those actually doing it.

It is fun to read the rants here complaining about how the posts aren't tailored to the correct target audience. As though FlyerTalk is the only audience someone might write for. Or even that FT has a single, consistent type of user.

Astrophsx

There is probably some sort of discussion of how they need to increase each blog to four posts daily. In order to do so, one blog will find a travel article and provide their opinion of how the article should have been written... then five other BA bloggers will respond to that post and say why the disagree with that opinion.

IMH

The problem is that this describes an increasingly large subset of bloggers -- apart from the fact that most of them don't often share anything resembling a grand idea.

sbm12

This could not be further from the truth. But, by all means, keep just making crap up.

Do you believe that most of them are trying to produce content targeted to you?

If so, why? Because there's no way that's true.

And if not, what makes you think that they're doing a bad job of producing content towards the people they are targeting?

I think a lot of the content is not to my taste and I don't read most of it because of that. If someone wants to write intro to CC churning posts all the time or 87-part trip reports that don't actually provide useful travel advice then that's on them. And if they have a readership they're happy with then I think that's great. If they are able to help someone travel better that's wonderful. The same person needing intro advice on CCs isn't going to get that from my site. And probably not here, either.

So it is useful that there are many different people writing content targeted to different groups. Some of that is on Boarding Area. Some of it is elsewhere. None of it is perfect but all of it is better than no one trying to help others.

IMH

So it's the opposite of the truth ("could not be further")? BA bloggers are in fact being requested to cut their output? Can you offer any insight as to why?

Obviously not.

Because I've read some of it. Much of the time it's clear that the writer hasn't thought about an intended audience and/or has forgotten her/his own mission statement.

1848

Yes, +1.

I would like to add that many if not most are pretty horrible at either marketing themselves properly or honestly. I don't think the two necessarily go hand in hand, but one of the two is required in order to not waste a lot of people's time.

sbm12

Yes.
Nope, that's also quite far from the truth.

Funny thing about what the "opposite" is in some scenarios. You're suggesting that someone is telling bloggers how much they should be producing. That is what I'm disputing. No one mandates content frequencies. Suggesting otherwise is crap. But, by all means, feel free to keep believing that someone tells the bloggers - on Boarding Area or elsewhere - what to do.

Again, I think a lot of the content is of no use to me. But that's why I don't read it. I focus on the things which are important to me. Similarly I doubt that most of what I write is useful to the majority of FT members. Or the aggregate of Boarding Area readers. That's not the goal, though.

And I disagree that many have forgotten who their audience is. I think that folks here are worse about identifying who or what the targets are.

Astrophsx

I don't think I'm making up crap? I think it is a correct observation that a number of BA bloggers have moved to posting multiple times through the day. I believe around 4-5 years ago you started to see more daily posts and now you are seeing multiple posts in one day. I believe the speculation was that at one of the meetings they had they were encouraged to post a certain amount no? I'd have to dig to see where this was discussed. I vaguely remember this was discussed around the time we started to see bloggers do weekly recaps. There may not be a mandate, but they could be encouraged or pushed to post at a frequency. I don't think anyone here has suggested or said there was a mandate so I'm not sure how you got that from what I posted.

pricesquire

I find it strange that people complain of content not being marketed enough to their own audience. That is what's going on, right?

My complaint is with regard to the content itself. I just find the content to be sub-par. COuldn't care less how accurately marketed it is to my genre.

84fiero

Sorry I couldn't resist! It's alright, you aren't the first auto-correct victim and won't be the last!

The Chase Sapphire Preferred card (one of the Ultimate Rewards earning cards) has extra bonus points for dining purchases on the first Friday of each month.

Canarsie

The first thought I had is that I enjoy consuming fresh oranges; but that would be navel.

How novel and ap-peel-ing...

gpapadop

BA falling? Not on ABC News:

http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/mom-tra...ry?id=25463907

Congrats to her! The "Welcome Nightline viewers" post was up before the segment appeared! Oh all these newbs with no credit cards

The third paragraph and the comments are very entertaining...

Night night