Introducing This Week in Blogging – Weekly News Recap

For many years, I've shared my blogging tips and tricks as its own series on this blog. There were many reasons why I did this, with the biggest being that I simply disliked a lot of the information that was out there for travel bloggers and wanted to provide my own insight from my decade-plus experience running this site.

Recently I got an opportunity to take this knowledge in a new direction, and I am happy to announce a free weekly newsletter to help bloggers out- This Week in Blogging!

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Is The MATPRA Marketplace Worth It For Travel Bloggers?

In the past, I've written reviews of travel conferences and networking events like TBEX, Travelcon, NATJA, and IMM- a few of which I've had in regular rotation for a while. As it has been my goal to broaden my networking horizons, I'm starting to attend more conferences/events beyond these as well.

One of my recent additions was MATPRA (the Mid-Atlantic Tourism Public Relations Alliance) Media Marketplace. MATPRA is a consortium of tourist boards from the mid-Atlantic, namely within Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington DC, and West Virginia, that comes together for a networking opportunity (the Media Marketplace) for writers and CVBs to meet and discuss publication opportunities.

So, is this one worth it? My short answer is yes. But my long answer would be with a caveat that it depends on where you are coming from and what you want to get out of it.

*Note: Unlike other event reviews, I forgot to take photos at the Marketplace proper (I was too busy networking, whoops). Instead, photos of this one come from the FAM experiences that coincide with MATPRA Media Marketplace.

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TravelCon Review – A Travel Bloggers Conference to Consider

TravelCon is a new conference for travel bloggers put on by the team behind Nomadic Matt- one of the world's most popular travel blogs.

The first conference took place in late 2018 in Austin, Texas, and offered three full days of sessions, networking opportunities, events, and more (in similar construct to the competing conference TBEX which has been around for the better part of a decade).

But as TBEX has had a somewhat bad reputation as being too beginner friendly, TravelCon stepped in to try and cater to all blogging skill levels- be it beginner, intermediate, or advanced. Naturally, I was intrigued and was fortunate enough to check out the conference after winning a ticket from my ad network (and event sponsor), Mediavine.

So, is TravelCon worth it? We share the highlights and pitfalls in this full review!

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