Keith Jenkins of Velvet Escape is a respected speaker and presenter in the travel world sharing his knowledge of business and the tourism industry with everyone from travel bloggers to PR professionals and tourism boards. We are thrilled to have him share his advice on how to prepare and present a presentation in your area of expertise. So take it away Keith!

How to Do a Presentation for The Travel Industry

If someone had told me two years ago that I would one day be speaking at conferences, I would have laughed it off with a “Yeah, right!”. Oh, wait a minute, someone did tell me a few years ago that I should look into public speaking – the argument was that my ‘investment banker to blogger entrepreneur’ background would be an inspiring story to tell.

That suggestion was met with a pursed-lipped “Hmmmm” and a shake of my head. The thing that held me back was that I’ve never felt comfortable standing in front of a crowd. I have plenty of experience chairing a meeting or presenting a product to a client but standing in front of a hundred people (or more) and talking was a daunting idea.

Keith Being Interviewed Live on Catalonian TV

As time passed and my blog grew, it gradually dawned on me that the experiences I’d gained from creating the Velvet Escape brand, building the blog and marketing it via social media would be useful to others. Moreover, I realised that speaking in public is a great way to market my brand and reach out to a new audience. It’s something I had to do if I wanted to take my brand further. I decided to test the waters by organising blogging seminars in Amsterdam and it was quite a revelation to discover that I quite enjoy speaking in public.

At my first seminar, I used little cards which contained my notes. I held these in my hands as I spoke but I threw them out before the second seminar – they were too distracting and made me feel uneasy. I figured I didn’t need the cards anyway because I knew the subject matter inside-out. This was my first lesson: you know the story, tell it naturally. Discard anything that prevents you from telling the story in a natural manner. So, I stood in front of the room and simply talked, using only my slides on the wall as a guide. The seminars were an excellent way to learn about my own speaking capabilities and test various techniques. Since then, I’ve spoken at seminars and conferences such as Travel Bloggers Unite, GoMedia Canada and most recently, at the World Travel Market in London.

Public speaking is an excellent way to showcase your expertise and generate exposure for your blog outside your usual circles. It’s also an opportunity to create an alternative source of income. There are many subjects that travel bloggers can speak about and there are various types of audiences that can be targeted. Experienced travel bloggers can target other bloggers and talk about blogging techniques, writing, photography, social media or SEO. If you have an inspiring story to tell, with thought-provoking anecdotes, you could approach schools or companies looking for motivational speakers.

For those who are thinking of speaking in public for the first time, I‘ve listed below some tips based on my own experience. One thing that always helps me is not to treat the presentation as a ‘presentation’ but merely as a ‘story-telling’ session – you’re there to tell a story you know very well. Putting myself in this frame of mind relaxes me and gives me an extra confidence boost – this is a mental technique I used very often at interviews during my banking days.

Preparation

• Choose a topic you’re perfectly comfortable with and which reflects your expertise
• I still use Powerpoint for my slides but there are other, more sophisticated programs in which to create a presentation
• Keep the text on your slides concise
• Use images that are relevant
• ‘Rehearse’ the story in your mind as your create the slides. Make notes.

Presenting

• Dress appropriately – you are representing your brand!
• Decide beforehand if you want to hold on to your notes. Some speakers feel more comfortable holding something in their hand, be it their notes, the microphone or a cup of tea (the last has the added advantage of being warm, i.e. relaxing, and it helps to create a casual atmosphere). Most importantly, do what makes you feel comfortable
• Choose a good spot to stand where you’re in full view of your audience. It’s advisable to move around but don’t overdo it – it may make your audience dizzy!
• Look out for friendly faces in different sections of the audience. Spread your attention evenly across the room by moving your gaze from one friendly face to another
• Effective body language is paramount to the success of your presentation. Stand tall, move confidently and look your audience straight in the eye. Remember, you’re the expert! Keep your hand gestures to a minimum – use your hands sparingly to drive home a point. Don’t forget to smile!
• Speak up but vary the tone of your voice to avoid monotony. As with hand gestures, use a different tone to drive home a point
• As you speak, make occasional references to your slides on the wall
• Interact with your audience by soliciting a response through a joke (if this works, great. If it doesn’t, you’ll be the only one laughing so be careful with jokes), a reference to someone in the audience or by asking a question.

 Feedback

After your presentation, try to get some feedback from the audience about the subject matter and how they think the presentation went. Ask if they have any take-aways from the presentation. Use this feedback to improve your presentation and the style in which it’s delivered.

Happy speaking! 

Keith Jenkins is available to speak at conferences or conduct seminars on utilising social media for branding, networking and marketing purposes; travel blogging (branding, monetising, working with travel bloggers); his experiences in promoting destinations via social media and blogging. Speaking engagements in 2011 include:
Blue Badges tour guides, London, Travel Bloggers Unite, Manchester, Social Media, Girona, Travel Bloggers Unite, Innsbruck, Go Media Canada, Edmonton, World Travel Market, London

Follow Keith on Twitter and Facebook 

I remember talking with Melanie of Travels With Two a year and a half ago asking her how she gets invited on so many trips. We didn’t look at her success with frustration, we looked to her for inspiration and she told us that she has a very targeted travel blog that companies find attractive to work with. She runs one of the top Travel Couple Blogs on the Internet. It was less than a year later that we had the chance to travel on a press trip together to Rancho La Puerta in Mexico where we enjoyed being roomies for a week and now consider her and Adam very good friends.

PR companies do their research. They are well informed and they have their own lists and analytics that they draw from when choosing to contact travel bloggers. However, that doesn’t mean that if you aren’t on one of those lists and nobody is calling that you can’t take control of the situation and make the right people notice you.

Introduce Yourself

Our Fellow Travel Bloggers in Alaska

Our first real press trip was the Princess Cruises Twitter Trip. It was the mother of all Press Trips where we were invited to tweet from sea for two weeks. We had the trip of a lifetime on a Twitter trip to Alaska alongside some of the most powerful travel bloggers out there. We never thought we’d be a part of such a strong campaign so early in our career.  We didn’t have the credentials of EarthXplorer and we didn’t have the influence of AOL’s Gadling but here we were, invited to tweet right beside these two travel icons.

We weren’t above sending Princess a tweet after their first Twitter trip to introduce ourselves and let them know that we’re an adventure travel blog. We knew that their next trip to Alaska would be perfectly targeted to our demographic and put it in their ear that they should invite us along on their next trip! So remember if you don’t pursue what you want how will you ever get it?

Meet in Person and Follow Up

Our Intrepid Travel Group, in Sichuan Province sans Dave

It was at a travel meet up in Toronto that we first met our good friends at Intrepid Travel. We hit it off and had a great time talking travel with them. We had the same beliefs and values about seeing the world as Intrepid Travel and the next day we decided to send them our media package. We wanted to let them know that we loved their company and hopefully we could work with them one day when the timing was right. This is why it is important to meet face to face. Your personality carries just as much weight as your numbers.

It was a couple of months later that we were on our way to China taking part in their Grand China Tour and a long and happy relationship was born.

Reach Out

On our Motorbike Tour of Thailand with Smiling Albino

We assumed that because Thailand is such a popular destination for backpackers and Travel Bloggers, it would be impossible to get the attention of the tourist board. However, we contacted the Tourism Authority of Thailand anyway because we knew we had a great idea. We searched for a contact name and sent them a pitch. We were nervous when we hit send on the computer, but they were very helpful and put us in touch with the person that we should be talking to.

After a couple more emails, we found the proper contact in the company and they liked our idea. It was unique and showed people a different side of Thailand that they wanted to showcase. A couple of weeks later, we were on an amazing two-week adventure through the country with the Smiling Albino having us experience a Thailand that we have never seen before!

Use Social Media

Our twitter page

You need to engage with the people you want to work with. Companies can’t notice everyone so you have to make yourself stand out.

Many of our fellow bloggers travel on sponsored trips that we are not a part of. We may not be a part of that trip, but we get involved and interact with them and the sponsor while it is going on by retweeting their posts and engaging with the tourism board or company.

When we see our friends such as Travel Dudes or Isabelles Travel Guide on a trip, we make sure to retweet them with the trips organized hashtag whenever we can. The tourist boards may be watching and they will take notice of who is sharing their invited bloggers posts. Plus we like to support our fellow bloggers to show these companies the power of social media. The better they do promoting their trip, the better it is for all of our business.

You just may be invited on the next one if you engage and let the people in charge know that you exist. Many top bloggers always share articles freely from their fellow bloggers sponsored trips. Just because they didn’t get invited this time doesn’t mean that they won’t be invited the next. And that explains why they do so well in this business.

Be Prepared

People won’t know that they can work with you if you don’t let them know are open to partnerships. Put up a media page that gives information about your blog. We labelled ours Advertise/Pr.  Make it easy for people to quickly reference and find out everything they need to know about your business.  Give them the option to download your media kit for more information.

Make things easy for people wanting to work with you and let them know what they can get in return when partnering with you. When you contact companies be prepared to show them why they should work with you and send them a media kit to go along with your pitch idea.

Explain what your blog is about, who the target market is and who reads your blog. This will let companies know quickly whether or not you are the right fit for their demographic. They can then move on to check out your blog statistics and rankings and cross reference with their own system.

So, the next time you see your fellow Travel bloggers on a press trip, traveling with a tourism board or partnering with a company, don’t be discouraged. Start to ask yourself, what can I do to get on one of those trips?

For more information and travel blog advice, check out our advice section on ThePlanetD.com

Yesterday we gave a list of gifts that we love so today we want to give you some gift ideas that we use(and also love). This gift guide has something for everyone who travels on your list. From the person who loves to give back to the one who loves a good adventure. So when you are shopping on Cyber Monday or any other time of the year keep these ideas in mind .

To See our latest Holiday Gift Guide Segment on CTV News Express, Click here! 

1. Gift of Charity:

2. Gift of Adventure: 

3. Electronics:

Olympus Waterproof Camera: Olympus TG-810 Tough We never had a waterproof camera and while in Fiji white water rafting someone asked us why we didn’t have one if we were such big adventurers. As soon as we flew to Bangkok we bought one and use it wherever we go. We’ve taken it canyoning over waterfalls in Jordan, rafting and swimming with dolphins in New Zealand and snorkelling in Jamaica. It’s our go to camera that can be used on any occasion. This Olympus Tough TG-810 is a 14 MP, 5x Wide Optical Zoom that is not only waterproof, it’s shockproof, freezeproof and crushproof! Cost: $299

4: Gift of Cool:

Travelpro Maxlite 2 Starting at $109.00

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5: Gift of Security 

Pacsafe Luggage PacSafe is an amazing thing to add to your luggage for places like South East Asia and Central and South America where security is an issue. For buses you can put your valuables into a small bag and lock it up under your seat or you can lock up your things in a hotel room if you don’t feel secure. If you are sleeping on a train, you can wrap your bag with this mesh wiring, lock it up and sleep soundly.

A fellow travel blogger from Brendans Adventures recently had everything stolen from his bag in South America when his bag slid back on a bus during a ride. People get on and off buses all the time, so there was no finding the culprits once he came to his stop and noticed his bag was much lighter.

Cost: $59.76

6. Gift of Relaxation: 

Cabin Max Ultimate travel kit Comfort packs for Airplanes. Give eye masks, blow up neck rests and most importantly ear buds to the traveler in your life. Nox Audio ear buds are what we brought all the way to Mongolia not only to listen to music, but they work great as ear plugs as well. I use them instead of earplugs because they don’t put as much pressure on my ears as ear plugs but still blog out the noise. Plus, most airlines make you buy your headsets now, this saves them money. You can add a mini toothbrush and toothpaste as well.

 Cost: $14.95

7: Gift of comfort:

Grand Trunk Silk Sleep Sack We use these wherever we go. While backpacking you can stay in some nasty places and having your own sheet makes things much nicer. Adding that extra layer between you and a matt or questionable sheets, makes your sleep bearable.

Also, if it is really hot, the silk is nice and comfortable wicking away your sweat and moisure and if it is really cold, the silk holds your body heat and helps to warm you up with layers.

Cost: $34.66

8: Gift of Cleanliness:

Coghlans Pegless Bungee ClotheslinePegless Clothes line and a universal Do it Rubber Sink Stopper : Sometimes you can’t get your laundry done and hotels charge an arm and a leg. Doing Laundry in your sink helps a lot and a universal plug can help you clean easier. A pegless clothesline has saved us many times. Even on treks, we may not be able to wash our clothes, but we can hang them up outside to dry out and we don’t have to carry around clothes pegs.

Cost: $5.96

9:Gift of silence/Privacy 

Nox Audio Ear Buds are what we brought all the way to Mongolia not only to listen to music.We could tune out the ambient noise and realas while listening to our favourite tunes. We never invested in quality earphones before and now I wish we did, they make a huge difference. They work great as ear plugs as well. I use them instead of earplugs on the plane when taking a nap because they don’t put as much pressure on your ears as ear plugs. Plus, most airlines make you buy your headsets now, so this saves them money. Cost $75

It’s our day to talk and share what we have learned over the past couple of years of the travel. Last week we shared what we did to secure Sponsorship for the Mongol Rally. Today, we are talking about StumbleUpon. For some it is the most confusing form of social media, but it doesn’t have to be. We don’t know everything by any means and we encourage you all to leave comments with your own ideas or additions to the post. If you feel something is wrong or you do it differently, we’d love to hear about it. We’re always looking for new ways to make things work.

Now, On to StumbleUpon

We’ve had a lot of requests to write a post about how to use StumbleUpon. This can be one of the most exciting tools in driving traffic to your site. Many people will argue that StumbleUpon traffic allows for too much of a bounce rate, but we have found that once the numbers started growing, the visitors evened out and the bounce rate settled down. People now stay on the website longer. Not only has our StumbleUpon traffic gone up, our numbers consistently climbed and stayed there.

So here is a step by step guide on what we do each week when going through our stumbles on StumbleUpon. If you haven’t got an account with StumbleUpon, you can sign up for one here.

Choose your interests: We don’t only stumble travel interests, we have various interests on StumbleUpon and it is an excellent way to make connections outside of your niche. We regularly receive funny videos, entertainment, photography and technology from our different followers on StumbleUpon.

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Find your friends and start Stumbling: You can friend us immediately we’re ThePlanetD and we accept shares! How do you accept shares? When you click on follow a link will pop up asking you if you want to accept shares in your toolbar, if you click that, you will be able to receive that stumblers shares. We’ll be explaining shares further down.

After You Have Signed Up 

First install the tool bar for your browser 

A mistake that we made when first starting with SU was not using the tool bar. The tool bar makes things a lot easier. We use the stumbleupon toolbar for chrome and once a week we go through our StumbleUpon Shares.  See that red number 172 on the left hand side beside Stumble button above? That is the number of people that have shared articles with us. We click on that red button, read the article and give it a like.

Discoveries

It is important to discover articles as well as liking them. You want to participate regularly in StumbleUpon to gain authority. Like most social networking sties, the more active you are, the better you do. If you discover a post, you will automatically have the option to write a review unlike when you are simply giving a thumbs up to a post already discovered. If you want to add a review to an article already discovered all you have to do is click on the bubble icon to the right of “friends” where it will allow us to leave a review.

Note: when going through shares, you won’t be the discoverer because posts can only be shared if they are already discovered.
I’ve since learned the above is not true, I just went through my shares and was the discoverer.

Contrary to popular belief, We stumble our own posts. We just make sure to stumble other people’s posts more than our own. What StumbleUpon doesn’t want to see are spammy stumbles. If you only stumbled your own website, well that would be different. But if you stumble your own site as you are stumbling other sites you are fine.

There is debate over this method but we have received tens of thousands of stumbles on several different articles and we have listened in on StumbleUpon webinars where they have even said that it is fine to stumble your own stuff.

We discovered our own post Petra By Night (photo above) that received 88,000 Stumbles. The more you discover, the more authority you have on StumbleUpon.

Optimizing your time with the Toolbar

The great thing about the tool bar is that we can also kill two birds with one stone. We have also added on the hootsuite hootlet  for Chrome. It’s the little owl icon above. While we are going through our stumbles, we can schedule tweets to come out throughout the day or even week.

It’s all right at our fingertips! Once you’ve given a thumbs up and scheduled the tweet and shared it with your other social networks, just click on the red button again for the next stumble share. We can schedule a day of tweets, facebooking and finishing our stumbling in about an hour each day.

Once we get to the end of our shares we start stumbling through random sites. That is when we can discover a lot of new articles and expand our reach.

Sharing

If we particularly like a certain post, we can share it with our followers for them to stumble as well.

Sharing is an important function of StumbleUpon. This is a way to ask your friends to give your article a thumbs up. Make sure not to over share, you don’t want to annoy your stumble friends with a share every single day. Also, it is a good idea to share other people’s posts as well. When you see something that you think someone will like, let them know about it.

When you click on the share button, your list of contacts will drop down. Click on each person individually and then write a little message to tell them what the article is about. Then hit share now. It will then go out to everyone and be in queue for them to thumb up when they go through their shares.

Have Patience

StumbleUpon Takes Time. It took time before we started seeing numbers. But once we sat down to really work on sharing sites, we suddenly saw a spike in traffic. We have had posts reach up to 100,000 stumbles. Now that we are in the system our posts seem to catch on with little effort on our part since we laid the groundwork early. Unlike Twitter, you don’t have to be on StumbleUpon day in day out to have a post go viral.

That doesn’t mean that we don’t use StumbleUpon regularly, we visit the site regularly. However, it is a social network that doesn’t require the constant feeding that Twitter does to remain influential. When we travel, we go for days without visiting StumbleUpon, but once we come back to catch up on our shares and stumbles, we are back on track and can pick up right where we left off.

How do you use StumbleUpon? Do you find it effective? Let us know your opinions so everyone can gain from the collective knowledge.

 Remember if you do use StumbleUpon give us a follow we love to share great content.

What we wonder is, what is with all the hating going on between travel bloggers?

Has everyone forgotten why they got into this business? Is it not for the love of  travel?

Serenity-Love-Travel

When we started in this community nearly 3 years ago, we were overwhelmed with the outpour of love and support by our fellow bloggers. Now when we watch the threads on forums and on certain websites, we are amazed with the bitterness and anger coming out of people’s mouths. We all run our business differently and that’s ok. We really don’t care what other people do with behind the scenes of their travel blogs. If they want to clog it with gambling and casino advertising that’s their choice. If they want to keep it straight and narrow and not run one ad, that’s good for them too.

It is up to the individual on how much money they need or want.

But now we see people fighting and ratting each other out to Google, there is name calling and arguments. This is over travel blogging! What have we become? Why is everyone so concerned with focusing on what everyone else is doing?

What is wrong with everyone?

Travel is supposed to be exciting and fun. When we go to a travel website we want to be inspired. We want to learn something about another part of the world that we didn’t know about.  Travel is about getting away from the stresses of everyday life and living a fantasy for a few days. Travel is beautiful and wonderful. It opens people’s eyes to ignorance and prejudice. 

Travel, Escape, Inspire

We love travel blogging and we hope to be able to do it for the rest of our lives. We have our ups and downs with starting a new business and we live through a roller coaster of extreme highs and lows each day. The one thing we have always been able to count on is sharing and discussing ideas with our fellow travel bloggers.

When a website comes out with hateful and hurtful commentary, it saddens us. We hope that people don’t turn on one another and that people won’t be afraid to discuss with each other anymore. We are all pioneers in the travel blogging world. We’re the leaders and together we should be able grow and support one another. We shouldn’t be turning into the police and turning our fellow bloggers in to Big Brother.

Peace, Harmony, Travel

We would love to be able to run an ad free site and we are working towards that goal by working in television and developing partnerships and sponsorships. We are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel but unfortunately we aren’t independently wealthy. For now have to feed ourselves and be able to put fuel in our car for all the meetings we’ve been going to these days to make the transition from a blogger that is merely getting by to travel blogger that is making a great living. We hope that people don’t resent us for selling ad space to travel companies that we research beforehand but we have to do what we have to do. We can’t worry about what other people are thinking or doing, we would drive ourselves insane if we did.

What we can do is look to our fellow travel bloggers for inspiration and advice.

We are so proud of the people that we know it travel blogging. We have watched our peers grow and achieve success and they inspire us to do better ourselves.

People Inspiring in Travel Blogging

Keith of Velvet Escape and Janice of SoloTraveler have started GBN and created successful personas of being leaders in the public speaking field.

Sherry Ott of Ottsworld has started Meet Plan Go with Michaela Potter and I hope that they get a multimillion dollar venture capital investment for their amazing idea. (maybe they’ll hire us if they do!) We’ve seen companies achieve great success in this sense like our pals at Tripping. We are so proud to know them and to be a small blip on their radar.

GoPackpaking is someone that we have always looked to for his business savvy. He has been sustaining his travels since 2007 and now he is not only sustaining himself, he is making a great living and is another leader in the industry.

Nora of the Professional Hobo starred in a TV series last year. When she told us about that at a Toronto Travel Massive, we were so excited for her. It is something we’ve wanted to do and to see a fellow blogger achieve our dream, gave us hope that we can do it too!

Ken Kaminesky landed the cover of National Geographic with his amazing photography. That’s National Geographic people! I need not say more?

Everything-Everywhere , Legal Nomads, Wild Junket, EarthXplorer, Uncornered Market and Nomadic Matt are all a part of G Adventures Wanderers in Residence. They are traveling the world representing this well known travel company as they write about their tours.

Wandering Trader and YTravel Blog are writing tips for Problogger. Problogger! They are starting to become such authorities in their field that they are giving advice to the entire blog world out there!

Andy Hayes owns an entire network of travel businesses. We have learned so much from him and admire what he has accomplished.

We’ve started working on CTV NewsChannel doing a weekly segment talking travel, we are announcing a partnership next week that we are excited about and we are so proud to be sponsored by American Express Canada.

There are so many other people out there that are supportive, inspiring and helpful and we don’t want to say that it is everyone is being hurtful. We have just noticed that it is easier to jump on the bandwagon of negativity rather than positivity and we feel the need to remind ourselves and everyone else to be optimistic. Great things are happening in this community and we can all grow and achieve success together. We don’t need to turn on one another to claw our way to the top. There’s room enough for everyone.

I haven’t mentioned everyone here, but each week we are going to feature our favourite blogs on Saturdays, so stay tuned for more! 

So what I am saying is we should all be proud of our fellow travel bloggers. If they are making $5000 a month selling ads, good for them if they are remaining pure to traditional blogging and not selling any sort of advertising or partnership, good for them too! Let’s leave the backstabbing and low blows to the political blogs. There’s enough hate out there to go around for everyone.

It’s our job as travel bloggers to spread the love of the world and make it a better place.

At least that is how we see it.

We learned a great deal during the Mongol Rally on how to approach sponsors and we now feel confident when seeking sponsorship that we do indeed have something valuable to offer them.

1. Define your Goals.

Having a hook will help immensely when seeking sponsorship for your travels.

A company may not be interested in sponsoring a blog that is simply going out to backpack around the world. You must find some way to stand out from the crowd. The Mongol Rally gave us and our teammates Rick Griffin and Sherry Ott a unique adventure to attract new readers and sponsors. Driving 1/3 of the way around the world definitely helps to make you stand out from the sea of travel bloggers and companies feel confident when there is not only the built in audience from the rally, but also the value of combining the audience of three blogs into one event for triple the exposure.

Mongol Rally Sponsors 

Intrepid Travel

Roomorama Apt. Rentals

Oh-London Apt. Rentals

New Zealand Car Rentals

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Other travel bloggers that have had great success in finding sponsorship are The Professional Hobo, Go See Write and Nomadic Chick for the Ultimate Train Challenge, As We Travel for their European Train circumnavigation and GlobeTrooper for their hike across the Gobi Desert. Each of these trips were unique, epic and attractive to sponsors.

2. Have an Attractive Package.

Your sponsorship package is the most important aspect of finding sponsorship. Be clear as to what you can give your sponsor in return for their product or monetary contribution. The first thing we did when putting together our proposal for the Mongol Rally was work on our package. We compiled our numbers and statistics together and input them all into a pdf file explaining what our venture was, what we will offer and how their product will be displayed.

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1. We offered 3 levels of sponsorship. Give value to the companies that contribute more. Offering 3 levels of sponsorship will give smaller companies the opportunity to get on board, but will nudge larger companies in the direction of offering more. If they give a monetary value along with product sponsorship, they will be more prominently displayed, mentioned more in posts and if you have a car, T-shirt or backpack that will be displaying your sponsors, you they will receive the primo spot on the item.

Be Clear on Exposure

1. We clearly defined how many posts we would give each sponsor, how many tweets they would get and how many facebook shares we would offer.

2. Tell the company what you expect from them.

Outline exactly what you require from the company you are seeking sponsorship from. People prefer to be told what you want rather than having to think about what to offer. Don’t leave it up to them. Tell them how much product you require, how much money you require and why you are approaching them.

4. Approach companies in your niche

We are travel bloggers so we approached travel companies or companies that have something to do with adventure. However the Mongol Rally gave us the opportunity to seek sponsorship outside of the travel business. We could approach cell phone and satellite companies, we found GPS and Audio Sponsors and of course we found the most important sponsor for our car in AllWAysRentals. A Rental company base in Christchurch New Zealand that offers campervans and cars for hire.

More Mongol Rally Sponsors

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5. Involve a Charity.

It is fulfilling to give back when traveling through communities so involving at any time during your travels is a great idea. When you decide to take on an epic adventure and are seeking specific sponsorship having a charity on board helps. Many companies are already involved with a charity, so it may be worthwhile to approach your premium sponsors first and offer to raise money for their specific charity in return for the largest premium spot.

Intrepid Travel also donated our carbon offsets for the fuel that we used driving from England to Mongolia.

Start Early

Companies plan their year in advance and the sooner you can seek sponsorship the better.

We waited far too long for the Mongol Rally to attract a Gold Sponsor. We originally wanted 1 main sponsor. They would be an exclusive sponsor that would receive all of the publicity throughout the Mongol Rally. We wanted to ask for a large monetary value that would cover all costs in return for exclusive sponsorship. This is something that you should start seeking at least a year in advance. By the time we got around to approaching companies in January, although they were interested, they already had their advertising budgets allotted for the year.

Just Ask

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from Andy Hayes. “Have you Ever Thought to Ask?” was his response to my question on how can I do that? Ever since, I have thought of him whenever I send out a sponsorship package or partnership request.  Thanks Andy!

Our biggest fear was sending that first email. We didn’t know what people would say and how they would respond. Once we got over the fear of rejection, we started approaching companies that we never would have had the nerve to speak to before. Companies will say no that is a fact. But you will be amazed at how many people will respond with a polite letter explaining why they can’t sponsor you at this time. Thank them for their time and keep them in your database for future reference. As your statistics grow and if the right opportunity comes along for partnership, you can try them again.

Once you receive that first acceptance letter, you will be filled with confidence and ready to approach more people.

Even More Mongol Rally Sponsors

Plus: Cheese Web  & Brooks on Break 

Fulfill Your Commitments

Don’t offer what you can’t follow through on. We found it difficult to tweet and facebook from the desert in Kazakhstan and Mongolia but we found ways to fulfill our commitments to our sponsors. We hired Social Media Atlantic Canada who were able to take care of our social media commitments when we couldn’t be online. We also scheduled our important tweets in advance to make sure that the word was getting out about our sponsors. If there was one thing that we did when we pulled into a small town with slow internet, was to get online and make sure that our duties to our sponsors were fulfilled.

Follow Up.

It is important to keep documentation of the exposure that you are giving your sponsors. We took snapshots of our hashtag #mongolsms and for 3 little bloggers working on their own, we reached over 1.2 million impressions in just 97 tweets.

Once you are finished, send your sponsors the posts that you wrote about them during the event and the analytics on how it was received. A great follow will help you continue your relationship beyond just one event. Building relationships is the key. Companies want to work with people they can trust and if you are professional with them during your first business venture, you have a good chance of working with them again.

Stay tuned for travel blog advice every Monday as our new and improved ThePlanetD editorial calendar begins today! 

We live by our motto “Anyone Can Do it!”

When we first started travelling, we did it the way many Canadians do. We bought a vacation package to the Dominican republic or Mexico, we drove to Florida and laid on the beach and we flew to Europe to check out museums and historical sites. Adventure didn’t even cross our mind. It was an adventure enough just visiting the destination. 

The Trip that Started it All

Thailand Was our First Adventure Travel Experience in 2000

What we love about travel is that we are inspired to try something new. We have more courage when we’re travelling than when we are at home and being in a foreign land where prices are cheaper, it is easier to step out of our comfort zone and take on a new challenge.

In the 1990′s our excitement was heading out to the midnight opening of a new blockbuster movie. After coming home from 5 weeks in Thailand in January 2000, we woke up from the fog and started living our lives to the fullest. The new millenium was the time for Dave and Deb.

Change Your Life

Planning a trip of a lifetime can change a life. We had 5 weeks in the land of smiles and we had never done anything like it before. We had never taken an unorganized trip before. We had always played it safe.

All that Changed in Thailand.

Armed with a hand drawn map from my friend Lana who had been to Thailand and India for 6 months the year earlier, we set off on our first backpacking adventure.

We were afraid.

Bangkok at Night

We landed in Bangkok in the middle of the night and caught a taxi downtown. We did everything wrong. We didn’t take the designated taxis and ended up paying too much. We didn’t have a clear address of where we were going and we didn’t know how to say hello in the local language. We were easy pickings for getting scammed.

We were let off on a deserted street and walked for hours looking for Kho San Road. We finally found our place at 2:00 am and all they had was the worst room in the house. We didn’t know to ask to see the room before paying so we slept on a dirty mattress with no sheets and had a hovel of a bathroom with a shower hose hanging over the scary blue squat toilet.

What the heck did we get ourselves into?

In The Early Days we Weren't ready for this, make this a squat Toilet and it was too much

I awoke early in the morning and forced Dave up. We had to get out of here and I wasn’t taking no for an answer. We booked a bus south the Ralaiy in Krabi province and breathed a sigh of relief as we left Bangkok. It wasn’t an easy start, but things got better.

There’s nothing wrong with changing your plans

An Upgrade Can Make Travels Much Easier

We admitted to ourselves that we weren’t prepared to stay in budget hostels and shoestring guesthouses and we upped our budget. We decided to move up a leve in our accommodation from and we were now midrange travellers. We found a very nice bungalow on Railay where we’d spend the next week. There is no reason in travelling if you are not having fun. We had full time jobs at the time, so we could afford to up our budget a bit. The important thing was to enjoy ourselves. If we stayed in crap for the next 5 weeks, we’d probably never travel again! Now we could enjoy ourselves.

Taking the First Step

Railay had everything that we needed to get our feet wet in adventure travel. We hiked through the jungle to The Lagoon Lookout and climbed high on a cliff to overlook the island. Today this would be a very tame hike for us, but then it had all the elements of adventure that we could dream of. We saw monkeys in the wild for the first time. We were hiking through an actual jungle on a tropical island for the first time! We slipped on rocks, climbed up ropes and we stood atop a cliff overlooking the most spectacular view we had ever seen.

Give Yourself Credit

We were proud of ourselves for venturing out into the jungle by ourselves. We had never done anything like it before. Sure there are other people that have crossed the Amazon by themselves and faced pythons head on. But this was our adventure. This was our quest to push ourselves farther than we had ever gone. And this was the trip that inspired us to keep on going.

Try Something New

It seemed that everyone that came to Railay was here to rock climb. We had never climbed anything in our lives but as we watched people scale these spectacular jagged cliffs, we felt the urge to join in on the action. So we signed up for a 1-day fun climb.

I was terrified.

I felt my legs shake as I climbed higher asking my guide to keep the rope tight so that I wouldn’t fall. I held on to the cliff for dear life and when I needed to rest, I held onto the rope thinking that would save me if I fell.

I remember later in the afternoon we went for a hike through Phra Nang Cave. It was here that we saw bats for the first time hanging from the ceiling. This was awesome. We climbed up bamboo ladders in the dark and I couldn’t believe that we were actually on the other side of the world doing all these crazy things!

It was when we came out from the cave that my heart pounded. We were going to rapell for the first time in our lives! We let our guide do everything for us. He tied us in as we clung to closely to the wall avoiding stepping out too close to the ledge. We listened to his every word as he told us how to lower ourselves to the ground and we prepared ourselves mentally for that first step out into nothing but air.

Just Do It!

We were afraid, we were very afraid. But we did it anyway and after we finished our day, our adrenaline was pumping. We were thrilled to have tried something that made us feel empowered. We felt energized and excited for the next day and we couldn’t stop talking about every single detail at dinner.

You’ll Be Hooked…

After our amazing couple of days in Railay, we wanted the adventure to continue. We signed up for sea kayaking and we hiked through more caves, we went to Khao Sok National Park and rode an elephant for the first time. We trekked through more jungles and took in as much of Thailand’s natural wonders as we could.

Acceptance

We had never travelled for so long before and before leaving Canada we thought that 5 weeks would be too long. We thought we’d be bored, we thought we’d spend too much money and we thought we’d miss home. None of that was true. We spent less in 5 weeks of Thailand than we did in 1 week in Mexico’s Mayan Riviera. We didn’t think of home once in that 5 weeks and we were never bored. As a matter a fact, we wanted to stay longer and see more!

Taking it home…

Canoeing in Algonquin Park in Canada

Not everyone can become full time travellers like us. And not everyone even wants to become full time travellers like us. However, everyone wants a more fulfilling life and after that trip 11 years ago, our lives changed forever.

Instead of spending our weekends drinking coffee at The Second Cup after watching a matinée at the movies. We signed up for indoor rock climbing at Joe Rockheads in Toronto. We became avid rock climbers and have now climbed in many places around the world. We have revisited Railay 2 times since 2000!  We went on outdoor climbing trips with friends near home in Ontario and camped on the shores of Georgian Bay at night.

A year later, we took up scuba diving and became rescue divers. It was another year later that we went to Central America to pursue our Dive Masters.

Scuba Diving in Georgian Bay, Ontario Canada

For 8 Years we travelled for a few months at a time during the winter and came home inspired to try even more new things in Canada. We took white water kayaking lessons on the Ottawa River, we learned how to lead climb outdoors and how to set up our own top rope routes so that we could go out anytime we like and rappell or climb by ourselves. We bought mountain bikes and started going regularly to hardwood hills and were eventually inspired to cycle the continent of Africa. We canoed Algonquin park, took an adventure racing course, learned how to orienteer spent every weekend outdoors either hiking through the Bruce Trail or bouldering on the Niagara Escarpment.

Life Can be Fulfilling No Matter Where You Are.

We learned that we could live a fulfilling life no matter where we were. Adventure became our way of life and whether at home or abroad, we always tried something new. We used to always say, “I’d like to try that someday.” Now we say, “Let’s do that next week!”

On the Mongol Rally, things are not so simple.

Once we crossed into countries like the Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan, filling up the gas tank became a choreographed ballet of tasks for each person.

We were quite awkward at first, but once we got the hang of the art of the fill up, we passed through gas stations with ease.

One of the Many Characters we meet at Gas Stations on the Mongol Rally

The first order of business was to look at how much gas we had in the car. You must know how much fuel your tank holds or this could get you in some trouble and cost you money. Our tank holds 50 litres.

Why do you need to know how much gas your gas tank holds you ask? Well,  you have to prepay and it can’t be in a monetary value. You need to tell the attendant (almost always a well dressed woman wearing either a matching pant suit or high heels) how many litres you need and what type of gas you want.

We aimed low on our first attempt so that we don’t overpay for gas. Although we have a gerry can to put the excess in if it ever does happen. We were below the half way mark but didnt’ want to throw away our precious dollars, so we told her to put in 20 litres.

It’s still not that simple, you need to know what type of gas you need. Unlike Canada, diesel spouts aren’t a different size than gasoline and nothing is clearly marked. The Cryllic Alphabet doesn’t resemble English so we shout the words “Nyet Diesel” (No Diesel) and pray that they understand. Nyet and Da go a long way when communicating in this part of the world.

Once we figured out that gasoline grade of 95 was what we wanted, life became easier. We now knew to ask for 95.

How did we learn all this?  I am sure that you think we are very clever don’t you?

Well, we aren’t at all. It was all understood a few fill ups into our trip. After bumbling our way through, we happened upon a gas station that had a friend who spoke English. The attendant put her friend on the phone and she translated for us. She said, how many liters do you need? I guessed about 30. She then said that you need to figure out what grade you want. We decided 95 was good. Another team told us to never go for 92, it was crap. 95 would get us to Mongolia.  That is until you reach Kazakhstan, then a whole other number is introduced and now we use 93.

After stumbling through the conversation, we wrote down the following on a piece of paper and have never stopped using it..

30 Litres
95 Petrol

These two phrases have made life easier.

We now pull into the station when we are at a half of tank of gas and fill up like a well oiled machine. We all have our tasks.

Sherry normally runs to the outhouse and then comes back to give us the update as to whether we should pee here or not, Rick buys us some snacks, Dave stands by the gas pumps to figure out how much we will owe and to make sure the attendant fills up with the right grade, while I go in to ask for the amount of litres to buy and pay.

The oddest thing is that most gas stations don’t allow you inside. A woman sits in a little dark office behind bars and you hand her your credit card or cash along with your note and hope that she understands. She then spits out the change or reciept and you never really get to see her face.

When you do want to buy snacks, you press your nose up against the dark glass to see what they have. In your broken English you point at the products while they try to decipher what you want.

I’ll have the chips on row two? And she heads to the Coke on the top shelf. You nod your head no and keep pointing until she gets it right. We never seem to get exactly what we want, but it will do.

We now have a full tank, a few treats to eat on the road, some empty bladders to head on for another 500 or so km until we have to find a place to lay our head for the night.

Just another day on the Mongol Rally.

Who better to give advice about having success in Travel Blogging than one of the most successful guys in travel!

Have you dreamed of living the life of travel and writing about it through your blog? Travel Blog Success is an excellent way to help you get started and keep you on track in achieving your goals.

We have been checking out the Travel Blog Success website and we find it to be a very valuable recourse for both beginner and established bloggers.

You have your choice of signing up for two different levels. Basic or Premium.

We don’t join many affiliate programs. As a matter a fact, the only one that we have kept on our blog is Nomadic Matt’s Make Money with Your Travel Blog. We followed his advice step by step when starting out and we believe that this book is a key factor in our early success. We believe that others can benefit from buying his ebook, so we like to share it with our readers.

After going through the lessons on Travel Blog Success, we have decided that this is another product we would like to be involved in.

And Other top bloggers feel the same way!

“Before starting Travel Blog Success I had no idea how to make money with atravel blog. I was actually pretty scared of it. Now I am confident enough to not justapproach advertisers, but to negotiate with them deals that work in my favour. AndI have landed some pretty impressive press trips as well.”
– Caz Makepeace, yTravelBlog.com

“I love having the opportunity to ask some of the top bloggers in the world specific
questions in a private, secure forum.”
– Matt Long, Landlopers.com

I suggest to anyone starting out in Travel Blogging read Travel Blog Success. Most of us that have been around for a while wish that we did things differently. If we would have known then what we did now when we first started Travel Blogging, and if programs like Travel Blog Success were around, we would have been much farther along earlier on. Something as simple as choosing the right domain name and defining your goals can give a travel blog a great leg up.

Travel Blog Success is laid out in an easy to follow manner with different lessons and sections to help a blogger at any level.

With lessons broken up into categories like, Creating Content, Developing Traffic, Making Money and Growing Your Business, you will receive expert advice in every aspect of creating a successful Travel Blog.

Better yet, there is a forum where you can network and ask questions to delve deeper into working on your goals.

One thing that we particularly liked was the expert audio interviews with top bloggers in their niche such as Shannon from A Little Adrift on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Anil of FoXnomad about the technical side of Blogging.

To get started with the program head over to  Travel Blog Success to find our more.

It’s $99 to join the basic membership program but for the extra 30 bucks we recommend the Premium package. With that you get unlimited coaching calls, a secret facebook group and audio interviews.  If you want to sign up for the basic level, you do have the option to upgrade to premium at a later date by paying the difference.

And you don’t have to worry because Dave offers a 60 day money back guarantee!

Travel Blog Success has been around since March 2010 and with it’s 2011 relaunch, 12 new lessons were added and 7 new audio interviews were recorded.  All members have a lifetime access to the recourses at their level and a 60 Day money back guarantee.

After studying Travel Blog success, I was inspired to pull up my socks and try to work harder by taking Dave’s advice. I was reminded of some points that I should be focusing on and I learned some very useful new tips and tricks. I am thrilled to be a member of Travel Blog Success and look forward to taking part in the discussions and forums  and listening to the next coaching call. If you sign up now you will make it in time for the June 22nd coaching call.  Hope to see you there!

So what are you waiting for?

Have you dreamed of living the life of travel and writing about it through your blog? Travel Blog Success is an excellent way to help you get started and keep you on track in achieving your goals.

We have learned a lot during these trips. We’ve experienced a different way of travel, been spoiled and pampered and enjoyed some of the most amazing adventures of our lives. At the same time we made a lot of mistakes and discovered that there are many factors that a travel blogger needs to take into account before accepting just any free trip.

Our Fellow Bloggers in Alaska with Princess Cruises

We have been very lucky in the fact that most of the companies we have worked with have been absolutely incredible and taken great care of us. We were lucky to kick off our series of trips with the Princess Cruises Twitter Trip. It set the standard as to what we knew to expect from each tour afterwards. When you start high, you now what should be included in the rest of the trips.

We take our work very seriously and a Press Trip is very hard work. There is a lot expected from you and you are not there to simply party and enjoy the beach. While other guests are enjoying their vacation, you are back at your room working until all hours of the night getting posts out and sending out photos and regular publicity.

Here are some tips that we have learned since last June and nine press trips later.

Ask the right Questions

When you receive your first email inviting you on a press trip you will be very excited and will end up saying yes to anything. But you want to make sure that you will have access to everything that you need to be able to do your job properly. Are flights covered, are tips and gratuities taken care of for you, is the trip within your niche? If you don’t have any of the above, how can you properly do your job? You aren’t getting paid for this trip, they are offering you a tour in exchange for you writing about your experience. No money should be coming out of your pockets to help them promote their product.

Internet

You are a travel blogger not a travel writer for a newspaper. Your job is to be online. You need to tweet and Facebook about your trip and you can best create interest by sending out twitpics and links during your time on your press tour. If you don’t have access to an internet connection you cannot do your job properly. Every trip should offer free internet service during the time that you are there. Nobody has been able to top Princess Cruises when it came to Internet Access. They gave us unlimited wifi coverage all over the ship and even provided iPhones for people that didn’t already have a smart phone so that we could tweet regularly. They created an exciting campaign that ended up reaching millions of people.

Be Clear on What They Expect From You

Will you tweet and Facebook regularly before, after and during your trip? How many posts will you write and where will they be shown. Will you have to provide them with posts for their own blog above and beyond writing on your own site? Will you have to be available for interviews? Will they want your photographs to be used in promotion and what rights will they have to your photographs and articles. We tend to give everyone quite a bit of coverage. We are a little geeky in the fact that we go above and beyond and even send them links to all of our articles once the trip is over and provide statistics if they require.

Like we said, our trips have been so well tailored that we can provide a lot of coverage for them and in return we have gotten excellent content for our blog. Our trip to China with Intrepid Travel was a turning point in our blog. We gained new followers, we found that we ended up inspiring people to go to China and developed an excellent relationship with Intrepid Travel. By providing them with the details of our travels, they can gain more information on the power of a Bloggers coverage and we can hopefully develop a long and happy working friendship.

Don’t be Taken Advantage of

Some companies may think that just because you got something for free, you should be grateful and give them whatever they want. This is not true. Your time is valuable and while you are on a media trip each and every minute is scheduled. You will not have time to network, answer advertisers or promote your blog. They need to know that this is your job and there should be a mutual respect. It is upsetting when a company actually makes you feel that you should be happy to be there and if anything goes wrong, well that’s just too bad, you got a free trip.

Tourism Fiji did an excellent job in making sure that we were comfortable in Fiji. They phoned us and emailed to see if there was anything more they could do, they asked. They even asked us for feedback upon our return home on how they could improve for the next trip. They understood that power of social media and made sure that they invited different styles of writers to cover different aspects of Fiji.

Excursions

Will they send you on excursions that fit your niche? It isn’t going to do you or your readers any good if you are an adventure blog and you are stuck sitting on a bus for a month. Make sure that they will send you out on trips and excursions, that they are included in the trip and that you don’t have to pay for them and most of all that they are something your readers will want to read about.

The Flying Kiwi did an excellent job of lining up adventures for us in New Zealand. If we didn’t have excursions each and every day, they would not have gotten their money’s worth from us because we wouldn’t have had anything to write about. By sending us out there to skydive, swim with dolphins and bungy jump, we could showcase the best of New Zealand and let our readers know that the Flying Kiwi is an excellent way to move around the country while having the adventure of a lifetime.

You Can Change Your Itinerary

You have a right to change things if you like. We have made the mistake on a trip by assuming that the company will give us an adventure simply because they said they would. We have had to take matters into our own hands once we arrived rather than have it all laid out in email beforehand. It turns out that companies want you to have the best time possible and if there are things on the tour that don’t fit with your travel style, they are willing to change it. But if you don’t speak up, you will come away without a story and that isn’t good for either party.

When we traveled with the Smiling Albino for the Tourism Authority of Thailand, they respected that we were there to showcase the best of their country. We discussed our itinerary before the tour began over skype and they tailored an amazing two weeks that fit in well with our type of Blogging style.  We had never had any company pay such close attention to making sure that both parties were getting the most out of this media trip.

Prepare

Press Trips take up a lot of your time. Nearly every minute is scheduled and you won’t have time to do your usual work. Before we leave on a press tour, we schedule tweets and posts so that we aren’t worrying about getting to an Internet. We even go as far to say what is on our schedule for the day. If we know that we are going to Petra by Night, we will schedule a tweet for that day stating that we are excited for seeing Petra tonight. It is important to alleviate as much work as possible. We don’t put up posts about our trip while we are there, we take our time when we get home to do that. Instead harness the power of social media to create interest in your upcoming posts and take notes while you are there instead. We also use the press releases and brochures that they give us. We pick up every flyer and pamphlet that we can on the destination that we are visiting.

If the Dates Don’t Work, They Can be Changed

Sometimes trips are scheduled for a certain time to harness the power of multiple Bloggers all at once. But sometimes you are on your own and you can turn down the first offer when it comes to dates. If you are too busy or on another trip, let them know that another time would be good for you. They will most likely be flexible. Or they will invite you back for the next one. Once you are on someones radar, they will keep an eye out for you in the future.  We have turned down three trips since returning home because we have a lot of preparations for the Mongol Rally that begins in 53 days. The PR and Tourism boards were gracious and told us that they would have us come and visit in the fall upon the completion of our trip.

You Can Say No

Sometimes a trip just isn’t a very good offer. We have had people want us to buy our own flights for a 4 day travel and we have had people invite us on a trip that doesn’t even work for our readers. We cannot accept this type of work. We have said no and then watched other Bloggers accept the same trip and wonder why they said yes to such poor terms. You need to have integrity. Another trip will come along. As your blog grows people will want you to come to them to help promote their destination because they enjoy the way you write. I know it can be tempting. Travel is expensive and to keep going non stop for  years on end it helps to have some free trips come your way, but you should never give up your vision and end up spending a lot of money for a few free days.

Tell the Truth

Let the company know up front that you will be telling the truth about the experience. Nobody wants to hear a fluffy press piece selling a property just because you got it for free. We let companies know that it states clearly on our “About Page” that we tell the truth about travel. If we don’t share the good and the bad with our readers, they will never take anything we say seriously. You also need to let your readers know that this was a sponsored trip. They will appreciate your honesty and if you tell a truthful account of your experience, they won’t even care that it was.

People believe us when we say that we like a place or destination because if we didn’t we would say so. Just because someone gives you a free trip, don’t feel obligated to write an amazing review. We always think of movie reviewers, it is their job to help you decide if you want to see the movie. Like them, we feel that it is our job to provide you with all the information you need to decide whether you want to see a country for yourself or stay at a hotel that you stayed it.

We won’t change our blogging style just because someone gave us a trip for free. But we can guarantee that a company will receive unprecidented coverage in the online and social media industry.

For Coverage from our Other Press Trips so Far here is a list to links below.

• Jordan Tourism Board – Jordan
• Rancho La Puerta, Mexico
• New Zealand with the Flying Kiwi
• Tourism Authority of Thailand
• Rawai Muay Thai – Thailand
• Intrepid Travel – Grand China
• Tourism Fiji – FijiMe Influencers Tour
• Paradise by Marriott – BlogParadise
• Princess Cruises #Follow Me At Sea in Alaska
• Air France Premium Voyageur
• StumbleUpon.com
• General Motors Chevy Equinox Rocky Mountain Adventure Drive
• Fairmont Hotels, Montreal

There are seemingly amazingly addictive and efficient apps available to aid in the avoidance and completion of most everyday tasks. From help completing your everyday shopping to working out when your car is due its next service and oil change there is seemingly an android app for it.

Travelling is a pastime enjoyed by millions; whether it is a well deserved break or a business trip, most individuals at some point during the year will embark on a journey of some description. Being away from home and those creature comforts has opened up a huge market for app developers. 1000’s of apps which aim to help you in every conceivable area of your trip are available; but which are the best?

Below we have outlined our top 5 travel related Android apps, bon lecture:

1. Google Translate

Never again need Android owners get lost for words when attempting to converse in a different language. The addition of Google Translate to the app market really has revolutionised the way in which people with different languages speak to each other; it really is as simple as that! Google translate allows you to say a sentence into your phone, select the language you wish to translate it to and wait whilst the app speaks it back to you in that chosen tongue. If that wasn’t marvellous enough Google Translate also facilitates conversation. By allowing a person of the language you translated to reply, and yep, you guessed it; the app will convert that response back to your mother tongue. Amazing.

2. Emergency Panic button

This app is a must for anyone visiting potentially dangerous areas or simply to install on your loved one’s Android. Basically the app allows you to pre-set a list of important numbers so that in a state of emergency you can alert everyone with the touch of a button. Not finished there, the app will also SMS/email your current GPS location to your contacts letting them know precisely where you are. Contacts who suspect you are in trouble are also able to text a specific number which will respond with your current location.

3. Skype

Keeping in close contact is a must when you are away from home and Skype mobile in my opinion allows you to do this better than any other Android app. Firstly, as long as you have a wifi connection you will negate all of the super expensive roaming charges. Secondly you are able to use video, which in itself makes those long distant calls seem that little bit shorter.

4. Google Goggles

This app is truly mind boggling in terms of its applications; Google Goggle basically allows you to take a picture of a plethora of things and the app will tell you what you are looking at. From a travel perspective this app will allow you to take pictures of landmarks and it will tell you exactly what you are looking at; great for history, but also excellent for finding your way about. You can also use the app to read menus, signage or anything else you care to take a picture of. The applications of this application are vast, try it out and be amazed.

5. Bump

Travelling around? Meeting lots of people and forgetting to get contact details? Or losing them somewhere between here and there? It is a familiar tale, told across the travel community and one which the app ‘Bump’ can help with. If two people have the app installed all they need to do to share any sort of info they want is bump phones together. It is that simple. Bump is also cross platform, so even if your friend is using an iPhone you can still share details.

These tips and tricks have been brought to you in association with myphonedeals.co.uk, who are focused on giving you the best android phone 2011. If you live in the UK and need help deciding on the best HTC android phones look no further than My Phone Deals.