If you’re sick of a blogosphere filled with boring, bland and unsubstantial advice, you’ve come to the right place.
At Slaying Social, we’re all about no BS guides that bring you closer towards your goals, with a witty and fun delivery that keeps you entertained (or at the very least, cringing at how hard we’ve tried).
That’s our style. But you might be wondering: what kinda stuff will you find here?
Pull up a chair and grab a cup of coffee or a mug of wine, and let’s talk.
What’s Slaying Social All About?
Travel blogging, and travel content creating, can often feel incredibly difficult. And confusing. Like you’re trying to climb up a smooth marble wall using nothing but floss and Scotch tape and nobody’s told you why or what exactly is at the top of the wall. Look, metaphors aren’t our strong suit here.
Travel blogging and content creation is a new industry, which means there are few rules or guidelines, or even how-to guides or maybe like a textbook or just information that feels trustworthy and not like it might be part of a pyramid scheme meant to sell you magical content-creation pills and a useless workbook with a glittery pen, or something.
As full-time travel bloggers, we (Lia & Christina, your fearless awkward leaders) often find ourselves up at 2am, feverishly panicking over questions like, “am I impacting the world in a positive way?” and “what is my role in overtourism, and how do I balance that with my passion for travel?” and “am I going to be able to pay my bills next month without compromising my values?”
Yeah, we’re real fun at parties.
But we don’t think we’re the only one who asks these kinds of questions.
In just the past decade, travel bloggers & content creators have witnessed the birth of travel blogging and digital content creation. We watched in awe as our online journals, meant to reassure our parents that we were, in fact, still alive during our gap year, became our full time jobs.
Together, we forged a path through a confusing, nebulous internet jungle, making our way without rules or guidance. It was exciting and breathtaking work, and we loved it!
… And then we had some questions.
Like, “do we have a responsibility to adhere to the journalistic code of ethics?” and “what’s the difference between blogging and content creation, anyway?” and “how do I use my platform for good?” and “is my responsibility to my sponsors, my readers, or my own personal ethics?”
So. Many. Questions.
The thing about doing a job that nobody’s ever done before is that there’s no guide to doing it meaningfully. There are lots of “how to” guides – we’ve written several ourselves. But they felt empty and incomplete.
Once we’d figured out the “how,” we found ourselves wondering about the “why.” And the “wherefore.” And a little bit of the “who?” and maybe some of the “what,” too.
What I’m trying to say is, we want answers to some of the deep, probing questions in this weird, crazy, brand new industry. So we thought, well, f**k it, let’s dive in!
We started Slaying Social as a way to empower small business owners and content creators to grow their businesses through social media.
But several months in, we felt like we wanted to tackle some deeper issues. And with reassurance (and overwhelming request) from our audience, we decided to focus on our industry specifically: travel.
And so, we changed – for the better, we hope? Here’s what the new Slaying Social is all about.
Slaying Social … Influence
First and foremost, we want to empower anyone in the travel space who is in a position of influence. We’re not just talking about “influencers,” although, yes – obviously that applies.
We’re talking about ANYONE with the power to reach lots of people. Anyone with a platform. Bloggers, freelance writers, TV hosts, YouTubers, Podcasters. Anyone with a voice and a megaphone who is saying things about travel and influencing people’s decision making.
If you’ve ever made someone want to buy something or want to go somewhere, you have influence. And that’s an incredibly powerful thing.
We want you to recognize that influence, own it, and use it for positive change. We want you to use your influence to be a driving force of GOOD. And we want to help you explore what that means to you, and how to do it.
We want to help you grow your influence. So we’ll be publishing guides that we think will be useful to travel content creators, covering topics like:
- Monetization for travel bloggers & content creators
- Email marketing, even if you don’t have a “product” to sell
- Cultivating an engaged audience: how, and why it’s important
- In-person networking: how to do it effectively, and why you should
We want to discuss the important stuff, and we’ll do it in our typical no-nonsense, fluff-free way. That said: we’re probably not going to be writing introductory guides, so if you’re looking for things like “how to start a travel blog …” let’s just say that we’re happy to refer you elsewhere 🙂
Slaying Social … Responsibility
As travelers and as influencers within the travel industry, social responsibility isn’t something we feel should ever be ignored. Travel is a political act, and social responsibility should factor into every trip we take and every business we support.
Social responsibility can come in a number of forms, and we’re concerned about all of them. Here are just a few of the things that keep us up at night:
- Environmental impacts of tourism
- “Green” and eco-friendly travel
- Ethical treatment of animals, especially in animal-related tourist attractions
- Social and civil justice issues in the places we patronize & support
- Diversity and representation within the travel industry
- The impact of tourism dollars on local economies
Are you concerned about these things, too? Do you wonder whether you’re doing enough? Do you feel like you could be doing more, but aren’t quite sure … how?
Yeah, us too. We want to tackle these issues head-on, because we believe that having a platform means you have a responsibility (eyyyy!) to consider these things.
Slaying Social … Media
We started Slaying Social as a no BS guide to using Social Media to grow your blog or business, and we won’t be neglecting our duties as your go-to gals for social media panic attacks.
We’ll continue to track the things that travel content creators need to know to use Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter to grow their businesses and engage with their audience.
And we’ll continue to give practical, actionable tips and advice for using Social Media to grow your reach, AND to engage with your audience in meaningful ways.
Slaying Social … Impact
At the end of the day, we’re business owners, whether or not we’re currently making money off of our businesses.
And a good business provides value to its customers.
Here’s the thing about travel content creation though: you have multiple customers. There’s your readers and your audience, and there’s your sponsors.
How do you create high value content that positively impacts both of these audiences?
We want to dive into how to create content that’s truly impactful. Content that matters. Content that bites. Content that makes you laugh and cry and book a plane ticket. Content that makes your sponsors say “wow, this is really amazing.”
We got into this industry because we wanted to create things, or tell stories, or because we’re passionate about travel and the way it connects us all and makes us grow and explore and change and examine our comfort level and try new things and meet new people.
And we didn’t sign up to compromise our values just so we can travel more.
Sure, we all need to pay our bills. But we want to do it in a way that feels truly meaningful. That feels good. That feels satisfying.
That’s what impact means to us. How do we create impactful travel content? Let’s talk about that sh*t.