Growing a Huge Audience, Scaling Content Production and Brand Partnerships
Paul is the founder of A Luxury Travel Blog, the world’s first luxury travel blog and one of the most popular travel blogs in the world.
He has worked in the travel industry for 30 years, from delivering local tourism brochures to building websites for hotels, and lots in between.
He’s now a regular speaker at travel industry events and a significant influence on the travel world, harnessing his audience of over a million people on social media and hundreds of thousands of monthly website visitors.
Summary
Paul has been immersed in the travel industry since he left education, working at his parent’s holiday let business and then becoming immersed in the local tourism industry in the Lake District.
He went on to explore some very interesting avenues with his own websites, using the digital knowledge he picked up through university to create hundreds of websites. At one point he was the biggest provider of customers for Premier Inn in the UK through the network of sites he created.
He’s gone from having a team to working solo and using freelancers, worked in affiliate marketing as well as doing partnerships with huge brands, and continues to explore how to build an audience and garner the power that it has.
This conversation covers all of that and more, and is a really unique insight into both running an editorial publication and developing a business in the travel sector.
Enjoy!
0:03:00
What was your first experience in travel
0:07:40
Dabbling in web design
0:13:00
Building a team
0:14:25
Starting affiliate websites and becoming the biggest seller of rooms for Premier Inn
0:19:25
Returning to solopreneurship and the challenges of having a team
0:26:55
Starting A Luxury Travel Blog
0:33:40
What experiences impacted how you set it up?
0:35:25
SEO and growing website traffic
0:38:00
Content creation and distribution and tips for scaling the process
0:47:45
Marketing approaches that have led to the website’s growth
0:52:00
Growing the email list
0:57:10
Brand partnerships and how to make them work
1:00:20
Influencer marketing and advice for finding good people to work with
1:05:00
Personal qualities that have led to success
1:08:00
Personal brand and how to separate them from a scalable business
1:09:30
Future plans for the business
1:13:00
Running and charity exploits
1:18:20
Advice to someone starting their own travel business
“If it’s a blogger who’s been around for 10 years they’re likely to be around in another ten. You’re not just thinking about your content for the here and now, this could be producing value for you for years to come. So you want to work with a blogger who’s still going to be around in a few years time.”
Paul Johnson
Founder, A Luxury Travel Blog
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