After Anne Taylor Hartzell had her first child in 2004, she was intent on finding a way to continue traveling as a family. An established media and public relations specialist, Taylor Hartzell was also a travel expert who had worked on the launch team of the airfare prediction site Farecast.com (now Bing Travel) and continued on with the company in communications.
She started a blog for the site. “It was the days when blogging had just begun, and I had just had my first child, and we were really interested in this idea around how families can continue to travel,” Taylor Hartzell told Travel Weekly PLUS. “When I was at Farecast, I was personally passionate about getting to know a lot of the travel suppliers and understanding the ups and downs of airfare. I wanted to be a resource for families to know when to buy airfare and also how and where to travel with your kids.”
Taylor Hartzell says the focus of her current blog, HipTravelMama.com, is to connect families to extraordinary 
travel experiences, hip hotels and “inspiration with a stylish twist.”
“The concept is that just because you're a mom doesn't mean you can't enjoy all the wonderful things that you had before,” she says. “And being a hip mom is fun, and it helps people. The idea is that a well-traveled family never goes out of style. It’s timeless.”
The interview that follows is part of a Travel Weekly PLUS Special Report on how travel brands can work with bloggers, based on a dialogue between Taylor Hartzell and Editor in Chief Diane Merlino.
Merlino: How can a travel company identify the right blogger for a specific project?
Taylor Hartzell: There are hundreds of bloggers out there, and the biggest challenge that a marketing department or a PR professional has is to identify those bloggers that reach the audience they are trying to target.
A lot of people will start by saying, “I want the blogger that has the biggest number of page views or the highest number of followers.” But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're influential. It means they have a voice, certainly, but whether they can convert their large audience to an actual booking with one or two tweets is the part where the process breaks down.
Merlino: How do you determine if a blogger is true influencer who can convert tweets to bookings?
Taylor Hartzell: I would look at a few things. First, do they have an established and active social media presence? Who are they engaging with? What is their level of engagement with their community? Are they sharing what they had for lunch, or are they providing an insightful resource for their readers? Are they sharing industry news? Are they helping to connect the dots between what's happening in the industry and what real travelers are experiencing?
Also, what is the tone of voice they have with their tweets and posts? Do they present themselves professionally? Do they have a proven track record of inspiring and engaging conversation?
These are all indicators of a blogger's influence and the company they keep, which are good indicators of their ability to produce actionable results on behalf of brands.
Merlino: What’s your advice for a company that’s going to partner with a blogger for the first time?
Taylor Hartzell: Begin with the end in mind. You need to understand what you want the outcome to be. Do you want coverage? Do you want to increase bookings? Do you want to be in a thought-leadership role? Whatever your goal is, you've got to start with what your expectations are for the end of the campaign. From there you need to find those influencers who can reach your target audience.
Merlino: How is working with a blogger on a project different from working with more traditional media outlets?
Taylor Hartzell: Bloggers share the same passion for travel that the brand does, and they have the same goal, which is to share that experience with their readers. So approach a blogger in a collaborative way. You have to be clear about what you want them to do and take action on. Then ask them what they think.
We want to have these authentic conversations, but you can’t do that by constantly trying to force information on people. Saying, “You get how great our brand is; just write about it,” is not how you start a collaborative, organic discussion. Tell the blogger what your offer is and why you think it’s great. Then ask them what they think, because they're an expert; they talk to people all the time. Then you’ll probably get a really great response.
Merlino: Can blogs do something for a brand that traditional media outlets can’t?
Taylor Hartzell: Blogs are really good for reaching a vertical audience for a specific purpose. A traditional media outlet has a broader perspective. While there might be vertical publications out there about backpacking, for example, there might not be a publication that covers backpackers who love to go to Peru in the summertime. If your goal is to reach backpackers going to Peru in the summer, then a blog makes a lot of sense.
Merlino: Tell us about the social media takeover you did with Expedia and Disney Cars.
Taylor Hartzell: I'm a Disney fan. I have two young children, and I've done some stuff with Disney on my own as a blogger. Expedia approached me last summer to do a social media takeover, to be their brand ambassador and represent Expedia for the Disney Cars Land launch. They gave me the keys to the castle — which in this case was 
their login access for Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest — and they said, “We want you to go down there and share the experience live with our community, so they can see what it's like to be behind the scenes at Cars Land."
The rules were to not overwhelm the community. It required a lot of trust on their part to have me go down there and represent them professionally, with their Disney partnership, and also with their community, understanding the dos and don’ts of tweeting and sharing: how much, how little, what to say. Nothing was scripted; it was very organic.
I went down there and shared from the red carpet. I shared what it felt like to be at the launch party. I took pictures of everything I could. We also filmed. I have a background with broadcast media, so we filmed a little video for Expedia’s YouTube channel of the Disney crew sharing tips for experiencing the new Cars Land. I was given a hashtag to use that was branded with Expedia and Disney, and Cars Land as well.
Merlino: Can you quantify the results?
Taylor Hartzell: I can't share specific numbers, because that's up to Expedia. But we had over 10,000 likes on one specific photo that we shared on the Facebook page, and lots and lots of comments. Those are all very tangible metrics of engagement. We basically did a Facebook takeover. There was a cover page, and also a landing page that linked back to the homepage of Expedia.com, so all the referring traffic went to that homepage.
Merlino: I understand you also did a program recently with Starwood.
Taylor Hartzell: I engaged with Starwood last year, with their North America marketing and destination group. Our main goal was to increase awareness around the amazing family programs that Starwood has at all its brands —Westin, Sheraton, W, St. Regis, and the Parker Meridian.
They had a specific family package that included adjoining rooms, daily resort credits, and other benefits. My work with them was to come up with some creative ways to connect with other family travel bloggers to get the word out about the package, and to come up with other social things that might increase buzz and awareness around the offer and Starwood family programs in general.
One of the things I created for them was a Twitter chat with the hashtag #loveyourfamily. It was a one-time chat where we invited the family travel blogger community to participate. We also did a Twitter chat that wasn't 
specifically Starwood-focused, around family travel amenities.
We asked questions like: “What is your favorite amenity at a hotel when you check in?” “If you could pick one perk from any package, what would that be?” The goal was to build community around family travel, engaging around a conversation about what makes a great family hotel experience. And that was wildly successful.
Merlino: Have you done any other collaborative programs with other bloggers for travel companies?
Taylor Hartzell: The Best Family Travel Experts group did a holiday promotion for Kimpton Hotels in December 2011. We are all located in different parts of the country, so we each picked a local Kimpton hotel and we did a simultaneous overnight stay with our families during the holiday season. We shared pictures of our families and the real-time experiences we were having on Twitter, which was very fun.
Kimpton got a bunch of engagement from that. The idea was that even if we are all in the same community of family travelers, every family has its own style of travel. So this was a chance to see different families experiencing a Kimpton hotel in a different region at the same time, and that really showed the breadth of their experiences across the country.
Merlino: These all sound like a lot of fun, and each program is so different.
Taylor Hartzell: I think that's the nice part about it. Every brand has a different goal in mind when they think, “I really have to reach out to the blogger community.” I talk about intentional partnerships. The whole idea is around engaging in authentic conversations, and how you do that just depends on what your goals are, what you have to say and the story that you have to share.
Merlino: Is there anything you want travel brands to understand about working with bloggers?
Taylor Hartzell: Bloggers and brands have a lot of things in common. We're all very passionate about the travel industry. We are passionate about sharing great experiences with others and getting people out to travel more and explore the world.
Think about blogger relationships as ongoing partnerships with a select few folks that really reach your target audience. Use them as business partners. Brands that identify those influencers and spend less time focusing on page views and click-throughs and more time thinking about influence and creativity and authentic conversations are going to be the brands that rise to the top in the ever-changing world of social media.