Travel blogging’s bloody addictive. Once you start recording your experiences, you realise how much it encourages you to observe things in greater detail, clarify them in your mind, contemplate what you’ve gained from them, and of course remember them later.

But it can be easy to forget that the true beauty of a blog is that it’s social. It’s out there, on the vast world wide web. No, my little agoraphobics, this is not a bad thing. This is an excellent thing. A blog is, by definition, public, and as a traveller you are presumably someone who wants to connect and share with people from all over the globe. Which means that you need make it easy for people to find your content and share their own discoveries in return.

First, make sure you tag, or ‘label,’ all your posts, videos and photos - whether they’re on your blog or on another site such as Flickr or YouTube - with relevent keywords that a search can find. Destinations make obvious tags, but be more specific too - a typical post on your flight to the States might be tagged New York, cheap flights, travel insurance, North America, lost luggage, JFK airport, travelling with kids.

And then make sure you register your blog on one of the blog search engines out there. Technorati is one of the biggest and best - sign up for free here. It bestows increasing ‘authority’ on your blog as other sites link to you, so make sure you develop good blogosphere relationships by reading and linking to other sites in turn. Other good blog search engines to sign up to include Bloglines, IceRocket and Blogscope. To be honest, you can knock yourself out with this game, so just pick a couple to boost your visibility.

So, in a nutshell, tag your content well and put yourself out there. Spread the love, people, spread it (in a hygienic kind of way).

The Gap Year is social media doing reality TV – with all the benefits that brings. Hosted on social networking site Bebo, The Gap Year sees a group of young travellers on their journey round the world, producing a constant stream of blog posts, video logs, and photos to keep us amused.

We first introduced you to The Gap Year last Wednesday, before the plucky (yes, I used plucky) explorers set off on their adventures. As we rejoin them after the long weekend, we see that Dave (representing Britain in this expedition – whoo! Go Dave!) has recently arrived in Canada and began, presumably, as he means to go on by hitting the bars and chatting up hot Mexican girls.

Follow Dave’s progress on his Bebo page here.

We’ve nominated Meg and Mojo to be our latest STA Explorers because, despite not setting off on their Epic Interrail Romp around Europe until July, their blog is already witty, quirky and clued-up on all the potential pleasures and pitfalls of travelling on a budget with your best mate. As they put it themselves:

Armed only with an Interrail pass, a backpack, a large roll-along suitcase and a detailed itinerary, these arresting youths will seek out culture, history and entertainment, and attempt to experience it all on a minute budget.

We reckon that, as they travel from London to Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Florence, Rome, Vienna, Budapest, Prague and Amsterdam (check out Mojo’s amazing home-drawn route map), their triumphs, trials and tips will be an excellent resource for anyone looking to explore the continent without breaking the bank.

They’ll be posting content across social media (Flickr, YouTube, Twitter etc) once the trip starts in July, but we’d like to introduce them now as their blog already tells the funny, fesity tale of Meg and Mojo preparing for their journey - their booking and budgeting, Meg’s inspiration for blogging, and their thoughts about protecting friendships on the road.

They’re eager for STA travelbuzz readers to get involved, commenting and contributing as they go. On which note, Mojo latest post describes a change of plans as the girls have read bad reviews about their vermin-ridden Amsterdam hostel - so let them know if you can recommend anywhere cheap but clean!

As my life is already a whirl of champagne-soaked, chauffer-driven, bling-coated ghetto fabulousness, I don’t really give a shit about STA’s new competition, but I thought I’d bring it to the attention of the rest of you Ordniary Folk.

Yes, Tom at STA kindly sent me an email to tip me (and consequently all STA travelbuzz readers) off about their comp. Basically you and 3 friends can win backstage passes to O2’s Wireless festival on 3rd July, with all kinds of VIP extras like your own limo, luxury hotel, champagne brunch, blah blah blah. Oh yeah and there’ll be a bit of music going on from some ‘famous’ people like Mark Ronson, Rosin Murphy, Hot Chip and some unlikely character called ‘Jay-Z’.

So, if that kind of thing gets you excited, head over here and fill in your details, at which point you apparently also get 4 free 02 Pay & Go SIM cards. Whatever those are. My butler makes all my calls.

I’ve always found Paris a bit of an anticlimax. The famous landmarks (that tower, that church, that arch) seem overfamiliar from tourist shots, and I don’t want to waste hours getting lost while I ‘explore’. So this is a bit of self-indulgent post, as I’ve rooted out some bloggers who can help me find some lesser-known Parisian gems when I visit next month.

In Peter’s Paris, a retired Swede explores unique places in the capital; this week’s photos of Villa Seurat, the quirky street named after it’s famous artisitic resident, and Parc Montsouris are making me stare out of my window at the London rain in green-eyed grouchiness.

Jay Corless of Ptelevision.org has posted a map and description of his favourite walk which encompasses ‘the oldest and the shadiest streets of Paris. In some places you may cringe, in other places you may laugh while other stops will have you in awe of the hidden secrets of Paris.’ A real find.

And Christine Dijon is blogging about ‘Paris’ best-kept secret’: Ephrem, the retreat house, of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Montmartre, which offers stunning and peacful accommodation to the holy-minded for 13 euros a night. I’m not a Catholic, but it’s almost enough to make me wish I was.

We’re highlighting this travel question from Lonely Planet Forums because it struck a real chord with us. Clydefrog and his wife are looking for ideas of where to volunteer ‘in a small community for up to 4 weeks’ in Peru this summer., and although they’ve ’spent a lot of time looking online’ they haven’t found anything quite right, as they are hoping for ’something smaller and more rural’ than the obvious cities. The problem is that they want some first-hand advice from someone responding to their specific needs:

Please, though, no pointers to website with big lists of volunteer sites. I’ve been through a few of those, and while they are useful resources, there are just too many options with little information and no filtering. I’ve spent weeks at this aleady, and at this point I’m only interested in personal recommendations.

It’s a pretty strong case for the value of person-to-person online word of mouth for travellers, which is what we’re always harping on about and trying to increase. So go give your advice over on the forum - for our part we’ve nobbled Ian from STA Reading to give us his opinion - read more here (more…)

Once upon a time, every trip started with a visit to your local, tanned travel agent, where you’d discuss five-star Caribbean retreats for hours before settling for a bus tour to the Isle of Wight. Now that feels as old as Harrison Ford in the new Indy flick, as most of us book our hols online with a few simple clicks.

So are you all for quick, easy, independent virtual booking or do you still love chatting with Sandra about the Seychelles? Do you in fact combine both systems, visiting a real-life travel agent before making your final decisions online?

Last week, ReadWriteWeb reported on a comScore study that found ‘booking travel over the Internet has become something of a nightmare for people. It’s not that using any of the booking engines is difficult, it’s just that there is so much information out there that planning a vacation is overwhelming’. Luke Cady would definitely agree. He has just booked return tickets from Cleveland to Thailand, and explains that he used STA Travel because ‘they have human beings on telephones and can easily change ticket dates, unlike online tickets where you have computers, who have neither souls nor emotions. I prefer people’.

In Girls Gotta Travel (a truly excellent travel and social media blog), the author admits that ‘I thought travel agents were supposed to be dead by now. Relics of a time before the internet’ but thinks some companies (including STA) have ‘managed to ride the online wave’ successfully - read here to find out why.

So do you prefer offline or online travel planning? Hit us with your linky shit.