One of the funny things about social media is that it can be anything but social. Far too often I miss dinner, drinks and general high jinks because I’m getting Flickr-happy uploading 1000 photos from my latest trip, or putting the finishing touches to that ‘perfect’ blog post.

Which is why I have to remind myself not just to create and spread my own content, but actually engage with others in social media (yes, I know, radical, but it hurts less after the first time). One bright idea is to create your own travel forums so people following your blog, photos and videos also have somewhere to ask detailed questions, offer tips and generally have proper old arguments and debates that the comments on blogs just aren’t equipped to handle.

In fact, our pioneering STA Explorers Stevo and Ady did indeed set up their own boards last week, so head over to chat about their upcoming round the world travel plans. They used myfanforum.org, an easy-to-use free site (with the few inevitable ads).

My personal top talk tool is Tangler, a beautifully designed site which creates your own customised ‘live discussion forum’. I’ve created one for STA travelbuzz so head on over if you want to see how it works and chat with Si, Sam, myself and other travel-happy web-heads. But make sure to also create your own so that you can be king or queen of your own sexy social space.

There’s one word of warning to all this: don’t forget to engage in the existing, big travel forums already out there (check out our forum roll for places we love). I wrote this post on the value of using travel forums a while back. Your own forum will be a great extension of your own content, but the established boards will open up your opinions and questions to a ready-made potential audience of thousands, and allow you to spread the travel love on a much bigger scale.

So why the hell not do both? Well. Exactly.

by Molly on 16 July 2008
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