Keeping The Travel List In Perspective

As you may have read yesterday, I am finally at the point in the year when I am giving considerable thought to the places that my wife and I would enjoy visiting this summer. Of course, this is in addition to any business travel as well as the lodge related trips to Erie, Scranton, Philadelphia, and, probably, Elizabethtown that I will be making during the sweltering season. Interestingly, while I was thinking about summer travel and putting my list together I came across an email (thanks Vocus) about the top ten destinations as reported by the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Talk about keeping things in perspective!

For those of you unfamiliar with Make-A-Wish, here is the summary of the nonprofit from their website:

Make-A-Wish^® grants the wish of a child diagnosed with a life-threatening medical condition in the United States and its territories, on average, every 38 minutes. We believe that a wish experience can be a game-changer. This one belief guides us. It inspires us to grant wishes that change the lives of the kids we serve.

Not all wishes require travel, many of them do and the foundation is determined to make sure that distance is not a hindrance to the fulfillment of those dreams forming in a child’s mind. 

While my wife and I visit places to get away and relax a bit, for these kids, these are dream destinations, not just a simple means of getting away. However, these trips do offer some sense of escape from reality which seems to be why the destinations tend to focus on places where wish kids and their families can experience the excitement something different whether it is a big city, theme park, foreign country, or beach destination. Based on data from wish trips that occurred in 2013, the destinations most visited by wish kids and their families were:

1. Orlando
2. Hawaii
3. Los Angeles & Orange County
4. The Caribbean
5. New York City
6. San Diego
7. France
8. Italy
9. Australia
10. Alaska

It is an interesting and diverse list and something to think about when putting your own summer itinerary together. We constantly focus on the places where we are going and forget the reasons why we go. It is to spend time together and experience life together beyond the usual routine of life. For some of us all it takes is a day trip while others need a little more and need to go a little further to put their daily lives behind them. We all need a break now and then, some people just need more of a break than others.

A Little Vocus Variety

I have been on Vocus for about a week now and I have received some interesting emails. To give you some idea of the variety that I am talking about, here are a few of the subject lines that have popped up in my email:  

• Interview Husband and Wife Team / Balancing Love, Marriage, and (Fictional) Bondage
• Newest DJH Hostel in Germany is also Ultra-Modern Sports and Conference Center for Top-notch Group Programs at Value Prices
• Art Basel week editorial request

See, I wasn’t lying, that is a very diverse sample. While the above emails didn’t pique my interest I still give the people sending them credit for reaching out to the blogging community to try and get coverage. I wish them the best and I am intrigued as to what they will send me next.

On the other side of things, there were two emails that registered a bit of interest. On titled “Adventure story teaches families about safe pet travel practices” was a bit off for what I usually write about but the publicists in this instance was sending out advanced copies and I am willing to give it a shot. What the heck, I at least might get some random jeopardy knowledge out of it.

The other email that actually had me eager to try the product came with the subject line “Photographers Track Valuable Cameras with GPS Locator Locca”. The tiny GPS tracking devise looked like something that I might use and that I am pretty sure would be of interest to some of you so I immediately sent an email to see if I could try it out. Well… that didn’t work as they aren’t sending them out at the moment which is a shame because I was excited to test it out. Oh well, I guess I won’t be writing about this product beyond this paragraph (that is still being debated).



Because it was the most interesting product pitched
I am posting a picture.

As you can see, so far there have been a few emails that really got me interested and a lot that have kept me entertained many of which have not been included because I just wanted to highlight a few. The one thing that these people have in common is there willingness to get the story out and pitch. And while, as of tonight, I doubt I will write about any of the current emails I am certain that at least a few are in the works and will be hitting my email shortly which will require a dedicated post.

Until then, they will keep pitching, and I will keep working on both sides of the mirror.

Hello Vocus!

Photo taken in Jim Thorpe, PA by my wife during our trip in June.

Today I made a decision that could change the future of this blog. You could say it was a “through the looking glass” kind of day when I decided to get this blog listed on Vocus. The hope is that I might be able to introduce a whole different world of opportunities because of it. When writing and posting every day it all comes down to having something to write about. This is one way to have some stories come to me which is why I might be able to expand upon the subject matter and maybe introduce some new topics.

I have worked with this service for a number of years now and the lists that it provides are an excellent way to find new reporters and bloggers. However, this is my first foray being on the other side of the screen. The years that I have used the site have been while working in public relations (which I still do) and now I am the one, potentially, being pitched. Actually, I am kind of on both sides of the equation.

For those of you unfamiliar with Vocus here is the basic summary from the company’s about page:

Vocus (NASDAQ: VOCS) provides leading cloud-based marketing and PR software plus consulting services enabling companies to acquire and retain customers. The company offers an all-in-one suite of applications and consulting services to help clients attract and engage prospects, capture and keep customers, and measure and improve marketing effectiveness. More than 17,000 annual subscription customers across a wide variety of industries use Vocus software. The company is headquartered in Beltsville, MD with offices in North America, Europe and Asia. 

Furthermore, the reason public relations professional use the service is because it allows them to “Connect with journalists and bloggers, send press releases, monitor news, reach influencers, and measure and share your results. Vocus PR Suite is designed to help marketing and PR pros increase their influence and tell their story online, across social networks and through the media.” While most PR/media interactions are relationship based (or should be) there is no getting around the fact that sometimes cold pitching has to be done. That is the nature of the business.

Moving forward this will certainly be a balancing act between my professional life and my personal writing life. I will be sending pitches and, hopefully, fielding them as well. Fortunately, the topics that I have covered thus far in the blog and topics I hope to introduce are completely different from the ones that I represent when on the other side of the mirror.

However, I think the most interesting, important, and beneficial thing that could, in theory, come from this development is the fact that being able to see a story from both sides can only help me both in my writing and with my professional career. Knowing how people on both sides of the pitch feel about the process is something that too few people understand and I am looking forward to experiencing that interplay. I am hoping for an interesting ride.