This past weekend I attended the first annual Family Travel Conference at the Omni Berkshire Place Hotel in New York City. The event was organized by Kim Orlando of TravelingMom.com, Kyle McCarthy of FamilyTravelForum.com,  Eileen Ogintz of TakingtheKids.com, and Joanne Vero of Travel Media Showcase.  The event was extra special for me, because I was able to bring my daughter Amy, who recently graduated from college and has embarked on her own freelance writing career. She and I have traveled on many mother-daughter press trips over the years. But this was the first writing conference that we attended together as professional journalists.

We both learned lots at the awesome workshops, which covered topics like “Writing for the Web,” “Monetizing Your Content,” and “Creating Video for your Site.” We got to network with an amazing group of writers and share tips and strategies. Our favorite part of the weekend was the video workshop, where we were sent to various parts of the Omni Berkshire Place Hotel (Amy and I were assigned to the Kidz Korner kids program) and told to produce a 1-2 minute video. I’m still editing it, but hopefully will have it ready to premiere here soon!

BETTER WEB WRITING

Though the conference focused on travel writing, many of the tips were relevant for any topic you might write about.  For example, in the Better Travel Writing Workshop, we learned these general tips on Writing for the Web:

●Use clear headlines. Make sure your title describes what your piece will be about. Don’t get so caught up in optimizing SEO that you lose sight of what will be appealing to your readers.

●Use photos to break up the copy.

●Have subheads every 2 or 3 paragraphs.

●Use bullet points to illustrate important information.

●Keep posts short. Instead of trying to cover too much in one piece, do a series of posts. For example, I’ll be doing a separate post on Creating Video for your Site, using tips we learned at the conference.

●Link, link, link. Refer to other articles (both on and off your site) that are related to the topic. But no more than 20 links per page.

POST CONFERENCE ASSIGNMENT: CONQUER NY CITY

We ended the conference with a family-style lunch at Virgil’s Real Barbecue restaurant in Times Square. (The pulled pork was to die for!) Then we were all given a New York Pass, which allows free access to over 70 NY attractions. Amy and I used ours to visit Madame Tussauds wax museum. Eli Manning was there to welcome us in the lobby. We hope that was a good omen!

Amy wishes Eli good luck in the big game.