A USA Today
article discusses travel blogs that are being used by the
tourism offices in Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Pennsylvania. One of
the blogs is
Play in the City, a Milwaukee travel blog by Erin
Leffelman, a 23-year-old UW-Milwaukee graduate with a degree in
Journalism (pictured on right). USA Today describes the support Erin
Leffelman receives from Milwaukee tourism office for doing the blog.
But while Leffelman's playinthecity.blogs.com doesn't mention it,
the 23-year-old waitress and aspiring journalist is getting a little
help from Milwaukee's tourism office: a year's worth of high-speed
Internet access, $1,700 in computer and camera equipment and free
access to many of the outdoor diversions she'll be describing in her
twice-weekly musings.
The article also mentions two other states that are promoting
local tourism with blogs: Pennsylvania and Minneapolis.
Last month, Pennsylvania's tourism site,
visitpa.com, launched six
blogs written by "real people" taking road trips across the state.
Accompanied by digital photos and videos, the diaries cover such
diverse pursuits as antique shopping, mountain biking and attending
a NASCAR event. The authors - a family of four, a history buff, and a
Harley-Davidson rider among them - receive $1,000 for each of three
journeys they'll write about this summer.
Minneapolis' visitor and convention bureau, meanwhile, is soliciting
applications for three culturally diverse "online tour guides" - a
heterosexual couple, a family with children, and a gay male couple or
group of gay male friends - who will post journal entries on the
bureau's Web sites at least once a week for six months. The bloggers'
payback: a "package of fun" that includes hotel rooms, event
tickets and gift certificates.
While the blogs are technically "sponsored" as long as the bloggers
appear to be honest and there is some level of disclosure it is
probably a smart strategy. Like
Hyku says there should probably be a mention of the sponsorship somewhere
on the blog. It is unlikely that mentioning the sponsorship would turn
people away from Leffelman's blog. And most bloggers and aspiring journalists
Leffelman's age are probably going to say it sounds like she got a
pretty good deal. It is a sponsorship but it is a different kind
of sponsorship then if she were being directly paid by a particular
tourist attraction or a specific soft drink brand that she kept
working into the blog without identifying them as an advertiser.
A USA Today 
