Last night I made the trip to London to visit this year's Travel Blog Camp.

After missing the inaugural event last year, and kicking myself when I read all the great feedback the event received, I was determined to visit this year. It was a great opportunity to leave the bubble of the day-to-day running of Rental Reserve and mix with some of the best people in the travel industry today.

Of the five talks, I have to say my favourite was by Murray Harrold. At times it seems all to easy to get caught up in the wonderful world of social media, and loose focus on why a business should be involved. Whilst there are difficult to measure benefits (giving a brand personality being one that stood out for me) it's not always clear if the outcome is worth the cost. His 15 minutes or so were both relevant and animated.

His talk got me thinking about how the whole travel agent industry went from being local to global with the growth of the web. Murray highlighted how it was not possible or viable to compete with the big travel guys. If local changes to global, then mainstream can turn to niche. Because it needs to for some, but also because it's now possible.

Some other key points for me from the whole event:

• Quality is more important than quantity (as is often the case). This point was made in reference to twitter followers
• Social media offers an opportunity to engage with people, as well as push special offers/late deals, etc.
• It can also give personality to a brand, show that humans are behind a site/business
• Raising your personal profile and gaining links are two important benefits of running a successful blog

Reputation management also came up. It seems the general consensus was that a comment should never be left un-answered. It does seem to me that some companies are going in completely the wrong direction when it comes to dealing with comments made about them. Hopefully there will soon be some support for bloggers (and commenters) who choose to speak their mind. At the moment, people are being forced into silence due to fear of the bigger (and more evil) corporations.

From what I heard I think it is also best to reply to public comments about your company, although the real problem solving work can be done offline (or at least not in the public arena). Some form of public reply should be made.

Everyone should be treated the same. Whether they phone, email, tweet, etc.

Paying for content seemed like a hot topic. My opinion on this is that people will pay for quality, particularly in niche areas. I've long been a subscriber of a pay-monthly community (for online marketing). This includes access to content and a private forum. The quality is like nothing else available, and plenty of people are happy to pay. I would do the same for a travel-based equivalent if only there was one. I think that many people would do the same, no matter what their niche.

The mix of people at the event was fantastic, although I think a few of the larger companies came in for some stick purely based on their size. I think it's good of them to attend an event like this and shows genuine interest and passion from the individuals who make the effort to go.

Very much looking forwarding to attending next year, and will allow myself more time at the event now I know how valuable it really is.

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