{"id":93020,"date":"2016-10-11T13:26:42","date_gmt":"2016-10-11T13:26:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=93020"},"modified":"2016-10-11T13:26:42","modified_gmt":"2016-10-11T13:26:42","slug":"blogger-spotlight-yaya-lloyd-hand-luggage-only","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/blogger-spotlight-yaya-lloyd-hand-luggage-only\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogger Spotlight: Yaya &#038; Lloyd, Hand Luggage Only"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 18px;\"><strong>Authored by duo Yaya and Lloyd, <a href=\"http:\/\/handluggageonly.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\">Hand Luggage Only<\/a> is a travel and lifestyle blog. Founded in 2014 while they were both studying at the University of Cambridge, blogging started off as a hobby but has since grown into a full-time occupation. With over half a million followers on social media\u00a0Hand Luggage Only has become one of the leading blogs within its genre, chronicling Yaya and Lloyd travels to places like Portugal, USA, Petersburg, Croatia, and Australia. In this spotlight\u00a0Yaya and Lloyd chat to us about the success of their blog, how they like to work with PRs, and what will be\u00a0big in their blogosphere in the coming months.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Hand-Luggage-Only-Vuelio-Spotlight.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-full wp-image-93030 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Hand-Luggage-Only-Vuelio-Spotlight.jpg\" alt=\"hand-luggage-only-vuelio-spotlight\" width=\"700\" height=\"406\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18px;\"><strong>Can you tell us a bit about Hand Luggage Only, and what made you start your blog?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>Hand Luggage Only is our travel and lifestyle blog, that we created back in 2014 to share our love of travel, adventure and fun new experiences.<\/p>\n<p>While at Cambridge University, we used to head away most weekends (with hand luggage only), to anywhere in the world \u2013 we\u2019d literally find the best deal and just book two days away. Nowadays, we tend to take a little more luggage (we\u2019re blaming the camera equipment for that) but our travel and experiences are very much the same!<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18px;\"><strong>How do you measure the success of your website?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Success is such a relative word when thinking of blogging; we\u2019re always changing the parameters and goal posts of what our \u2018success\u2019 is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Hand-Luggage-Spotlight-Vuelio.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"  wp-image-93031 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Hand-Luggage-Spotlight-Vuelio.jpg\" alt=\"hand-luggage-spotlight-vuelio\" width=\"508\" height=\"338\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>We tend to set ourselves goals to work towards, to visit certain places that we\u2019re eager to share, build upon our relationships with fellow travellers and also being able to commit our time to our blog fully (which is exciting and scary in equal measure).<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18px;\"><strong>What\u2019s your favourite blog and why?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>Now this is very hard, there are so many blogs that we genuinely love, it\u2019s hard to name just one. As you\u2019re making us choose, we\u2019d probably have to say Park &amp; Cube created by Shini Park. Her style and creative flair is incredible.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18px;\"><strong>What advice would you give to someone who wants to start a blog?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>Firstly, to just do it! The best thing is to jump right into it and learn along the way. Also, make sure your blogging on your own terms, you\u2019ll need that passion and drive when you\u2019re writing at 4am in the morning before going to your full-time job for 8am!<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18px;\"><strong>How do you work with marketers and PRs?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>We work in a number of ways with marketers and PRs and it really does depend on the client or brand, though, we always have a rule we follow. Every partnership must:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Benefit our readers and fellow travellers<\/li>\n<li>Benefit the brand (with they get the deliverables they\u2019re looking for)<\/li>\n<li>Work well for us, Yaya and Lloyd<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If all three of these rules are answered positively, we will always endeavour to work together.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18px;\"><strong>How do you use social media to promote and share content? What are the challenges?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We tend to spend quite a lot of time on social media, we\u2019re not fans of automated updates or services where we can\u2019t be personal so we tend to update each different social media platform manually.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Yaya-Lloyd-Vuelio-Spotlight.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"  wp-image-93032 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Yaya-Lloyd-Vuelio-Spotlight.jpg\" alt=\"yaya-lloyd-vuelio-spotlight\" width=\"456\" height=\"304\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This can be time-consuming but it\u2019s well worth it \u2013 after all, that\u2019s what social media is for!<\/p>\n<p>One of the biggest challenges for us is that each of our social media platforms is slightly different. For example, one platform may be skewed by gender, location or age and that one type of photo or experience may well do better on one than the other. Knowing this constantly changing landscape can be the biggest challenge.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18px;\"><strong>What can PRs do in working better with you?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>Generally, it would be for PRs to trust that we know our audience best and to allow creative control on campaigns that work well with the deliverables they\u2019re looking for.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18px;\"><strong>What has been your blogging highlight?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>There\u2019s been so many! Wow, okay, we loved our challenge where we rode a rickshaw all the way down Italy in 5 days, spending a week discovering Norway for our Visit Norway Instagram takeover, and having a secret trip to discover the Angry Birds Studio in Finland \u2013 we even got to try out some of their new top-secret games in development (understandably, we weren\u2019t allowed to take photos)!<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18px;\"><strong>What will be big in your blogosphere in the coming months?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>We\u2019ve got a few confirmed trips that we\u2019re really looking forward to sharing. Our first ever trip to Peru and discovering the atolls of the Maldives are just two of these, we can\u2019t wait!<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re always trying to find the next quirky and fun thing to see, do or experience! Our home is London and we\u2019re also really excited to showcase so much of our incredible city, after all, travel doesn\u2019t need to be hopping on a plane for ten hours (though that\u2019s an added bonus).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Authored by duo Yaya and Lloyd, Hand Luggage Only is a travel and lifestyle blog. Founded in 2014 while they were both studying at the University of Cambridge, blogging started off as a hobby but &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":400,"featured_media":93029,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7272,4038,6980,1449],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93020"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/400"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}