We are stoked to announce that we were chosen by the African Blogger Awards as the “Best Travel Blog in Africa!” well actually they phrased it “Best blog about Travel” but it’s the same thing (right?) Either way, we’re pumped.
2015 is the second edition of the refreshingly different African Blogger Awards. Refreshing because rather than a competition based on votes from your peers, parents, dogs, cats and neighbours pet seahorse, their results are determined from an algorithm based on stats. There is no begging for votes on Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp and all that other drivel.
At the end of the day we are all tired of seeing those carefully worded “please vote for me” tweets.
Before anyone gets negative and judgy about stats though, let me be the first to say that stats are not the be-all and the end-all of what a website / blog is about and algorithms aren’t perfect either, in fact Google & Facebook both own the most hated algo’s out there.
That said, in my opinion they do a much better job in determining the success of a blog than votes, which is ultimately just a popularity contest aimed at gaining exposure for the company running the contest and not the actual entrants.
SO WHAT DOES “BEST TRAVEL BLOG IN AFRICA” MEAN?
Awards and the title’s that go along with them should always be taken with a pinch of salt because ultimately the question asked is “who gives the organisers the right to declare that?” and it is a good question because there are a lot of incredible African travel blogs and bloggers out there (and we count ourselves lucky to know many of them personally.) Furthermore, the travel niche is a large one with many players participating.
There are also huge, much bigger African travel blogs with lots of writers, contributors and even staff, blogs likeTravelstart, SA-Venues, Getaway and Travel Ground, who are all excellent.
So what it really means then, is “best of those that entered”, and even then people will debate, roll their eyes etc.
But we’ll take it…along with the awesome little trophy. Because who doesn’t like a trophy?
At the end of the day we are two travel bloggers from South Africa that focus on the destinations where we are. We don’t solely write about South Africa or even Africa for that matter, though they are our first loves, the world is a lot bigger than that, and we’d like to experience / write about as much of it as possible.
That said, from December this year we’ll be back at home (dare I say) for good and we’ll be focusing more on Mzansi and Southern Africa…Fo Sho. Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
A lot of hard work and behind the scenes stuff goes into this little blog of ours and it’s great to see our work being recognised and rewarded.
THE THANKS.
Ultimately the thanks goes to our readers and all the people that have surprised us by clicking on our links. Thank you. Both Lauren and I are working hard everyday to improve the quality of our story-telling, our photography and our blog and we hope that in year from now we’ll be serving up even better travel tales and destinations to you.
Thanks too, to all our blogging friends and family that have inspired us and helped us to do better. You guys rock the socks.
And finally, a big thanks to everyone at Webfluential for your platform and this competition.
You can go check out the rest of the category winners and runners-up here.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.