Whether it’s because of the cost of travel or the fear of the unknown, nearly two-thirds of Americans have never left the country. However, many of the people who never take the chance to travel will use any opportunity they can to read about travel or what life is like in other places.
Taking a few travel blogging tips from well-respected influencers will allow you to write a travel blog that really connects with people.
Here are six tips to follow when creating your travel blog.
1. Take Plenty of Notes
If you want to be the best travel blogger you can be, many experienced travelers assert the importance of taking notes.
If you’re in a foreign country or a completely new place, you’ll be overwhelmed with new sensations. There are architectural details, scents, and sounds that won’t be anywhere you’ve seen. There are plants, animals, and mountains that don’t look like anywhere you’ve been.
Failing to take notes means you’ll fail to recall some of the most important details of your travels. When recalling a meaningful conversation later, you won’t be able to remember what was said. If you can’t recall what people say or how events occurred, your writing will suffer.
While you might prefer to sit down at the end of the day and just rattle off your thoughts, that’s not the way to create meaningful writing.
2. Take Lots of Photos Too
When you’re trying to recall something you saw or did, it’s easy to misremember the details. Without a photo to look back at, you won’t be able to get all the details that you missed.
Photos also make a travel blog more engaging. No matter how good of a writer you are, having photos to help guide the reader makes for a more engaging experience. People can put themselves in the space, hear the sounds, and smell what you smelled.
It’s much easier to get your readers on board with a blog that has great photography. Bring a good camera with you everywhere that you go. Even a bad photo taken with a good camera will outshine a great photo taken with a cell phone.
3. Give Yourself Time
Every major influencer will tell you that travel blogging can consume your life. If you don’t put aside enough time, you’ll end up struggling to balance your time.
If you fail to write, you’ll lose subscribers and readers. If you spend too much time writing, you could neglect your family or your responsibilities. If you’re not making money from your travel blog, you shouldn’t neglect your basic needs just to keep it running.
Any kind of success requires commitment and focus. Spending day and night on a blog works for some people. No matter how much time you have, you must be passionate about what you do.
Influencers don’t become successful at travel blogging by simply devoting a little bit of free time. They need to devote hours every day to crafting the perfect blog.
Building an audience won’t come overnight. Allow yourself time to grow.
4. Understand Your Niche and Grow
When you know what your niche is, you can understand what your limits are. When you know your limitations, you can expand beyond those borders and start growing. If you don’t know your niche, you might be chasing readers you have or else chasing readers you can’t have.
When you’re looking to increase traffic to your site, you should go beyond the limited niche of the travel blogging community. If you travel across Asia and love to show off the foods there, branch out to food blogs. You can make money by adding sponsored links to food blogs to help increase readership.
Find people who aren’t traveling yet and want to learn about the places that you go. If someone is learning to speak Spanish, they might want to travel to Latin American countries. If you take the time to expand your reach to countries that are Spanish speaking, you can increase your readership broadly.
5. Let the Narrative Come to You
When you’re writing, you might have a narrative in mind. Many influencers will tell you that listening is your most important trait when you want to create a smart and clever blog.
While many travel writers are getting away from something, they shouldn’t let their own narrative tell the story of a place. One thing that famous travelers like Anthony Bourdain taught is is that the story that a place tells you is more important than the one you bring to it.
Travel writers need to be flexible enough to be changed about the places they visit. Small details might bring everything to a travel blog post. If you’re not listening, you’ll miss out on small details, interesting moments, and inspiring details.
6. Learn About SEO
While it might seem a little bit technical, search engine optimization is a vital tool when you want to create a travel blog. When new readers find you via a search, they might find your insight valuable.
Start each blog post by asking a question, either explicitly or implicitly. Every blog post should be the answer to a common question that people search online.
It can be as simple as “how much fish do people eat in Japan”? Make your post all about the fish markets you’ve seen. Add some statistics and then use phrases that people might use when searching for information like that.
A Few Travel Blogging Tips Will Bring in Readers
If you follow a few simple travel blogging tips, you’ll be able to attract all of the readers you need to increase your influence. If you take your readers’ time and commitment seriously, you’ll be able to give them something valuable that will stick with them.
If you want to start a strong brand for your blog, check out our latest guide.
