It is not new for us to see jaw-dropping selfies from the top of the Alps or from the beaches in Malibu. Travelers around the world do not shy away from sharing their insightful journeys. Their travel blog and other Social Media Platforms are filled with hundreds of oh-so-beautiful images.
Platforms like Instagram have made it easier than ever for travel-lovers to make traveling their full-time career.
If you think that writing a blog or posting juicy pictures on traveling is enough to become a master travel-blogger then you are wrong, you need to stand out from the rest by planning your travel blog effectively.
You need to have a presence on each social media platform to be accessible to a variety of audiences.
I have come across amazing travel blogs where people share their stories on the professional networking platform – LinkedIn.
Travel blogging can be in many forms.
To understand it better, let us look at how My Job Search defines travel blogging.
A travel blogger is someone who travels around the world collecting material for writing about their travel experiences, deriving income from a variety of on-line and off-line sources.
The above-given definition describes travel blogging as a full-time career for people who love to travel, collect experiences, and make money out of it.
There are two main aspects of Travel Blogging:
- Collecting Experiences: It is the primary job of a travel blogger to pick out destinations that are story-worthy so they have something valuable to share with their audience on their preferred social platforms.
- Earning Money: If you’re just traveling for fun, you can’t term yourself as a Travel Blogger because your traveling expenses aren’t generating any return. Monetizing your travel expenses is a big part of what sets the difference between a travel enthusiast and a travel blogger.
Travel Bloggers hold an important position in today’s world. 73% of travelers use online sources when deciding on their destination.
How can you become a better travel blogger on social media?
Make yourself a brand
Any individual who is planning to make money through his/her social media blogging skills should be able to treat themselves like a brand.
For instance, if you would have been a company you would have branded yourself in a particular manner then why not when you are a travel blogger.
You need to think about the future, how would you like to position yourself as a travel blogger.
You should think from the point of a layman that why should they follow you or take your advice instead of other travel bloggers.
What’s your niche? Finding an answer to this question would help you a lot in creating a distinct brand for yourself.
It is recommended that you also make a logo that defines you as a travel blogger. Logos have better recall value than names.
For example, HoneymoonGoals is a travel blog that specializes in talking about the best honeymoon destinations and provides recommendations for luxury getaways around the world.
Create multiple travel post libraries
Being a travel blogger you have an advantage over other bloggers because you have real pictures. Photographs make your blog visually attractive and appealing.
Travel involves multiple stages – Planning, Purchasing, and Travelling
As a travel blogger, it is imperative for you to create multiple libraries of High-Quality photographs for promoting content for each stage.
1.Planning
You should keep some pictures exclusively for catering people at their Travel Planning stage. Generally, people are looking to learn about the facts, culture, and budget in relation to their preferred place of travel.
You can create a detailed piece of article, a video, or a slideshow on social media to help travelers plan their travel in a seamless manner.
2.Purchasing
Once people have their itineraries with them, the next step is to start making bookings, and buying a list of things that’ll be required for the travel.
At this stage, you should promote offers, cost-cutting tips, travel bucket-lists, and must-haves.
3.Traveling
Finally, after all those days of waiting, when your audience is all-ready to begin their journey – they should be provided with some extra dose of inspiration and awe.
This stage requires you to share your personal experience-based photographs with the audience. Experiment with different content formats for this stage – video, podcasts, or even a detailed article sharing those adrenaline-push moments of your trip.
Good articles never go out of fashion
It sounds like a cliche! But yes have to write good content. If you write an article that lacks a personal touch or emotions, then people would hardly read or share it.
This is how great bloggers differentiate themselves from mediocre bloggers. They understand how people feel about certain places, and they pour out their real emotional moments from the travel to connect with their audience in a better way.
You will have to write content that attracts eye-balls and is easy to relate to.
It should be a mix of information, humor, emotions, and CTAs.
Conduct Candid Interviews
Travel bloggers love to talk about their blog with other bloggers and collaborate with them so that they can tap a different kind of audience.
Video interviews can be a great medium to deliver detailed information in a fun and relaxed state.
Talk to them about their journey of travel blogging, their favorite destinations, how they engage people and feel free to share your experiences as well.
This not only teaches you how to form your network but also gives you valuable lessons on how to improve your own travel blog.
To take it to another level, you can even go on a joint-trip to a mutually loved destination.
Video interviews have better brand value than stills or tour videos. The reason for this is simple – people love stories. It depends on you how well you can bring out the stories in the interview.
This practice will help you gain new followers from a relatively different niche.
Don’t worry about the production costs, start shooting using your phone. You can gradually upgrade to a professional studio or even divide costs with the interviewee.
Try out email marketing
Your blog page is not of much use if you do not have a lead capturing strategy in place.
Firstly you need to make a strong email marketing list so that you can promote your featured articles to them in the future.
Do not send across all your articles to your audience. Create sub-audiences (based on their liking and behavior). Send targeted blogs to these sub-audiences, this will help you a lot to improve your CTRs.
Every now and then share some casual personal emails with your audiences, asking them for feedback or their preference for your next destination.
Good email marketing requires you to pay attention to the following points:
- Think of Click-worthy Subject
- Personalize your every email campaign
- Use humor between the lines and through GIFs/Images
- Do not shy away from asking questions
- Keep it short, to the point, and clean
How different social media platforms work for you?
Twitter: frequency and timing matters
It is the only platform where knowledge and information are most-widely shared, the content you share should be concise and knowledgeable.
Twitter requires you to be active on a daily basis for multiple hours. You should think of it as a live-feed of your life, wherein you keep sharing updates about different stages of your travel.
We know that you don’t have that kind of time with you. Don’t worry, you can use RecurPost to schedule your posts on twitter.
1. Facebook: social media pioneer
The most popular social media platform is Facebook and this is the reason why you should promote your travel blogs over there. You only have to share the best of your content on Facebook.
Don’t overload your audience with every format of content you create. Long videos and blog reposts work well on Facebook.
You can also share content on different Facebook groups to increase your reach. RecurPost can help you schedule your posts on Facebook pages, groups and personal profiles.
2. Instagram: Visual king
Instagram is the go-to platform for travel bloggers like you. It gives you the liberty to use high-quality photographs of your travel experiences from around the world and post them to build your grid.
While strategizing content for Instagram, you need to create multiple repositories of all the photographs you take in your travel journeys. Do not make a mistake by posting all the good pictures in one go. Make sure you use the pictures in the long-run gradually and strategically so as to maintain a good inflow of quality photos.
RecurPost supports scheduling on Instagram for you to schedule your posts for future in one sitting and not having to constantly worry about uploading pictures to Instagram.
3. Youtube: make your own channel
The most prevalent form of content in the travel segment is videos and youtube is the leading platform to host your videos to your audience.
Create a video content strategy for each Travel stage. Travel guides, insider tours, cuisine experiences, adventure highlights, meeting local people, time-lapses, and full city-tours are some examples of the kind of videos you can make for your audiences that they’d want to like and share.
Carefully plans, create and share content on different social media platforms. Keep in mind your audience preference, liking, and comfort before you decide to do that.
Final thoughts
Learn. Engage. Share.
Constantly keeps looking for new ideas and inspirations to build your travel blog.
Attend events, conferences or forums so as to create your own local network with other fellow bloggers and influencers.
Most importantly, share what you learn and adapt along your journey of Travel Blogging.
The world is not separated by boundaries, it is separated by mindsets. You guys work hard to break the stereotypes about traveling around the world and becoming an inspiration to millions of minds out there who dream to live their own nomadic life.
We at RecurPost, appreciate your work and are open to suggestions from you in the comments section below.
Debbie Moran is a Digital marketing strategist with 5+ years of experience producing advertising for brands and helping leaders showcase their brand to the correct audience. She has been a part of RecurPost since 2019 and handles all the activities required to grow our brand’s online presence.