If you love reading travel websites and have had some interesting trips of your own, you may love the idea of starting your own travel blog or submitting some posts to other travel blogs. The great thing about blogging is that you do not need to be a professional writer or journalist with an agent and high paid contracts to have hundreds or even thousands of people read what you write, as long as you can create content that is interesting or entertaining or gives people information about something they are looking for. Many travel bloggers gain lots of followers who are interested in the destinations they have covered or in travel experiences in general and blogging can be a way to relive some of the fun times you have had, as well as share helpful information with other people.
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If you are thinking about blogging about your travels, here are some tips to help you make it a success:
Use Your Own Pictures
Pictures are fairly important on blogs in general, however, for travel blogs which generally describe what a given place or experience was like, they are crucial. While you can, of course, find stock images to represent just about anywhere, this takes away some of the uniqueness and authenticity of your content. You should, therefore, try and capture some pictures especially for potential blog posts when you travel. If you do not like the idea of yourself or your family appearing in pictures on blogs that anybody can see, be sure to take some great landscape shots and shots of interesting landmarks, as well as some pictures of things like your accommodation should you want to review it. You can just use your phone camera, but for a more professional touch, invest in a good digital camera. There are some great camera reviews to help you choose one here.
Write From Experience
Writing things that anybody could just find out by browsing an official website, like the opening times of an attraction and how much it costs, does not really give your readers anything new, so where possible write about your own experiences. How easy was it to get around? Were there any local quirks you noticed that it might benefit another traveler to know about? Did you have especially good service somewhere? The more you can talk about your own unique experiences, the more the reader feels like they are getting valuable insider tips about visiting somewhere.
Do Not Be Too Personal
Some blogs really just feature the writers talking about themselves and their families and while this does attract a certain type of following, informative travel blogs tend to be less ‘diary style’. While it is good to share unique experiences where they may be useful or interesting to the reader, someone looking for travel information about Rome is a different type of reader to one who would be interested in a story about how your son dropped his ice cream near the Trevi Fountain and cried for hours, thus be personal, but not too personal. If you find yourself having to introduce characters in full, rather than just being able to simply say ‘my wife’ or ‘our ten year old’, then you are probably straying into web diary territory.
With great pictures and the right tone, it can be easy to create great blog posts about your travel, whether for your own blog or other people’s sites!
Great tips Andi! I totally agree. I think it’s really important to be a little bit personal (so you don’t sound like a Wikipedia entry!) but not so personal that each post is more about you than your experiences. It’s a tough balance but the blogs that do this well are definitely the best.