Keep your travel blog going even when you’re on the road by setting a weekly posting schedule. Creating a calendar of when your blog will have fresh posts will help keep your blog going even when you can’t be in front of your computer. Traveling can make travel blogging difficult, but only if you’re unprepared. Getting ready in advance and setting a realistic goal to have 1, 2, 3, posts a week will make it easy for your travel blog to keep working, even when you’re on vacation.
Set A Weekly Schedule
Unless you want your travel blog to be a vacation blog about a trip or two you took that will eventually die out, it’s important to be consistent. Both for yourself and your readers. If you really want to have a good travel blog that people will keep coming back to week after week, day after day, you need to blog on a regular, fairly predictable basis. It’s not quantity but consistency.
Find a realistic pace for yourself, whether it’s once every other week or 3 times a day. Once you’ve got a number of posts you’re comfortable writing per week, stick with it.
Work In Breaks
It’s not always possible to get a post up for some reason, whether you’re traveling or just need a break from the computer. Give yourself some slack – I’d say about 15% per month. So if you post once a week, after 6 posts you can miss a week. This works best if you post on a more frequent basis but don’t beat yourself up if you miss a post here and there.
How You Benefit From A Weekly Posting Schedule
- Save time. Thinking about what to write can waste a lot of time so when you get a flurry of ideas write them down. If you’ve got 4 ideas and post twice a week, you’re now set for half a month. Whenever you get ideas write them down, no matter how stupid they sound. You can usually branch off into more posts.
- Get in rhythm. You’ll find that some posts are longer than others and your tone will vary over the course of a few posts. Having a schedule will let be more aware of this rhythm, ultimately helping you generate ideas and improve your writing by mixing up the tone of your posts.
- Less stress. When you sit down in front of the computer, you want to use as much of that time for writing as you can. Save time and stress by not wasting an hour trying to think of something to write. If you’ve got an idea of what you want to write in advance you’ll spend less time twiddling your thumbs.
- Increase your focus. You can break down your blog posts into very specific topics deserving of their own posts. There are multiple aspects you can focus on in any given post. Having a weekly schedule you can write a series of posts out in advance so your blog keeps going while you take a rest.
- Keep it fun. When I first started my travel blog foXnoMad, I had no direction and my posts were all over the place. It was difficult for casual readers (and myself) to understand what my travel blog was about. I forced my writing simply for the sake of writing which resulted in a lot of bad posts. Having a schedule helps you keep your creative energy going because if your posts are boring for you, they’ll be boring for your readers too.
No matter what your goals for your travel blog, if you want to keep the readers you have and gradually increase the number of them you have you need to keep your travel blog interesting and updated on a regular basis.
Traveling benefits your travel blog and shouldn’t take away from it. Just set a reasonable schedule you can work with when you’re traveling and use to prepare for when your travel schedule gets hectic. It’s a matter of planning and balancing the content and ideas you have to their full potential with a clear mind. A weekly posting schedule is an important step in that direction.
[photos by: Jayel Aheram, Joe Lanman]
One tip that works for me–When I get an idea for a blog post, I write the title and maybe a few sentences in the New Post section, then save it as a draft. I usually have 4 or 5 drafts saved, and when time or inspiration strikes, I will open a draft, and complete the post.
Excellent advice, it’s something I started doing recently after I noticed how easily posts flow when you’ve got a few lines there waiting for you.
Excellent advice. Consistency is a key I think. I am still trying to find a focus though. Dave and I are always trying to figure out exactly what our blog is about. Sure it is about our adventures and travels, but a more focused point would be very helpful.
I agree – I think once you set that things can more easily take off and it helps your marketing.
I really agree with what you’re saying here. Having a posting schedule and sticking with it has allowed me to grow my blogs at a steady rate.
I’m lost without a schedule; it’s been one way to remain steady even after 5 years.
One thing I’ve struggled with is wondering if I should put up a post even if it’s not very substantive in the interest of having some schedule or spacing my posts out a little more irregularly to produce more pillar posts with more extensive content. I never put up anything that has no value but some easy posts include photo inspiration… do you think that an irregular post schedule is harmful?
I prefer a regular schedule, I think it helps both reader and writer in different ways. Though if you don’t have something you want to say, don’t write or post for the sake of doing so. Find a pace you can maintain with good content is what I would suggest.
A good long idea list too can help you figure out a good posting rate and experiment early on to find out the what works best for your site (e.g. days, time of day, etc.)
We really struggle with this. Keeping our posts consistent is really hard as we’re constantly on the move! I hear you about not writing boring posts, I want to scream when I read some past articles I wasn’t feeling when I wrote them!
A travel blogger’s biggest challenge!
You are right about the schedule and being realistic about focus and not stressing yourself out. I’m still very new to this gig and when I first imagined my site I had big ideas about what I would accomplish each week. Then I realized how long it took me to produce each article and how much I was stressing about getting it done. Now I still try to produce a weekly article, but they are shorter articles with a longer one every 5 – 6 posts.
It’s important over the long run, although in the beginning it can feel like you want to write everything/idea at once!
Thanks Anil for the good tips. Indeed, finding his tone and path is difficult. I don’t believe I am quite there, but I am definitely gonna use those advice to make it better !
Thanks and good luck!